Bodo Ramelow in conversation: “A toxic mixture has formed”

Prime Minister, last Monday 20,000 people demonstrated in Thuringia alone because of rising energy prices. However, economists assume that most hardships are yet to come. What do you expect in the next few weeks?

Democracy includes the right to demonstrate. And when people meet in many places to express their displeasure together, that is their right. However, if the keyword energy is hardly mentioned at all, and instead it is almost exclusively about Corona, then that shows what has filled the barrel.

The question now is whether the camel’s back will break. Politicians must succeed in balancing out the hardships of the crisis across all democratic parties. When people see that the federal government is acting, that it is curbing the price of gas, that it is helping them, then that also stops the flow of people to the Monday demonstrations.

The anger about fuel and electricity prices is greater in the East because the prices are higher.

Why are the fuel prices in eastern Germany still 10 cents above the western average? That just can’t happen. The mood in East Germany is getting worse and worse. Not only that people are fundamentally less economically available, but they also perceive something like this as deeply unfair. The price of electricity is also the highest, although the price of electricity in East Germany should be the lowest if one were to go by the production costs. The wind turbines in Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – which manage to supply over 120 percent of their own electricity – produce electricity for six cents per kilowatt hour. I then ask myself why the citizens are getting letters now that they should pay 60 to 80 cents per kilowatt hour in the future. It is also about not driving people into the arms of the war aggressor Putin.

A survey by Infratest dimap comes to the conclusion that only one in three people in East Germany is satisfied with democracy. To what extent are dissatisfaction with democracy and loss of prosperity related?

The question is whether the fear of a loss of prosperity will cause democratic principles to begin to falter. All of a sudden, people in the new federal states not only started going for walks on Mondays, but also held unregistered demonstrations. This is usually part of the regulatory framework. But basic rules of democracy are ignored, journalists who want to report are attacked. You can feel that fear is spreading, even from people who objectively may not yet be threatened with decline. Fear alone leads them to say: “Yes, I feel threatened.” Democracy depends on the rule of law and the population that supports it. However, a toxic mix has formed: people who believe they shouldn’t say everything, who come together with those who believe in chemtrails or who consider themselves Reich citizens, and a few others. We see that ads appear in advertising journals, some of which cannot be verified who is advertising.