“Firewall”-Idealism

2. February 2025 Matthias Winter 6 min read

Idealism Firewall

Merz’s poker game to win votes from the AfD is the end of democracy for bourgeois antifascism, but why exactly?
About the legitimacy tool “firewall,” and the unclear boundaries between fascism and well-off bourgeois nationalism.

Reminder: The words marked in red are links leading to corresponding critique articles.
This article is part of several analyses on fascism, how it functions, and how it is misunderstood. We recommend the following:

“The Contradiction of the Foreigner” – About the contradictory relationship Musk and Co. have towards foreigners.
“On Right-Wing Radicalism” – About the logic of fascism and why AfD voters are not stupid but understandable.
“Reversed Antifascism” – About the futility of banning the AfD.
“Deportations and Refugees” – About the fundamental contradiction behind deportations.

The bourgeois reason is going crazy – the democratic union tried to push through a highly reactionary immigration law with votes from the fascist AfD – in vain.

“A black day for the democracy,” is repeatedly said by the democratic unity front, “the firewall has fallen,” even the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation writes.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Germany last week to demonstrate against Merz’s collaboration and to defend the mentioned firewall.

But why exactly?
The draft law included “permanent border controls at all German borders,” “refusal of entry to all persons without valid travel documents,” “deportation detention for all enforceable deportees,” and “exit detention for all offenders and dangerous individuals.”
Since the votes from the Union and FDP factions were insufficient for a majority in the Bundestag, Union faction leader Merz hoped to push the law through with votes from the AfD – narrowly missing, “338 members voted for the draft, 349 against. Five members abstained.”
For the other parties and their supporters, cooperation with the AfD, even if it’s just a poker game for votes, is a betrayal of the “firewall” (German political term for the separation between the regular bourgeois parties and the far-right AfD, based on the principle that no party cooperates with the AfD):

We – the democratic parties – and the AfD.

Where exactly this boundary lies remains unclear.

Moreover, Merz’s immigration law is nothing special:
The SPD also openly advocates for “border controls at Germany’s external borders,” the traffic light coalition has, as recently as October last year, despite “constitutional concerns,” extended the deportation detention from ten to 28 days – and we need not even mention deportations:
The traffic light parties, the core of German democracy, deported 18,400 people in 2024 – 21 percent more than the previous year, almost twice as many as last year under Merkel.

So what makes this firewall into a wall?
Doesn’t the framing of a political party’s topics fundamentally serve to hold onto power?

It’s no secret that in the “fight against the AfD,” all established parties (except The Left) adopt talking points from the AfD in order to get heard.
It’s obvious that the self-critical “We should have paid more attention to people’s concerns” tactic, which established parties use to gain legitimacy for their own xenophobia, is nothing but an implicit agreement with the AfD’s efforts to maintain power.

The AfD hovers like a large, unavoidable evil over liberal reason, which wants to distinguish its own imperialist ambitions from those of the AfD, although both aim for the same – the preservation of the existing system with as little upheaval as possible.

The seemingly self-evident boundary in bourgeois consciousness between “democratic” and “fascist” is no longer definable since the “fight against the AfD.”
What differentiates the AfD in content from the other parties that have governed the FRG since 1949?
It was the traffic light parties that last robbed refugees of their last bit of self-determination through the “payment card.”
It is the “democratic” parties that decided once again to deport to fascist Taliban-Afghanistan – a death sentence for many whose way of life is criminalized in Afghanistan.

The Green leadership has been calling for “speeding up deportations” for months, Faeßer and the SPD are responsible for the harshest political persecutions since the 1960s, and we need not even mention FDP and CDU.

The only real difference between the migration policies characterized by bourgeois media as having fascist tendencies by the AfD and those of other parties is the rhetoric.

You might argue that the hardening of the migration discourse by established parties is a consequence of the AfD’s success, but what kind of argument is that?
The tactic of “getting heard” is nothing but betrayal of all pretended political ideals, aimed at securing power.
This purely ideological boundary between fascism and healthy bourgeois nationalism is a defense mechanism to avoid dealing with the systemic causes of societal contradictions.
This emptiness of bourgeois fascism understanding, and what it actually is, allows other parties to indulge in chauvinism, hatred of migrants, and militarism while hiding behind their firewall.

This applied to CDU, SPD, FDP and of course also to the Greens – especially the latter, who try to give their interior politics a woke flair; here it’s not “mass migrants” to be deported, but the appeal to “more clarity on difficult issues,” even if that means deporting to Taliban-Afghanistan.
The myth of the firewall is a prime example of idealist, i.e., non-materialist political thinking and action, based on the fundamental misunderstanding of politics as a freely acting thing.
“Fascism” is a thing reserved for parties that stand “to the right of CDU,” where the CDU as a benchmark is irrelevant.
The development of bourgeois parties from right to even further right is of no concern to those supporting the firewall, because they do not see the AfD as their enemy.

Looking into the comment sections of any social media post about the “fall of the firewall,” hundreds of self-proclaimed antifascists respond, claiming that one must vote for the Greens or SPD to “stop the AfD.”
The firewall has become a shield for established parties against the realization of their own immigrant hatred – of course, they do everything the AfD does, just a little less bad, and we are not the AfD.

All the talk about the firewall has, on the other hand, proven to be an effective campaign tool:
“A coalition. One word. Firewall” – The Greens and SPD use the situation to rediscover antifascism, which is foolish if someone then looks into what they actually do.
An bourgeois party can follow certain ideals as long as they serve as a useful instrument to legitimize their power.
The protests around the fall of the antifascist protective wall are undoubtedly commendable and at least show that protest is a suitable means of political opposition – the misunderstanding lies in the understanding of political power itself and in the ambiguity about where the line between normal contempt for humans and fascist contempt for humans lies.
For CDU, the cost-benefit ratio of the “firewall” has already turned against them, and the other parties can still score points – at least as long as it is worthwhile in their external perception.