Should one argue publicly with a politician like the ethnic leader of the Thuringian AfD? The response in Germany is predominantly positive.
The Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke (left) and Mario Voigt, the state chairman of the CDU in the Free State, on Thursday evening in the Welt TV studio.
Michael Kappeler / DPA
One thing stands out from the review of the TV duel between the Thuringian CDU state chairman Mario Voigt and his ethnic-national AfD opponent Björn Höcke on Thursday evening: Most observers are of the opinion that the experiment was a success.
There were great fears about the discussion on Welt TV. Politicians and political scientists warned against giving Höcke a platform. It was often said that you couldn’t argue with someone like him. Anyone who constantly distorts facts cannot be confronted with facts. The concern was that Höcke would use the duel to spread his crude theses and that a man like Voigt, largely unknown outside Thuringia, would find no way to counteract it. According to many observers, at least the latter did not come true.
Praise from left-wing media
Left-wing media also tended to share this impression. With regard to Voigt, Die Zeit, for example, wrote of a “well-prepared” politician who was able to land effective hits again and again. The “Spiegel” concluded that Voigt had “done it well, decently and with commitment, perhaps even in the best possible way”. He was “recognizable in the training camp,” armed with “papers that had the brownest Höcke whispers of the past few years written on them.”
The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” blamed Voigt less for the outcome of the debate, but rather Höcke’s own demeanor. This “disenchanted” itself. There was a politician on stage “who knows exactly what he is saying in the beer tent, but wants to believe in the studio that he meant something completely different.” During the debate, Höcke tried to reinterpret the word “remigration”. He claimed that this term did not mean the deportation of Germans with a migration background, but, on the contrary, their repatriation from abroad.
Many media outlets also rated Höcke’s statements about SPD politician Aydan Özoguz as revealing. Höcke once wrote that the Deputy President of the Bundestag has no place in Germany. In the studio he suddenly didn’t want to remember it anymore.
Unsurprisingly, there was also praise for the Thuringian Voigt’s sometimes combative performance from the CDU party headquarters. What is striking, however, is how exuberant the recognition was. The CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann, for example, thought that Voigt had shown that he “can be prime minister”. His “courageous course of confronting the right-wing extremists in terms of content has proven to be spot on.” The rapture probably also contains relief at how the argument went.
“Brown-black freak show”
A contrast was also striking: While the duel was the dominant topic in the German media, the reactions of politicians were rather cautious. The CDU viewed the duel as at least a technical knock-out for Voigt, and the AfD, as expected, celebrated their man. But representatives of other parties refrained from commenting. An exception was the reaction of the Left Party. “Thuringia doesn’t deserve such a brown and black freak show,” complained party leader Martin Schirdewan. It was a mistake by the CDU leadership in Berlin not to have stopped the duel.
When making such statements, one must consider the special situation of the left in Thuringia. There she represents the Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow. He has as much to lose from this exchange of blows as the CDU, if not more. In the polls for the state elections in the Free State on September 1st, the AfD is still well ahead of the Union – and the Left is a distant third. The duel gave the public the impression that the politicians who were most important in the election were arguing. Voigt was able to present himself as a challenger for the office of Prime Minister. Ramelow was nowhere to be seen.
Was this debate a success? That depends on the perspective. The whole thing was definitely worth it for Welt TV. On average, just over a million people watched. The market share was 4.2 percent, far above the usual values for the small station. Was it a success for the Union? That also depends largely on your point of view. This duel will certainly not deter many citizens who are willing to vote for the AfD.
However, anyone who is still unsure could get an impression of how Höcke and Voigt react under pressure. And he was then able to check the statements. Immediately after the debate, many media outlets published so-called fact checks, some of which were of good quality. Overall, this duel, which often seemed chaotic and disorganized, was one thing above all: a success for the culture of debate.