Burladinger Call: No vote of the AfD in the Zollernalb district!
For some years now we have been experiencing a clearly notice able shift to the right in Germany.
This takes place in the discourse, on the street and the ballot box. The parliamentary arm of the shift to the right is the “Alternative for Germany”(AfD) party, the AfD transformed into a right – wing populist style.
In recent years, the AfD has been successful at the ballot box by pitting social groups against each other and inciting them. She makes politics with prejudices and fears. In return, it divides society according to religion and origin. The AfD´s “solution” consist primarily of nationalizing and ethnicising the political (“Germany first!”, “Islam doesn´t belong to Germany”, etc.).
The associated call for special laws for minorities (e.g. the building of mosques or minarets) is antidemocratic because it violates the democratic principle of equality. The AfD is both an actor and a winner of the shift to the right. This is also clearly noticeable in the municipalities.
The AfD will run for the state elections on March 14,2021 in the constituencies of Balingen and Hechingen-Münsingen with one candidate each.
In the Zollernalb district, right-wing conservatives said goodbye to the AfD, at the latest after the departure of the state parliament member Stefan Herre and three of four district councilors in November. Since then you have been dealing with a clearly right-wing extremist district association.
Armin Schweitzer, himself elected to the district council for the AfD in May 2019, wrote in December 2019 in his reason for leaving:
“The AfD, both in the federal government and in the Zollernalb district (KV), has changed its appearance in the last six months to a considerable extent for the negative! This
took place increasingly in the sense of a more right-wing, more and more authoritarian basic orientation. The growing influence of the “right-wing” of Björn Höcke (Thuringia) is increasingly turning into a problem of the AfD´s original credibility.”
Even in the Zollernalb district, the AfD doesn´t represent an alternative to the established parties. Instead of solution, it only offers setbacks, divisions and false promises.
Anyone who wants a society based on solidarity, in which everyone can live better, has to take a firm stand against the AfD.
The “Burladinger Call” is aimed at people in the Zollernalb district, because we belive that smallscale, communally rooted work against the shift to the right is necessary. It must then be supplemented by supra-regional and international collaboration with other groups and individuals.
As part of the “Burladinger Call” we declare:
* For us, the signatories of the “Burladinger Call”, the AfD doesn´t represent any viable alternative.
We appeal to the people in the district not to vote for this partei.
*We call on you to do educational and persuasive work in this sense. In families, in companies, in communities.
* We are also aware of our historical responsibility at the local level. German national socialism left its bloody traces in the Zollernalb district. During the “Operation Dessert”, the SS forced up to 12,500 prisoners to work in the region in 1944 and 1945. More than 3,480 people died as a result of this forced labor. For us this is no “bird shit”, as the AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland once said.
* Stronger democratic participation also helps against the AfD and the shift to the right. Democracy cannot be limited to the ballot box. We therefore demand more democracy at all levels. In the companies, in the neighborhoods, in the youth centers, in the schools.