Bavaria: Affluent, Picturesque -- and Angry
Last edited Sat Jun 30, 2018, 10:52 PM - Edit history (1)
MUNICH — All seems well in Bavaria.
The streets are clean, unemployment is practically nonexistent, social benefits are generous and a vibrant sense of identity infuses small villages and big cities alike: Even teenagers sometimes don dirndls and lederhosen for a night out at the disco.
Yet this is the new angry center of Europe, the latest battleground for populists eager to bring down both Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the idea of a liberal Europe itself.
Rich, religious and on the southern border, Bavaria is the Texas of Germany. It is a conservative bastion of the nation most associated with Europe’s open-door migration policy and the ultimate prize in a culture war that has seen populism chip away at consensus on the eastern flank of the 28-member bloc.
Since the 2015 migration crisis, the far right has been steadily gaining support in Bavaria, and local conservatives have responded by veering sharply to the right themselves.
The number of asylum seekers arriving at Bavaria’s land border is but a fraction of what it was three years ago. But in the past two weeks, the Christian Social Union, a longtime ally of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, has mounted a spectacular rebellion against the chancellor. It is demanding a hard border with Austria and threatening to pull out of her government. . .
Markus Söder, the Bavarian premier, speaks of the end of “orderly multilateralism,” and has ordered that Christian crosses be displayed in every state government building. From July 1, a Bavarian border force will start patrolling along a border that is supposedly open under Europe’s border-free travel.
Alexander Dobrindt, the Bavarians’ parliamentary leader in Berlin, predicts a “conservative revolution.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/world/europe/bavaria-immigration-afd-munich.html?
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