Gregor Gysi

Make Love, not AfD

It is time, high time, for a new movement of humanity and love. Particularly because the extreme national egoism of Orbán, Trump, Le Pen, and the AfD are fed by the attempt to roll back what began in 1968 and simultaneously threatens the values of our coexistence, like the U.S.-American world policeman posturing with its barbaric peak in the Vietnam War; what are needed are rebellious young people who do not allow themselves to be beamed back to the loyal-to-the-homeland, exclusionary bliss of a Biedermeier parlor.

For that, one does not have to wallow in the mud of Woodstock; someone will surely be able to program an app with which it is possible to practice “Make Love, not AfD” via smartphone or tablet—a kind of Tinder with an aspiration to change society. Although I continue to find the real world more important than the virtual one, one does have to go with the times. And, in social media, some things would arguably have already been achieved by taking some space away from all the swearing trolls, who, in part, act in an organized way, from all the disseminators of lies, half-truths, and fake news, from all those who cultivate their prejudices, and filling it with news of love, humanity, successful integration, practical assistance, and the promise of together being able to change the world for the better.

Such a movement would probably not directly alter present-day politics, but it would change the spirit of the times, the feeling in society. Why shouldn’t the generation of 2018 be able to do what the generation of 1968 did? This year is the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Second World War; with pictures and memories, one might counter renationalization, with all its horrible, violent, warlike excesses, in a very particular way. The new generation, which is predominantly European, cosmopolitan, and self-assured, has something to lose. It will have to show that, and how one sets limits to unfettered, financial-market-driven, neoliberal capitalism, without putting those who are most affected by the social fragmentation of the world into the cages of their poverty. Che Guevara once said: „Solidarity is human kindness.“ Exactly. Make love, not AfD.