Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt advises taking Germany's Far Right seriously
Amid the subsequent hand-wringing and high-horse mounting by an aghast political class, an appeal not to ignore these seismic results emerged from a most unlikely source. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, head of Conference of European Rabbis (CER) and a figure closely associated with Europe’s centrist establishment, issued a statement warning that the results represented real concerns expressed by voters that were being ignored by mainstream parties.
“If the political center will continue to ignore those issues, those political parties will disappear and the threatening, extreme ones will only grow stronger,” his statement said.
Indeed, the results were grim for Olaf Scholz’s ruling center-left coalition of Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Greens. All three parties scraped the single digits, while the hard-right AfD finished first in Thuringia and missed victory in Saxony by 1.3%. The far-left BSW, an unorthodox fusion of left-wing economics and cultural conservatism founded only months ago, scored in the double digits.
Speaking to Mishpacha, Rabbi Goldschmidt doubles down on his concerns that the political center has ignored immigration for too long, and events conspired to prove his point: Hours before the interview, an armed Austrian-born Islamist attempted to attack the Israeli consulate on the 52nd anniversary of the Munich Olympics massacre, less than 100 meters from the CER main office.
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