Gerhard Baum, 90, a human rights lawyer who was Germany’s interior minister (1978-1982) during Helmut Schmidt’s chancellorship, warned against the danger of extremism in his country and called on the current chancellor, Mr. social democrat Olaf Solz, to speak out more strongly against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“I expect the chancellor to speak clearly about the AfD,” Mr. Baum, a veteran Free Democrats (FDP) official, told the German news agency.

Denigrating the AfD as a “whining” party is dangerous, turning its ideology into a platitude, warned Mr Baum, the son of a Russian-Polish mother and a German father, who was forced into the Hitler Youth as a child and lost his father in the East forehead.

“The AfD is the biggest threat to our democracy since the establishment of a federal democracy 74 years ago,” Mr Baum insisted. “Cosme, wake up!”

The far-right faction has recently recorded a spectacular rise in opinion polls, causing growing concern.

For Gerhart Baum, in addition to Chancellor Scholz there are others who should adopt a clearer stance. “Many opinion-makers need to show who they are — intellectuals, artists, businessmen and clergy,” he said.

“Everyone is coming back from their summer vacation and acting as if everything is normal, as if the AfD party conference in Magdeburg didn’t show” that democracy in the country “is under attack — and in the rest of Europe as well,” he insisted.

Mr. Scholtz may think the far-right party’s performance in the polls is a passing thing, but “that’s fundamentally wrong,” Mr. Baum pointed out, because public outrage over the problems “feeds a group of people who hate democracy and it’s been growing for a while.”

This, he added, is not just about the current coalition government, in which the FDP participates. “We are in the midst of a global crisis of confidence” in politicians, “which I have never seen before” on such a scale, he said. He pointed to fear and uncertainty due to the war in Ukraine, massive migration flows, climate change, the US-China conflict. With this background it is “easy” for some to be convinced by far-right forces that promise “simple solutions”, he stressed.

All democrats are called upon to stand up and tell citizens clearly that by voting for the AfD they are putting their very freedom at risk, Mr. Baum warned.