Firewall against the far-right in Germany

[laughs]

But, um, there is talk of ending the Brandmauer, which is the firewall against the AfD and cooperating, and you can see figures, um, looking at Berlin and saying, "They're working with the extremists.

The SPD and the Greens are working with extremists." So, you know, this is a Dammbruch.

The br- the dam is breaking.

it, it's, it's obviously stupid, and, like, again, you know, it's sort of insulting to, to people's intelligence.

Um, I mean, I think we might be Like, in, in some states at least, hopefully never at the federal level, but we'll see.

I mean, this question of the Brandmauer, like, might become irrelevant pretty soon because it's supposed to be, right, we don't, uh, have a coalition with them to then get across the 50% threshold.

Mm.

open with where the mainstream sits.

The consensus view treats the Brandmauer, Germany's refusal to cooperate with the AfD, as a genuine safeguard, and reads the granting of parliamentary leadership to that party as an erosion of democratic norms rather than a procedural technicality.

The firewall isn't just a political convention, it's an institutional grammar that reveals deeper contradictions in Germany's militant democracy.

When the CDU codified its incompatibility resolution in 2018, it wasn't merely drawing a line, it was creating a new form of bureaucratic exclusion that operates parallel to constitutional law.