Opinion: Russia is cultivating Germany’s far right. Germans don’t seem to care.
By Anne Applebaum Anne Applebaum Columnist focusing on national politics and foreign policy Email Bio Follow Columnist April 12 It’s not as though the relationship between the Russian government and the German far right, the Alternative for Germany party, has ever been a secret. Last year, when the government expelled a group of Russian spies, AfD leader Alexander Gauland protested: Germany could be letting “itself be drawn into a new Cold War by rabble rousers,” he declared.
A cache of other emails, analyzed in Der Spiegel, places these exchanges in a broader context. They describe a broad range of Russian “foreign-policy activities” in Europe, ranging from the “organization of meetings, vigils and other protest actions in [European Union] countries to the successful support of resolutions in the national parliaments of the EU and to media campaigns.
Even more interesting is the question of how the rest of Germany grapples with the Frohnmaier story. Inside the Bundestag, one leading Social Democrat has called for a parliamentary investigation; the Christian Democrats have demanded that Frohnmaier resign. But Germany is still profoundly resistant to the idea of a Russian threat to German democracy, preferring to downplay it as some kind of Cold War throwback idea, and to suspect those who discuss it of warmongering.
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