Don’t play ball with ultras deal with ultras

“To the right of our party, there can be no de­mo­c­ra­tic or legal par­ties”. This is a phrase at­trib­uted to Franz Josef Strauss (1915-1988), the pa­tri­arch of the Chris­t­ian So­cial­ist Union of Bavaria (CSU), re­gard­ing their strat­egy that for decades, seemed to work in this pros­per­ous and tra­di­tional Ger­man land. The Bavar­ian con­ser­v­a­tives po­lit­i­cally stood so far to the right that any group or party which at­tempted to stand fur­ther to the right, was seen as an ir­rel­e­vance, or con­demned to pro­hi­bi­tion. It’s a tough strat­egy that can be even tougher to square with the more cen­trist po­si­tions of its fra­ter­nal party, the Chris­t­ian De­mo­c­ra­tic Union (CDU). The re­la­tions be­tween Strauss and an­other great pa­tri­arch, that of the CDU, Hel­mut Kohl (1939-2017), were as com­plex as those presently be­tween An­gela Merkel and Horst See­hofer. The be­hav­iour of the cur­rent Bavar­ian leader to­wards the Chan­cel­lor often seems more rival-like than that of an ally. The CSU, under See­hofer, has de­fended po­si­tions, with re­gards to mi­gra­tion in the midst of the ar­rival of refugees in Ger­many, which have seemed dan­ger­ously sim­i­lar to those of ex­treme right Al­ter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD). How­ever, they have al­ways avoided being tempted into team­ing up with AfD, in ex­change for main­tain­ing power. When the CSU lost its tra­di­tional ab­solute ma­jor­ity in the elec­tions last Oc­to­ber, no­body doubted that they would con­tinue to rule out a pact with AfD. Not only be­cause there were other op­tions – but be­cause until a Ger­man party dis­proves the un­writ­ten rule, no self-re­spect­ing po­lit­i­cal party makes deals with par­ties with neo-Nazi ties or con­no­ta­tions.