Ideology
Initially, the Republicans was a conservative party close to the CSU, with a moderate nationalist approach. As Schönhuber soon became leader of the party, it however radicalised and became increasingly nationalist. His positions included to abolish trade unions, reduce the welfare state, expel all foreigners and return to Germany's 1937 borders. The latter included campaigning for the unification of the then-existing West and East Germany, which helped boost the party's popularity in the late 1980s. The party also attacked the European Union as an infringement on German sovereignty following the enactment of the Maastricht Treaty. The ideology of the Republicans is mainly characterised by nationalism, although the party itself rejects such a label, instead regarding itself as "national" or "patriotic".
Read more about this topic: The Republicans (Germany)
Famous quotes containing the word ideology:
“The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty—of the indefinite expansion of possibility.”
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“Liberation is an evershifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises.... It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred—it is the amphetamine of its believers.”
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“We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.”
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