More passion in politics! (TruLies Blog by Wolfgang Schroeder)
How to deal with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its voters is a crucial challenge for the established parties. However, in this TruLies blog post, Professor Wolfgang Schroeder observes that to confront the emotion based campaign exclusively with facts does not seem to be enough. Rather, the right strategy needs to be derived from the background, problems and insecurities of AfD clientel. Schroeder points out that the populists’ success cannot be explained solely by economic discontent.
Wolfgang Schroeder is a professor for political science at Universität Kassel and member of the scientific advisory board of Das Progressive Zentrum. This contribution was first published on 19 October 2016 on Causa, the debate forum of the Berlin daily Newspaper Tagesspiegel within the debate “AfD voters: A Challenge for politics?“.
The project “TruLies – The Truth about Lies on Europe”, aided by the Stiftung Mercator and run by the Institute for European Politics (IEP) in cooperation with Das Progressive Zentrum, has two principal objectives. On the one hand, it strives to deconstruct Eurosceptic and populist prejudices, animosities, and false assertions, by means of social scientifically-grounded analysis. Thus, it aims to contribute to a rationalisation of the public discourse and debate in Germany (and beyond). On the other hand, “TruLies Europe” endeavours to publicly communicate its findings beyond the select circle of scholars to political actors, civil society, and the wider public. You may find further information on our website: http://trulies-europe.de/.
Wolfgang Schroeder’s contribution can be found here.
