my. peeps in about the moments before. it's all about the stories in so. it's all about george chance to discover the world from different perspectives. join us and be inspired by distinctive instagram or. d.w. stories new topics each week on instagram. following a very warm welcome indeed to quadriga coming to you from the heart of burlington germany's two biggest political parties are currently trying to forge a new coalition government the problem is though that i'm going to merkel's conservatives and the social democrats are both suffered historic losses in last september's election and it's the same picture in much of the rest of europe where

traditional broad based parties are increasingly coming under pressure from brash and often aggressive populist parties who when voters over by offering simple solutions to complex problems so how should the mainstream parties respond and can they survive so our question this week europe's far right can the established parties stop them and to discuss that question i'm joined here in the studio by matthew carney chief europe correspondent for politico he says europe's populists are here to stay if traditional mainstream parties fail to reinvent themselves soon it's only a matter of time before the fringe supplants also with us ellen posner a columnist with the berlin daily develop two argues that political parties are lovely can't stop the rise of the far right civil society from trade unions to soccer clubs needs to. rally around liberal democracy and

a very warm welcome to to share of the insurance trees a french german journalist who just published a book about the role of family under the nazis and geraldine says the emergence of europe's far right populists is linked to the way in which individual european countries have since the second world war tried or not tried to come to terms with their history all very interesting stuff going to begin with you alan alan posner and it was just a couple of days ago that the far right alternative for germany party here in germany for a moment at least actually overtook in the opinion polls one of the main stream positive broad based parties the social democrats i know that that was really just a snapshot but it was an interesting moment and i wondered what your thoughts were are about that moment. and it's sad you know the social democratic party which is the oldest party in germany the only party in germany which can trace its history

back to before the second world war the party that stood up to hitler in the high stock and said no when hitler gave himself dictatorial powers and so on you know the party of evil and and what have you in it and which made that you not want to i'm not a fan of him. yes so it's really it's really sad it's not the sad thing isn't that the a.f.p. the far right if he got gets run up fifteen percent sixteen percent in polls the sad thing is that a party which represents sort of the broad working class in the broader sense or should represent them is down. to that segment so yeah it's sad but as as matthew said in his statement they have to reinvent themselves i don't i mean it discusses a lot of times if i knew how i probably be the leader of the social democrats not just a journalist a few runs about in just a second or matthew i mean the alternative for germany now is looking set to become

the main opposition party here in germany there certainly in the bundestag we know that time magazine wrote in its most recent edition the me that the established parties meanwhile are in free fall why are they in freefall. i think one of the reasons especially with the social democrats is that they are to a degree victims of their own success when you look back in you know as a sort of nostalgia cleanses out has done and talked about the pre-war period and so forth in the nineteenth century when these parties started they were pushing for things like universal health care pensions retirement pensions and you know these kinds of things all of which have been realized so they're not really the party of the working class anymore that they once were because they've helped lift people out of the working class into the middle class with things like free university education free education really large so i think that you know

they've had difficulty you know not just recently but really since the berlin wall fell down to adapt to this new world which has become more globalized more liberalized and so forth but you said at the beginning they said the social democrats nevertheless despite everything you just said need to reinvent themselves the christian democrats angle americans conservatives need to reinvent themselves to have how against the backdrop of what you've just been telling us well i would argue that maybe the christian democrats don't need to reinvent themselves i think that we might be moving to a situation and in germany and maybe some other european countries where you're going to have one centrist party and that the social democrats will become just another nice party because they've also over the years they've sponsored other smaller parties like the greens for example the link obviously when they had the split in germany in the early two thousand and so i don't know that the center right is going to need to reinvent itself i think the the bigger problem is what happens on the left or the bigger question is are you going to have sort of a union of these leftist parties in germany and some other countries because for

now the center right seems to be sitting pretty they did lose a bit in the last election but they're still over thirty percent and there's no reason to think that they you know that they can't sort of regroup with with. the right leadership because their message really does speak more to these middle classes and you know they they have shown us organizationally that they can maintain power and govern in a very effective way let's bring geraldine in general as i mentioned earlier been writing a book about the role of your family under the nazis and to this at the same time as we're seeing the rise of. populist far right parties across europe and in many different countries that's a difficult mix you what what are your feelings given that. well i think i mean my concern is more the rising distrust against towards democracy because they're nothing new has been invented in the last seventy years after the war so the result

of it the distrust of democracy leads to kind of moussavi feeling towards what was before the democracy of past world war two and this is fascism and in socialism. and my feeling of course as a french and german person is that the the lie of the world where i've been brought up freedom democracy. europe has been freedom for seventy years and this is something people are forgetting this is something that was allowed by also the way europe though it was it's passed after world war two and now my feeling is that this consensus towards history is. breaking you know let me just let on that would you just mention the word forgetting the book is actually called. you know french and english i suppose that would be the easier or people who lost their memory yes just

a little bit more about that some ways relevance what which will bring about well because a thing about the way people dealt with their history for example germany. alone. it's germany to built up its democracy the democracy of germany you call it separate it from the way germany dealt with its past so when you have a party like the if they which is attacking this way of dealing with memory the. fundamentally father democracy then in a way this party attacks also the democracy because the way of dealing with history in germany especially brought the people. the civilians to develop a sense for individual moral responsibility just to pick up on the problem you know well. not really because i agree totally i mean i can't say much about that you're

totally right geraldine that's ok let's go back to the the alternative for germany as we've seen the very year on our far right party there in the german parliament the bundestag the question is know how to respond to them and their presence here is one example. in september twenty seventeen the far right populist alternative for germany became the third largest party in germany's ponderous time they claim to be the only ones who can preserve germany the rhetoric is getting tougher on all sides and it's not you know i won't allow any heckling. all the members sitting there from the f.t. if they were honest data admit that they disdain this country and everything but we think it is highly regarded the world over and respected. part of this is our owning up to our past which as a citizen of this country i am proud of and i want to shout out to you that

knowledge erminie this germany is stronger than your hatred ever will be on us. this speech by greens representative jim to me or to the british talk swiftly went viral on social media is the force of political convictions enough to stop the right wingers. to meet with passion and conviction alan is not the right way to stand up to the f.t. in the german parliament definitely and i'm very grateful quite personally because this was a debate about a colleague of mine. a german turkish colleague called denis huge head who was imprisoned for a year without charges in a turkish jail and was released and it was the a of d. who demanded a debate in the german bundestag and demanded of the government that they distanced themselves from some critical remarks you gelett made about the german government and it was in this debate and the attempt was simply to set up the bundestag as the german parliament as

a sense agency for journalism and in this debate. i think. dimia who like dan is huge he is a german of german origin showed them where they get off and in no uncertain terms and i think was very good that we had a member of the green party which. traditionally have been. wary of german patriotism generally speaking really using patriotic language to show that in fact the a.f.d. the right wingers actually do hate everything that post-war germany stands for as indeed does the falling us in france as indeed do the right wingers in poland they hate this new germany this new europe and i was i thought i thought bad you know i'm not i'm not a generally speaking you're someone who tends to represent greed opinions but i thought the germans to me have made

a i mean he was the only one in that debate who really had the fire to combat there is the danger not that if you start getting fiery and combative in the way that it becomes a shouting match in the german parliament matthew. well i think you know that's obviously a danger and i think germany given the weimar history and so forth might be particularly sensitive to that although i found it refreshing that for once there was a real debate going on there was a real exchange of ideas in viewpoints i do think and i thought the speech was very important because it sent a very clear message i would add though that i think that it was really preaching to the choir in a way i don't know that he convinced many if the voters of his side i thought it was important because he is out and said sort of redefined german patriotism in his own terms and said this is what it means to be german not what you think it means to be german but i think that the larger problem here is that the if you know

continues to get fifteen sixteen percent in the polls and the same as in other countries and it's because of this issue of migration of refugees that the established parties you know going back to what we were talking about before why the s.p.d. can't really reinvent itself at the moment i think that this issue of migration is at the core of it because they have traditionally been an internationalist party they're very open to asylum to taking in refugees of all kinds and they wouldn't have any credibility were they to reverse their position on that and this is where i think the center right has had a bit of an advantage particularly if you look at austria now under sebastian quits he's obviously been very very out front in strengthening the asylum rules there but even in germany i mean merkel has this reputation as being the mother of all refugees but in fact if you look at what the c.d.u. has done over the past couple of years in tightening asylum rules it's been quite extraordinary so i think this is sort of a fundamental issue that is bubbling beneath the surface still that is the biggest

challenge that the left leaning parties have and those are going to. come but. i think of course. the hard core order of. if he but maybe convince the other ones he can just the social democrats who are now avoiding if he because people need also emotion and i think someone is demure and this kind of debate gives hughes a big debate to his emotions and this is very important now a days because nowadays only the properties parties are giving this emotion so we need more emotions from the part of the other parties and but i don't find this debate i didn't find this debate very interesting because i found it actually very depressing that in germany today we have in two thousand and eighteen a debate on freedom of speech and press this is we are going back i

mean we're talking about going back i mean people are so people are suddenly talking a lot about pride people are talking about identity people talk about nation states rather than rather than. so should social groupings there's even been a call for a conservative revolution where is all that coming from suddenly i'm not totally against a sense of pride that you can be proud of your kountry i think germany maybe this was a bit too long a taboo that you are not allowed to be proud of this of the kountry. and so i think it's this is not a link for me to know study of of the bad but we have to build it on a very clear bases which is the basis of being for out of the german constitution the german democracy what germany has done since forty five you know and not and

against immigration or against the other based nationalists and there are far right populist policies now part of the mainstream across europe. well as you as you said they've actually managed to redefine the debate even someone like jen as to mia when he comes on the ball as he talks he uses the language the the form of language patriotism love of country which let's face it let's hand it to them the the right wing populist introduced into the bait the problem here is that this is part of a worldwide trend we've got russia basically blaming nineteenth century great power politics we've got president trump saying america first which basically means. you know that none of the rules binding international organizations of countries together that simply deals for him bad or good deals we got bricks we've got britain's people saying we want to take control of our country again as if that

were possible in the twenty first century and now we've got within europe the visit ground groups eastern europe countries under re saying they don't want those integration want less integration and then we've got the populists here so it's obvious that all the entering of silvio berlusconi this weekend so we're entering you know being dragged kicking and screaming us people who believe the liberal world order into a much less liberal world disorder and it's of frightening it's frightening quite frankly ok so could this be the beginning of a populist year or that's one question and the other is could it be the era of charismatic politicians leaders not of policies but of popular movements people like emanuel mccraw in france and we've mentioned him already sebastian courts in australia. high expectations were riding on emanuel when he took the french presidency and the european stage he founded the all marsh party especially

for the election swiftly gathering hundreds of thousands of supporters and millions of voters with his power of persuasion and pro european direction it was enough to win against the pan and her right wing populist from the top. of us to imports to is a party platform on two legs the conservative austrian people's party made the charismatic politician their chairman he set out on the campaign trail with his corpse ticket it was open to non party members as well. he left behind the right wing populist f.p.o. but then included him in his coalition do not call on courts embody a new political culture for europe. the. us the question matthew. courts today represents the new european politics. i think they do in some countries and we've seen that in other places as well i don't think

could strategy is that different from say victor war bonds in hungary. that said you know court is obviously much younger he's a fresh face is thinking about courts is that he did this within an established party the pay the austrian people's party has been in power often as a junior partner but has been in the government coalition in austria since one nine hundred eighty seven so it's kind of it's really an extraordinary thing when you talk about this backlash against the establishment that there's somebody you know he's about thirty years old comes in to sort of change the name of the party cause that sebastian cortes list and so forth and manages to pull this off and how did he pull it off is because he used the same tools that the populist use to use the same sort of media tools that they've used and he also was told their main theme which is again migration fear of refuge that is that then one strategy against the far right that could be adopted by other parties across europe perhaps even by germany but then they become like to far right which is what they say that they don't want to do in this way this is this question of credibility comes and that's why i think

it's difficult for the center left parties to copy that strategy because they don't have the same credibility if if say the s.p.d. were to come out and say well we want to act really strict rules on on asylum and immigration they would have the credibility because for the past seventy years they've been preaching something else and i think you've seen that for example in italy where there is this election this weekend matteo renzi was also sort of hailed as this michael like figure very popular young guy was going to reform everything and make everything better and they're probably going to get around twenty percent on sunday so it's not just the personality there are other factors there that really are important to do is it is it possible that in german politics there could be somebody like ian spawn the angry young man of conservative politics good looks at how sebastian court has been doing things and think that's that's one way to go or is that in conceive. german politics no no i mean as matthew said i

think the christian democrats are going to market strategy was to move the christian democrats to the left because when she started that strategy they were worried that the that the christian democrats would be would be marginalized the social democrats would take the center she managed that opened up a position on the right and the spawn for instance would move the christian democrats back to the right trying to squeeze out the f.t. he might manage though he himself i think is a bit of a lightweight person you know sort of a twitter personality rather than what but anyway it's that that's where it could go but it can go in different directions brooke a great britain look at germany called in with the left wing populist message challenging the reason may and look at what might be happening united states where the democrats now you know advocating universal health care and things which you know a decade ago in america would have been rabid socialism so you know it's on both

sides of the political divide that people are ramping up the populous message early in what is what does it matter what fifteen tool this left right the battle against popular or right wing populism what can we learn from him well i mean actually he was his the big winner also because of the electoral system in france which i knows it in germany would not be possible because of the electoral system this is the first point and the second is also his ruling in a quite old. to retire in a way in france and i'm not sure in germany a government or a teen would allow this kind of. rule but it is true that now the us or not is totally down and i think it's it's been it's just you know was ten us years and but it doesn't. it's for for ever i don't know so

if he fails if my core fav then the first part of france will be the fondness for not i think this important point that these parties they sometimes go down in the polls and then you know the sort of commentary at people like us say oh well that's the end of populism if you watch it over the past few decades that certainly hasn't been the case there's sort of dormant for a while it's sort of like cancer that goes into remission and then and then comes back when when there is a problem and you saw this in germany with the f.d.a. as well which when they were having their internal struggles a few years ago fell into the low single digits and as soon as the refugee crisis came i think by the end of that year they were around ten percent and they obviously finished at twelve percent in the last poll so i think the problem with these parties is that once they take hold in the system as they have de is done now in the buddhist tog it's very difficult to get rid of them and if this is one great big battle in between the established mainstream parties the broad base policies that have been part of the post-war settlement right across europe battle between

them and between the new young populist parties who's going to win. is more than that it's a battle between the liberals world order and the illiberal world disorder and i think it's in the but let's not forget behind the liberal order you've got russia you've got to china you've got great powers you've got islam ism and you've got the populist things it's you know it's in the balance it's a fight it's not you know this is going to be so many people tempted by the in liberal order and tempted to shift away from democracy because they're there for god knows how it looks like when there is no democracy because they haven't lived it you know because the war is seventy years. ago so. you know we have to remind people again and again i think so. no i agree i mean i think this is this idea about than the style of the past people tend to sort of mythologized the past especially

a past that they didn't experience which is why i think this book is sort of interesting as people collectively forget how it really was but at the same time you know it does appear that there is a large swathe of the population in europe and in the west in the u.s. as well that is just not happy culturally with the way things have moved over the past thirty years or so with globalization with you know increased immigration in all of these countries and that's not going to change ok and the best way to combat the far right in one sentence in a nutshell. it's to do i think what is to me is done which is to confront them head on and to not not hide from the debate to take them head on with real arguments yeah yeah yeah make democracy sexy again democracy sex and they aren't. generally because i totally agree ok all every mind also that democracy is also work for citizens citizens have to participate much more and political right ok thank you for a little truth me thank you for being here today we've been talking about europe's far right come to establish call to stop them thanks for joining us come by next

week bye bye interest.

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