Q&A: A historic far-right win & are we biased against Trump?

James Rubin (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Christiane Amanpour (0:04)

This is the very first time since the Nazi era, that means since World War II, that any far right political group has won such an overwhelming victory in any German election of this kind. Populists and nationalists and nativists are good at playing on people's legitimate fears, their legitimate economic hardship, and promising that they can provide the answers. This lot also support Russia. Sorry, they do. They want Germany to stop helping Ukraine, and this is a disaster for Germany and for Europe.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Q&A episode of The Ex Files with me, Christiane in London, and Jamie Rubin here in Amsterdam. Just wanted to say that you've had a lovely, lovely long holiday, and I hope you're back rested after a pleasant three weeks off. Hope you're well rested.

James Rubin (1:16)

Well, thank you for that. Thank you for your concern as well.

Christiane Amanpour (1:20)

So, everybody out there, this is where we answer your questions. So we are going to get started after that slight aside.

Jamie, I'm going to ask the first one. Sarah on Instagram, although I've got a lot to say about it. How worried are you by AfD, the alternative for Deutschland's historic victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections in Germany? Is this party now a genuine threat to the political mainstream? So, here's the thing, Sarah on Instagram. This is the very first time since the Nazi era, that means since World War II, that any far-right political group has won such an overwhelming victory in any German election of this kind. It is a state election. It's a small-ish state. It's in the former East Germany, where a lot of people feel disenfranchised economically, socially, politically, etc. since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of their Soviet-propelled order.

And they feel that they hate all the immigrants who've come in, especially under Angela Merkel in 2015 It was the immigrants, we were talking in our first episode about Iraq. It was a lot of Iraqi refugees from the ongoing war and instability, a lot of Syrian refugees from the war that was going on at that time.

Most have assimilated and God knows, we Europeans need a workforce. But it is easy and populists and nationalists and nativists are good at playing on people's legitimate fears, their legitimate economic hardship and promising that they can provide the answers. That it's all the fault of some nameless, faceless elite, and they are the representatives of the people and they will provide the answers. So I think it is very, very dangerous. I think it tells you a lot about Europe right now and the very difficult circumstances that Europe is in right now. What do you think, Jamie?

James Rubin (3:27)

Well, I agree with all of that. I guess I would say one thing that I'm pleased about. They didn't get a majority, they got a plurality.

So it doesn't look like they're going to be able to take the government over for sure as having a majority of the seats.

Christiane Amanpour (3:44)

They got 44 something percent, yeah.

James Rubin (3:48)

Yeah. So if the other parties behave responsibly and put a government together, and I expect this will be weeks and weeks, if not months of wrangling, this government will not be run by these far right people who question the Holocaust, who don't just talk about immigration in a responsible way but talk about it in a monstrous way.

Look, immigration is a problem. Immigration is a problem in the United States, doing it responsibly and well and carefully allowing for legal and illegal immigration to be cracked down on to make sure you distinguish between the two is the proper role of government. None of our governments have done a particularly good job of it. I think it's mostly an attack on government itself right now. For a lot of reasons, for many, many years now, the institutions in our world, in the Western world have been discredited, whether that's the executive branch of the United States beginning way, way back under the Nixon administration when Watergate started, whether it's the Vietnam War that made people question government in the United States or whether it's all the problems that have subsequently occurred all over the world. Yes, it's a tragedy that government is now seen as somehow run by elites, for elites, for the rich, for the powerful. When I happen to know in the cases where I've worked in government, that that's not the reasons why things are done.

You're not helping Ukraine because you think it's good for business. You're helping Ukraine and Europeans have been brilliant at this, and their governments deserve enormous credit. The German government itself deserves enormous credit for recognizing the danger from Vladimir Putin, and reversing their reluctance to build up their military. So I've always been impressed until today by Germany's ability to be recognized the dangers and take responsibility for the Holocaust and World War II. They've done it really, really well. They've built a brilliant democracy. This is the first time I have to say I'm worried about it. How could it be that the German people are not offended, appalled, disgusted, and turn away from those who would minimize what Germany did in World War II? To me, that's the threshold question.