Since the beginning of the year, 4500 individuals have chosen to join the Green party – a rarely seen number of new members. The party leadership has provided an explanation.
More than 4500 new citizens have become members of the Green party since January. This is the second highest increase in membership in the history of the party. The party leadership sees a connection between the relatively high number of new members and the ongoing protests against right-wing extremism and for the protection of democracy.
Connection between demonstrations and increase in membership
“Once again this weekend, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Germany to protest against right-wing extremism and to stand up for our democracy,” said the party’s political director, Emily Büning, to the German Press Agency.
She also experiences this mobilization within her own party: “Since the beginning of January alone, over 4500 people have decided to become members of the Green party – this is the second strongest monthly growth our party has ever experienced,” Büning said. According to the party, there has only been one even larger wave of new members since the founding of the Green party in 1980, in 2021 leading up to the federal election.
Membership increases also in Berlin
Just like nationwide, the Green party has also significantly increased its membership numbers in Berlin since the beginning of the year. A total of 511 membership applications have been received since the start of January, as the regional association announced on Wednesday. In 2023, the number of members did increase, but only modestly from 12,963 to 12,981.
There has been a veritable boom in new members, explained the two regional co-chairs Philmon Ghirmai and Nina Stahr. “The clear mission associated with these new entries is to counteract the shift to the right in Germany and Europe.”
Green voters against right-wing extremists
The trigger for the ongoing nationwide wave of protests in recent weeks was an investigation by the media company Correctiv into a meeting of radical right-wingers with individual politicians from the AfD, CDU and the Union of Values in Potsdam in November. The former leader of the right-wing Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, reportedly spoke about the concept of so-called remigration.
When extremists use the term, they generally mean that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country, possibly by force.
Studies on voter migrations from recent years have shown that the Greens overall lose fewer supporters to the AfD than other parties. In surveys, the Greens recently scored between 13 percent and 14 percent nationwide.
