When mainstream parties jointly vow not to criticize a salient issue, they hand its ownership to the outsider who refuses the pact. In Cologne, CDU, SPD, Greens, FDP, Die Linke, and Volt signed a pledge—policed by church 'arbitrators'—to avoid negative migration talk, leaving AfD as the only voice airing downsides. Such moralized self‑muzzling creates a vacuum that populists can fill to mobilize voters.
— It shows how elite coordination around taboos can unintentionally strengthen populist rivals by monopolizing voter concerns.
Rod Dreher
2025.09.02
92% relevant
The piece highlights Cologne’s 'fairness pact' in which all major parties except AfD pledged not to attack migration, leaving AfD as the sole party speaking to voter anxieties on that issue and thereby advantaging the populist challenger.
eugyppius
2025.08.29
100% relevant
Cologne Round Table for Integration’s 2025 agreement barring negative migration rhetoric, with a controversy over a CDU flyer criticizing a 500‑bed refugee center.
Dominic Cummings
2025.07.25
75% relevant
Cummings argues BBC editors, pundits, and academics dismissed grooming‑gang reporting as 'far‑right disinformation,' creating a taboo that left Tommy Robinson as the only loud voice on the issue—an elite self‑muzzling vacuum that populists can fill.
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