A member of the newly formed HoGeSa group. Wikimedia. Public domain.Consider HoGeSa, Pegida, and Bavaria’s recent complaints about a sieve-like Italy, unable to choke off the influx of migrants travelling beyond the Alps. These are visible symptoms of a deepening malaise: Germans worry there are too many foreigners in their country and that many more are coming through porous borders. Politicians masterfully stoke resentment for political gain.
“We are not the social services for the whole world,” Horst Seehofer almost shouted in February. The prime minister of Bavaria and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU) summed it all up with his inflammatory, populist utterance: conservative forces all over Germany seem to agree with these words and tone, according to the main media outlets.
Munich paper Süddeutsche Zeitung explained that Seehofer’s statement was “almost literally quoting campaign slogans by Alternative for Germany [AfD] and the National Democratic Party of Germany [NPD].” AfD is a fiercely anti-immigration organization akin to the UK Independence Party; NPD places itself on the very edge of extreme far-right politics (and perhaps beyond). All of which says a lot about CSU itself.
