In Germany, as in the West at large, Democracy™ means that when an inconvenient party wins a plurality of a vote in any given jurisdiction, all of the institutional power that can be mustered is brought to bear to prevent that party from actually holding power and exercising the popular will of the voters that put them there.
Related: German Minister Announces Pre-Crime Surveillance, Prosecution of ‘Far-Right Extremists’
Via CNN (emphasis added):
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has become the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since the Nazi era, dealing a crushing blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government with only a year to go before the next federal election.
After voting closed on Sunday, the AfD was projected to become the strongest party in the eastern state of Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote, and to come a close second in Saxony, with 30.6% of the vote.
In another worrying development for Germany’s mainstream, the fledgling Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – a far-left party that has questioned the country’s support for Ukraine and shares some of the AfD’s anti-immigration streak – came third in both states, despite only being founded earlier this year.
Although extremism has long been concentrated in Germany’s east, the results will be a concern for Scholz’s center-left SPD coalition, which slumped to a dismal fifth in both states. If federal elections were held now, recent polls show the AfD could become the second-largest group in the Bundestag, with the SDP trailing in third.
Scholz described the results as “bitter” and, calling on the European principle of the “cordon sanitaire,” urged mainstream parties in Thuringia and Saxony to exclude the AfD from any state governing coalitions.
CBS News led their coverage with a human-interest story about adoptive lesbian mothers’ consternation at what the AfD will do to their “family.”
Via CBS News (emphasis added):
Nicki Kämpf watched her daughter toddle across the sand in a Berlin playground and wondered whether she and her wife should move their 1 1/2-year-old west, after Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party to win a state election in post-World War II Germany. Kämpf, 29, and her wife discussed a backup plan as Sunday's election results came in. They're concerned that a gay couple and their child might not be safe in the future if parties like Alternative for Germany, or AfD, gain more power in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states.
Even though they live in the liberal city of Berlin, Kämpf was scared the far-right's power could spread. She's especially worried because the paperwork to formally adopt her daughter is still pending — and could be for another year or more.
"I don't think I would be able to adopt her if they're in power," Kämpf told The Associated Press on Monday. "I don't want to bring her up in a hostile environment."
Imagine — as unimaginable as it might be — the corporate state media ever doing a sympathetic story to the inverse effect: “Conservative mother and father in Munich worried that a takeover by the Green Party will result in their boy being kidnapped and forcibly transitioned by the state.”
