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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/donutloop on 2023-12-28 18:24:33.
Germany: AfD a growing threat to democracy, says minister
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-afd-a-growing-threat-to-democracy-says-minister/a-67839373
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The interior minister of the eastern German state of Thuringia, Georg Maier, has warned that “democracy is under pressure” as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seems set to score major successes in state elections next year.
Maier, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung that “right-wing extremists of the AfD under Björn Höcke are trying to undermine democracy from within by all means.”
The Thuringian AfD branch has been classed as “proven right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, as have those in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
“We have to make the constitution weatherproof,” he said, adding that he sometimes has “the feeling that we are sleepwalking into a kind of disaster and will wake up in an authoritarian system on September 2.”
Maier pointed to manifold social problems in Germany’s former communist eastern states as contributors to the AfD’s rise in popularity, saying that people in the east earned 25% less on average than in the west, for example.
He said many people were very worried by the crises facing the world at present, and even sometimes had concerns about whether they had enough money to pay for heating.
The original article contains 363 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!