As German Voters Reject Mass Migration, Politicians And The Media Play The Fool

Authored by Pawel Styrna via American Thinker,

The anti-mass-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won the election to the provincial parliaments in the states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The AfD’s rising trajectory demonstrates that – like throughout the rest of the West – voters increasingly want an end to unchecked mass migration and its many cultural, economic, and security problems. It also shows that the globalist, pro-mass-migration political and media establishment continues to ignore and demonize the voters and pretend there is no problem.

Although the AfD did not capture a majority of the seats in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament (Landtag), it came within striking distance. Winning 44 percent of the vote, the AfD nevertheless doubled its share from the previous (2021) election and secured its best showing ever. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it more than doubled its vote share.

The biggest losers were the Christian Democrats – the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and former Chancellor Angela Merkel – which plummeted from 37 percent five years ago to 17 percent in Saxony-Anhalt. Overall, Merz’s policies, including on immigration, had even lower approval there: a devastating 9 percent. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the CDU got less than 5 percent and didn’t even make it into the Landtag.

The reaction of the political establishment and the media was pretty much the same as in the U.S. following Donald Trump’s presidential victories, or in Britain following Brexit. It was a toxic combination of condescension, finger-wagging moralizing, pearl-clutching shock, and shrill fearmongering. Like the boy who cried wolf, pro-mass-migration voices, both in Germany and elsewhere, labelled the AfD “far right” (while hardly ever using the term far left) and even “fascist,” hoping to terrify whoever would listen with the specter of a resurgent Fourth Reich.

Chancellor Merz, who apparently does not follow the news from his own homeland, claimed to be “deeply shocked” by the Saxony-Anhalt election results. Angela Merkel – the single greatest contributor to Germany’s current problems with mass migration – declared, with a “bleeding heart,” that the AfD win was “deeply shocking.” These statements show just how out of touch with reality the political establishment in Berlin is.

In fact, the most shocking thing is the absolute complacency of mainstream German politicians as unchecked mass migration undermines their country.

Rapes, stabbings, and other crimes by migrants – often rejected asylum applicants who weren’t deported – have become a “new normal.”

German women feel unsafe. In late July, a Lebanese Islamist perpetrated a terrorist attack in Berlin, killing one woman (a tourist visiting from Poland) and injuring 29 more with his vehicle. Meanwhile, Islamist migrants taunt Germans with promises of an “Islamic Republic of Germany” as the already highly-taxed German taxpayers are forced to support large immigrant families, such as a Syrian with three wives, 32 children, and 25 grandchildren.

Images of the migrant incursion into Ceuta – viewed all over the world thanks to social media – no doubt also made an impression on German voters. Recognizing the extent of the constant pressure on Europe’s borders, Germans had legitimate grounds to fear that the migrant wave would eventually make its way to Germany and had little stomach for a repeat of Angela Merkel’s 2015 red carpet for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

Image: Maximilian Dörrbecker, with use of official sources, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed

An increasing number of Germans have had enough. So, when Alice Weidel and other AfD leaders pledge to “close the borders,” remove migrants from the welfare rolls, and mass deportations (remigration), the message increasingly resonates, even with German voters with immigrant backgrounds. That’s because – as in the U.S. – just because you’re an immigrant doesn’t mean you want higher crime, terror attacks, and seeing your hard-earned money fund huge polygamous migrant families that turned welfare dependency into a competitive sport.

What further drives AfD support is how the mainstream elites respond to these completely legitimate voter concerns. Sometimes, they begrudgingly acknowledge them and attempt to show that they are doing something about the crisis. However, voters can see that Merz’s supposedly “tougher” migration policies are really just nibbling around the edges (often with paradoxical results, such as dumping illegal migrants onto Poland). Overall, however, the voters are talked down to and told that they are dumb, misinformed, unsophisticated, mean-spirited, unwelcoming, and, perhaps even racists and Nazis. Establishment figures then conclude their lectures by proclaiming utter “shock” that the voters are rejecting them.

Herr Merz showed just how deeply committed he is to the mass migration agenda (in spite of some tactical concessions) by channeling the most radical “abolish ICE” activists and attacking mass removals (remigration) as “ethnic cleansing” on the floor of the Bundestag. (Of course, unchecked mass migration rapidly changing Western societies culturally beyond recognition is apparently not “ethnic cleansing.”) Like much of the Western political establishment, Chancellor Merz has learned nothing. The voters, however, are refusing to put up with it.

Pawel Styrna is director of international relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He is a legal immigrant and holds a Ph.D. in history from American University in Washington, D.C.