Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:12expectations, and well, that is what
00:00:35Only bread, bed, and soap, nothing more for
00:00:39asylum seekers, was the slogan in 2024 by the
00:00:43radical German right, which today re-edits and
00:00:46radicalizes. AFD says:
00:00:49for children of irregular immigrants, separate
00:00:52schools; for refugees, areas
00:00:56far from the general population, establishments with
00:00:59foreigners. They must pay to monitor them, because they claim that
00:01:03they increase violence. This is an alternative for
00:01:07AFD in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany that triumphed in the local elections of Saxony Anhalt, with its leader
00:01:11Ulrich Segmund, who intends to give a more friendly face to a
00:01:15group accused by the German Evangelical Church of
00:01:19wanting to destroy democracy. They were
00:01:22three seats short of taking over the local government, capitalizing on the
00:01:25discontent against Chancellor Merz's government and the depressed
00:01:29economy. From that area, they present themselves as the only
00:01:32representatives who know how to connect with the people, of
00:01:36whom only Germans are truly a part. "My
00:01:39heart is bleeding," said a normally cold Angela
00:01:43Merkel, in response to this election result, as if to
00:01:46gauge what it means in the country that experienced the horror of
00:01:50Nazism, that AFD has for the first
00:01:53time won local
00:01:55what excites me most is elections. What is happening in the rest of Europe and how does it question the
00:01:58common project? What do these movements tell us in Latin
00:02:02America? We discuss it on Global Connection for CNN
00:02:06in Spanish.
00:02:09We begin the analysis of this exciting topic with Franco de Ledone,
00:02:13who is a researcher, as well as an analyst, specialist in all matters
00:02:17of authoritarianism and global far-right, and a doctor in
00:02:20communication from the Free University of Berlin, author of the book "Epidemia
00:02:32the program of Alternative for Germany, but what
00:02:35is this party and tell us a little about its
00:02:38history?
00:02:40Well, it is a party that is located
00:02:43democratic what AFD within the family of what are called radical right parties, that is, parties
00:02:47that through democratic tools manage
00:02:51to advance and possibly reach power, and from those
00:02:54positions, they have an agenda that erodes different
00:02:58aspects of democracy, democratic
00:03:02institutions, values, rights, and guarantees. It is
00:03:06a party that was born approximately 13 years ago in
00:03:092013 precisely as a eurosceptic party,
00:03:14impressive mobilization that is, it criticized the positions of the government at that time, the government of Angela Merkel, of
00:03:18supporting or rescuing banks and
00:03:22rescuing the euro itself. Do you remember that crisis, that
00:03:24moment? And over time, it mutated and became a
00:03:28much more radical party. It has
00:03:31these ideas that are much closer to what appeared in
00:03:35other Western European parties like the National Front at the time of Jean
00:03:39Marie Le Pen as a comparison, I mean,
00:03:43and it is the party that we find today where from
00:03:46a point of view of the current German
00:03:50political reality, it is absolutely normalized and
00:03:54right? To impact day. obtaining results like those of last Sunday. Let's talk about the
00:03:57leader of this party,
00:04:00AFD, but in Saxony Anhalt, who
00:04:04is Ulrich
00:04:05Segmund? Segmund is a character
00:04:09who is now occupying
00:04:12a prominent position in the Alternative for Germany party, but it has
00:04:15not always been this way, he has not always had
00:04:19such a relevant
00:04:21What ingredients must you have to be successful in place. He gained this space after the
00:04:24electoral campaign last summer where he obtained the result he did,
00:04:28but he is a person who comes from the most extremist sector of the
00:04:32party, the most radicalized sector. He is a
00:04:34person who has contacts
00:04:38with sectors of neo-Nazism, who has contacts
00:04:41with sectors like the identitarian movement, which are
00:04:45classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
00:04:47as extremist positions and movements,
00:04:52as an opposition, and in that sense, he constitutes one of
00:04:56the elements that lead the Alternative for
00:04:59Germany party to position itself in those more anti-democratic
00:05:03spaces, and to build a kind of
00:05:06agenda that points more to authoritarian tendencies at this
00:05:10moment. Yes. And what is the key to his
00:05:13success? Because among several things they have said is that somehow,
00:05:17beyond his real proposals, he appears very direct,
00:05:20young, in contrast to Chancellor Merth,
00:05:24and with a very
00:05:27intelligently planned
00:05:29campaign. Yes, that's true, he has
00:05:33a quality that other radical right parties around
00:05:37the world also have, and that is a fairly
00:05:39strong and fairly
00:05:43efficient ability to handle political
00:05:46communication. He can construct
00:05:49messages in a fairly accessible way,
00:05:52in some cases even simplified, which allows him
00:05:56to reach a very broad audience through social networks
00:06:00and what platforms offer with these short videos and so on.
00:06:03Other parties may not reach as well. It is also true that
00:06:07during the campaign, he showed a very people-friendly profile,
00:06:10a profile
00:06:13showing himself as a member of a community, right? But what
00:06:16explains this local victory of
00:06:20also regarding national politics?
00:06:23Well, first of all, it must be said that Saxony-Anhalt
00:06:27is a fairly small, sparsely populated, and quite
00:06:31poor region, one of the poorest, which means we are always talking about a
00:06:34symbolic blow with what happened last Sunday. Now, as you
00:06:38rightly point out, it belongs to a particular
00:06:41region in Germany that is known as Eastern
00:06:45Germany or East Germany, which is precisely located where the
00:06:48old GDR was, the territories of the old
00:06:52GDR. This territory
00:06:55was unified with West Germany in the
00:06:59early 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a process
00:07:03of, if you will, annexation took place there. The
00:07:06point is that in this process of reunification,
00:07:10a narrative has been built and developed
00:07:14that has been passed down from generation to generation of a kind of
00:07:17injustice, an injustice in economic terms, but also in
00:07:21terms of positioning in decision-making
00:07:24places, etc. This narrative has
00:07:27become a kind of profound
00:07:31frustration, even for people who did not experience the process but
00:07:34who received it later by listening to their
00:07:37parents, their grandparents. And
00:07:40from there, no party could take
00:07:44responsibility for that narrative. The majority of people
00:07:47who understood that process as unfair ended up taking refuge in
00:07:51abstention. Now,
00:07:55has done is to build an identity, a
00:07:58political identity through that narrative. AFD has presented itself as the
00:08:02only party that responds to that anger, that can
00:08:06channel it. From there, they have been able to
00:08:09establish a kind of connection that goes beyond the political
00:08:13program, that goes beyond the concrete content they
00:08:16propose. There lies at least part of that very important
00:08:20success they have had. Now, and of course,
00:08:23one can also see an
00:08:26with the highest participation recorded at 78%, with
00:08:30new voters, discontent, punishment for the general
00:08:33government, the leaderships we mentioned, the strategies we
00:08:37mentioned, also against immigration
00:08:41and in favor of greater
00:08:44stability with bad economic figures. I would like to ask you, Franco, what can you tell us
00:08:48from your perspective, and what effect can
00:08:52this local election have on the
00:08:54next local elections, but especially thinking about
00:08:582029 in the next national general
00:09:01election, how much can it shake things up, how much can it
00:09:05change the German political system?
00:09:09Let's see, first of all, it's a novelty that AFD is on the verge
00:09:12of forming a government. It won another election in Thuringia two
00:09:16years ago, if I remember correctly, but it was never as close as now to
00:09:20forming a government. As you correctly pointed out, it needs only three
00:09:24seats and would achieve it, or with some abstentions as well. This puts
00:09:27AFD in a role and a space it didn't have until
00:09:31now. This allows AFD to pressure even
00:09:35more the rest of the parties to break the
00:09:38cordon sanitaire, to build or at least to
00:09:42be open to building dialogue with AFD, something that no party
00:09:46wants to do except the left, the conservative
00:09:50left, which is a relatively new party that emerged two years ago and has shown
00:09:54itself open to this. But yes, going back to your question,
00:09:57AFD now has a much stronger
00:10:01position in the political spectrum, or rather, on the political
00:10:04stage. This will surely generate an impact on the
00:10:07other regional elections, but above
00:10:11all, I believe that the most significant symbolic impact is at the federal
00:10:15level, in terms of showing that the discontent with the
00:10:18federal government, with Fredrik's government, is more
00:10:22present than ever. That exception
00:10:25that there might be with the electoral promises, both
00:10:28to the more progressive sector and to the more
00:10:32conservative sector, would not be meeting
00:10:37would perhaps reflect the growing AFD vote
00:10:41that we are seeing in the polls now. Yes, of course, and the vote of the
00:10:45CDU, which supports Merz, falling by half.
00:10:48Briefly, to close, you who are
00:10:51there, how has the victory, even if regional,
00:10:54and the advance of this far- right resonated
00:10:58in a country that experienced World War II,
00:11:00the horror of Nazism? Well, first of all, I would say
00:11:04that in general there is a significant concern,
00:11:08because of course, as I told you a while ago, the connections
00:11:11that may exist with more extremist sectors, neo-Nazis, are
00:11:14worrying. It has come to light that some of the candidates who were
00:11:18voted for on that list belonged to the Stasi,
00:11:21which was the secret police of the GDR. Others have deep connections
00:11:25with neo-Nazi sectors,
00:11:29openly neo-Nazi sectors,
00:11:31connections with Russia, etc. There are many elements that generate
00:11:34concern. Now, when you look at the reactions in general,
00:11:38you start to try to identify different
00:11:41profiles. You also find opinions such as,
00:11:45"Well, they should be allowed to govern to see if they do well,
00:11:48and if they don't do well, they will be punished electorally,"
00:11:51a position that I,
00:11:55I doubt, I doubt that this will be the case,
00:11:59because in general it has not happened. We have examples all over the world that
00:12:02when the far right comes to power, it doesn't necessarily receive that
00:12:06punishment. And there are other positions that have to do
00:12:10with, "Well, this will help the rest
00:12:13of the parties realize that they need to change their stance on some issues, that they need to
00:12:17change their discourse on some issues," something that also makes
00:12:20me doubt, because if they haven't succeeded until now,
00:12:24we are already, in some way, at the end of the
00:12:28process of normalization. There have been other warning signs, so I also
00:12:31doubt that will happen. The point is that, in any case, AFD occupies
00:12:35this place, a place that 13 or 14 years ago was unthinkable
00:12:39for a party of this type to have this role in Germany, and
00:12:43Germany, as well as the rest of Europe and in many other places in the world,
00:12:47will have to learn to live with that and try to uphold
00:12:51democracy and democratic
00:16:36What does the triumph of this radical right in
00:16:40a local election in Germany mean for Germany, for Europe, and for Latin America? We will
00:16:44discuss it with Michel Jafeman, academic from the Institute of Political
00:16:48Science at the Catholic University. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much, Monica, for the
00:16:51invitation. We talk about local leadership,
00:16:54specifically in Saxony-Anhalt, with the
00:16:57local leader Ulricht Segmund of AFD. But what
00:17:01does national leadership mean, again a
00:17:04woman, Alice Weidel,
00:17:07the head of a radical right-wing party, as we have seen in other places?
00:17:11Exactly, we have the cases, right, of Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia
00:17:14Meloni in Italy, the leader of the far-right
00:17:17party of Denmark. Female leadership is repeated in the
00:17:21European far-right. This is a particularity of these
00:17:24European parties that promote female leadership because
00:17:27they understand that gender equality and women's
00:17:31rights are civilizing achievements of... and
00:17:34that allows them to contrast these projects against the threat posed
00:17:38by the East, especially the Middle East and Muslim migration,
00:17:41right, that reaches Europe, which understands women in a different
00:17:45role within society and in a more patriarchal
00:17:48role, certainly subordinate to authority. This is how these
00:17:52more radical right-wing groups portray it.
00:17:55Is it correct to call them the radical
00:17:58right? The categorization we are using and the
00:18:01typology that is most often
00:18:05proposed is that there is a family of parties that is the far
00:18:09right. There we have two projects: the extreme right, which is characterized
00:18:12by trying to operate outside of democratic rules, and
00:18:16right-wing radical populism, which plays within
00:18:21norms and takes advantage of democratic institutions to
00:18:24roll back democracy. AFD
00:18:28would be in that sub-family. It is
00:18:31advancing, and how! What can this
00:18:34election tell us about the advance of this radical
00:18:37populist right in Europe? Well, we are,
00:18:41according to what various authors have proposed,
00:18:44in a fourth wave of the far-right, and in this
00:18:47fourth wave, of course, we have seen the European cases, Viktor
00:18:51Orbán, the case of Marine Le Pen herself, who has not yet
00:18:54acceded to government but has grown
00:18:57nationally in the
00:19:00representation in France, the case of Giorgia Meloni, as we mentioned,
00:19:03and also Viktor Orbán, who accedes to government and
00:19:06then withdraws. The Polish far-right
00:19:10party also accedes to government and then loses the next election. That's why
00:19:14we talk about Hungary exactly with Orbán, and
00:19:17that's why we talk about the wave, right, that in a certain
00:19:21way activates and deactivates
00:19:24cases in different parts of the
00:19:27continent. But we are facing a phenomenon that is extending
00:19:31worldwide, which is why we can speak of a wave in
00:19:34general terms, and of the
00:19:38same logic, right? Just as many female and male authors have paid attention to
00:19:42Europe, now they are also paying attention to Latin America, and with the cases that are emerging
00:19:46in our region, what can we say
00:19:49then about the European project? Is it
00:19:52threatened by these groups that are at least
00:19:55Eurosceptic? Exactly, one of the logics
00:19:58of the emergence of these parties is opposition,
00:20:02right, to globalization. They are profoundly
00:20:04anti-globalist. Or anti-
00:20:08globalization. They are
00:20:11sovereignists; they understand that countries should resolve their political issues
00:20:15within their borders. So, transnational bodies,
00:20:19right, and international governance like the European Union
00:20:22are threatening. Think that, as you already mentioned,
00:20:26AFD emerged
00:20:30right, to the European Union's plan to rescue countries like Greece
00:20:33during the crisis between 2008 and 2013, and today
00:20:37it is also opposed, for
00:20:40example, to support for Ukraine against Russia. Exactly,
00:20:43this is one of the fundamental characteristics of these radical right-wing
00:20:47populist projects: a nostalgic
00:20:51authoritarianism, right? In this case, a nostalgia
00:20:54for the German project of Eastern Europe, right, a
00:20:58search for vindication of that previous state, right, of a previous
00:21:01order that was lost and that in a way explains the shortcomings and
00:21:05difficulties faced by that sector, that area of Germany, even if it is a
00:21:09different ideological sign. Even if it is a different ideological sign, and that is curious, because
00:21:13there was a communist regime, but there was an order, and there is a
00:21:16nostalgia for that order. On the other hand,
00:21:20right, a populist discourse in the logic of separating
00:21:24society between a "them" and an "us," right? "Them"
00:21:27being the corrupt elite, in this case the corrupt transnational
00:21:31elites, the European Union, right, that wants
00:21:34to threaten that "us," right, which is the pure German
00:21:37people. Also, Muslim migration,
00:21:40which is a civilizational, cultural threat to pure
00:21:44Germany. And finally, a component known as nativism,
00:21:47which is different from xenophobia, which is the idea
00:21:50that countries should operate with the natives of those
00:21:54regions, that is, Germany for the Germans,
00:21:57right, and German decisions made by Germans. What happens in
00:22:01Latin America? What can this German process tell us or
00:22:05teach us for our continent? Well, the
00:22:08far-right has a diffusion effect, as happens with
00:22:11many political phenomena in general and in global
00:22:15terms too, right? From Latin
00:22:18America, we have seen the advance of the
00:22:21far-right in Europe, and it is no coincidence that there are
00:22:24links between the parties, right, of these new right-wing
00:22:28parties or the far-right, as different authors are studying
00:22:32them, right, with parties like Vox, right, with parties
00:22:35like AFD or FPO of Austria, which had
00:22:39its MEPs at the Madrid Forum last week here
00:22:43in Santiago. So the success in Europe, in a certain
00:22:47way, it is inevitable to think that it encourages these projects
00:22:50in Latin America. But we must understand that there are
00:22:53fundamental variations. The migratory issue is not
00:22:57a political issue for the Latin American far-right,
00:23:00right? Most countries, for example, Brazil, Argentina, that
00:23:04have had governments or are having
00:23:06them, like the Argentine case, do not have
00:23:10migration as a public problem or a public
00:23:13agenda item, as it can be for the Chilean case. Yes,
00:23:17economy, yes, indeed, security.
00:23:21And the idea of that intrusion, right, of
00:23:24agents outside of national states, right, in local
00:23:27politics, let's call it the UN, let's call it the
00:23:30WHO for the Argentine case, right? But of
00:23:34entities that seek to interfere in local
00:23:37politics, right, with the aim of also, in the populist logic,
00:23:40harming that "us" that is the pure people. I'll close by asking you something that
00:23:44is always very difficult for political scientists,
00:23:47but do you think this will still be
00:23:50a specific event going forward to the next
00:23:54regional elections, will the
00:23:58more radical populist right of AFD in
00:24:02Germany also advance, and perhaps thinking about
00:24:062029, be the leading force in the national
00:24:09elections? I believe there is a process
00:24:12that an author named Valentín
00:24:15calls the "information shock," which is when these
00:24:19parties win elections, increase their representation,
00:24:22and when they come to power, other political
00:24:26leaders see that they don't seize power by force, they see that they
00:24:30comply with institutions, they see that they
00:24:33are even capable of sitting down to negotiate, and what some in France have
00:24:36called the "cordon sanitaire" is lowered. In
00:24:39Germany, the other parties have called it the "firewall,"
00:24:44it. Exactly, that advance will depend on how the other
00:24:48political forces
00:24:50align around this
00:24:53far-right force that is growing electorally.
00:24:57On the one hand, how much they keep it marginalized and how much
00:25:00they integrate it into the political mainstream, right? How much
00:25:04capacity they have, right, are they willing to form a coalition with them
00:25:08or not? We are already seeing the discussions,
00:25:11right, from the German Christian Democrats, AFD itself, that there is no possibility of a coalition, but the truth is...
00:25:15that they don't have a majority so they have to negotiate the local government to
00:25:19reach 50% of the seats,
00:25:22so part of the successes of the far right also has an
00:25:25endogenous character in the sense that it is outside of the parties and
00:25:29it has to do with how other political forces react, I understand, but also how
00:25:33the media reacts, how much they normalize these
00:25:36projects, because the language
00:25:39can change and they can moderate certain antisemitic positions
00:25:43that they have put forward, Holocaust deniers that they have put forward, or ultimately
00:25:47uh uh Islamophobic ones that they have put forward,
00:25:50but the project remains, so they moderate
00:25:54in order to grow, and when they grow,
00:25:57the environment gives it a boost. Michel, thank you very much for having
00:26:01joined us in global connection. Thank you very much, break and we'll be back.
00:26:17Here on
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00:28:25And I know it's difficult, but how do we reach a
00:28:27balance in which we don't lose sight of
00:28:31this that we had all over the place when we started
00:28:34preparing this talk, which is the common
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00:28:41few, it should not be a business,
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00:28:52intelligence must have a
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00:29:19To understand the world you need to seek
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00:29:29wherever they take us, no matter how far we have to go.
00:29:35there are new statements from President Donald Trump, I take an
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00:29:41data, ready for whatever comes, the concern is for the
00:29:45common Cuban, we
00:29:47face the world, who will finance Maduro's
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00:30:23October 6, deadline to see if AFD manages to
00:30:27form a local government, what repercussions does this have nationally
00:30:31for Germany and for Europe, we are following it
00:30:34closely, in global connection for CNN Spanish,
00:30:50we are CNN, the world leader in
00:30:53news.