The SPD warns of a new political taboo in Thuringia. According to media reports, the CDU in the state parliament is considering pushing through a request for fixed wind turbine distances next week with the approval of the AfD. “What is looming in Thuringia is alarming,” said the parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, on Saturday to the AFP news agency. And SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert called on CDU leader Friedrich Merz to intervene.
Mast said: “This is not a state issue. If it happens as it is currently emerging, it would again be a political taboo.” The AfD wants to destroy democracy – in the Bundestag and in the state parliaments. It is not for nothing that the AfD in Thuringia is being observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Kühnert told the “Spiegel” that a law against the votes of the red-red-green minority government was “a legislative majority by Höcke’s grace”. Björn Höcke is the right-wing extremist state and faction leader of the AfD in Thuringia. Kühnert said: “There has never been anything like this and there must never be.” In the CDU, leadership is now required, “in the state parliament in Erfurt, the authority of party leader Friedrich Merz is also being challenged.”
The political director of the Federal Greens, Emily Büning, recalled a statement by Merz in December that there would be a firewall to the AfD with him. “Now he is silent while the Thuringian CDU plans to push through two draft laws with the votes of the AfD against the state government for the first time,” Büning told the “Spiegel”. No party should make itself dependent on the votes of the right-wing extremists. “I expect from the CDU as a democratic force that this firewall stands.”
In February 2020, the FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich was elected Prime Minister of Thuringia with the votes of the AfD, CDU and FDP; it was the first time in the history of the Federal Republic that a prime minister was elected with the necessary votes from the right-wing populist AfD. This was seen as breaking a taboo. Kemmerich resigned a few days later.
Mast said the SPD will also be watching very closely from Berlin what is happening. “As far as the AfD is concerned, the SPD parliamentary group is clearly sorted: We will always defend our values everywhere. There will be no common cause.”
