NZZ. December 2022. Germans don’t tend towards extremism – actually. But in the political and media sphere, know-it-alls and paternalism are increasingly noticeable. Contempt for the normal is a cause for concern.
For a long time, modern Germany was not a country to worry about from a democratic point of view. According to a study by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion from this year, 25 percent of Germans place themselves exactly in the middle of the democratic opinion spectrum; 36 percent slightly to the left, 29 percent slightly to the right of this center. That’s 90 percent between center-left and center-right. Actually calming.