But with Chancellor Angela Merkel retiring after general elections this Sunday, the AfD is about to lose its favourite scapegoat. But now, with “Merkel must go” redundant, the anti-immigration, anti-establishment party is having to direct its anger elsewhere. “We can easily replace ‘Merkel must go’ with ‘Laschet must go’, ‘Scholz must go’ or ‘Baerbock must go’,” says Berndt. This “may not work as well as having Merkel as a scapegoat, but it will certainly not lead to a lasting weakening of the far right,” Riebe says. “Germany will continue to be slammed as a dictatorship and Scholz and Laschet as representatives of the Merkel system.

Source: The Local September 22, 2021 07:07 UTC