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Can German nationalism ever be normal? The rapid rise of the AfD has alarmed the country, and continent, for obvious reasons

What can go wrong? Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

What can go wrong? Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images


July 24, 2020   7 mins

There was a time when British foreign policy was dominated by the question of how to contain France. Then the question became how to contain Germany, and today the hangover of that problem still lingers. Not that Germany as a state any longer needs to be contained, rather just that it is the country still most identified — and suspected — as the motherlode of bad ideas.

Anyone doubting that this remains the case need only consider the now resurgent debate around nationalism. Recent works by Yoram Hazony and Rich Lowry among others have addressed the case for nationalism, yet for all the strengths of their arguments, they all face one giant hurdle: the past.

Across the world nationalism is rarely seen as a problem in and of itself, let alone the worst political problem of all. Throughout Africa, the Middle East and Far East nationalism has been a mixed blessing, but aside from some religious conservatives (who have their own beef with it) it is rarely seen as the locus of bad ideas.

Only in Europe does nationalism ring differently, with something like a feeling that Europeans cannot be trusted with the stuff.

And yet it isn’t quite the case that nationalism is forbidden in Europe: the British are allowed some of it; the Scots certainly have a dose, and so do many other parts of the continent. The real problem is Germany. Even three-quarters of a century after the Second World War, it remains the case that the deepest problem with nationalism is that people are concerned about whether the Germans can be trusted with it. Try it for yourself: “Resurgent German nationalism”. How does it look to your mind’s eye? How does it poll in your personal barometer of political acceptability?

It is one of the reasons why, when you survey the moving political landscape in Europe, Germany is the country that is still different from all the others. The horrors of the 20th century are so well known that even mentioning the fact is a form of cliché, yet still, even in 2020, the country’s politics remain haunted by the mid-century crime scene.

The feeling remains that it was something in the blood, or the water, or the air, or the ideas or the philosophy or all of these and more. The feeling that even after all this time, all this study and knowledge, we’re still not completely certain why the country did what it did. And a feeling that in the meantime we have to keep an extra close eye on developments there.

This close attention was exemplified by the news in May that a sergeant-major in the German army had been arrested by police commandos at his house in Calw. There the officers found a cache of arms and explosives plus a quantity of Nazi memorabilia, including SS magazines.

While the foreign press might have got a tad over-excited, talking about the Calw arrest as though it was the start of a Robert Harris novel, the whole thing rings obvious warning bells. A potential Nazi in the ranks of the German army is more concerning than a potential Nazi in any other nation’s army, for reasons too obvious to be spelt out.

A similar sensitivity exists in German politics. Where other countries might be trusted with Right-wing and even nationalist parties, the political consensus here is policed more strictly than anywhere else. Right-wing economics may be accepted, but on all cultural issues the borders of acceptable belief are strictly patrolled, and those that step over the line face the consequences.

No party has demonstrated this more clearly than Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), only founded in 2013 on the back of a movement involving a number of journalists, lawyers, academics and others. At that stage its manifesto and platform were centred almost entirely on criticism of the fiscal policies of the eurozone, the flatlining of the Mediterranean economies and the vast bailouts that resulted from the financial crash of 2008 and resulting eurozone crises.

Throughout this period the feeling was growing that Germany was constantly having to bail out its irresponsible southern partners, and so the potential was there for a fiscally separatist movement to arise.

But once it formed into a political party the AfD became explicitly anti-euro, losing those founding figures who favoured a constructive-critical attitude to the currency. Perhaps it was inevitable that a party defined by a policy that was still so far from the political mainstream would attract a certain number of the politically homeless and even malcontent, but the number of skins, and people, that the AfD shed throughout its formative years was striking by any standards.

This was also a result of the party’s extraordinarily swift growth. Within months of its founding the AfD was represented in all 16 German states, and in the Federal elections it won just under 5% of the vote, only just missing out on entering the Bundestag. But the party did manage to enter state parliaments for the first time, and the following year the European Parliament with seven members.

Over the following years this upward trajectory continued, and there was one factor — as in other countries across the continent — which particularly contributed to this: the 2015 European migration crisis partly created by German chancellor Angela Merkel.

By the time of the crisis the AfD had already begun to shift its focus, its eurozone-scepticism taking a back seat to a wider set of priorities which the American scholar of modern European political movements Daniel Pipes has characterised under the umbrella of “civilisationist” parties. With the election of Frauke Petry to the leadership of the party, the AfD was increasingly keen to talk about immigration, Islam and issues of identity.

Of course, Germany being Germany, every millimeter of this terrain was fought over with exceptional bitterness. The media here had already come to expose and condemn the statements of the most minor members of the party, but with each fresh scandal the core of the AfD was reduced, as a concoction might reduce over a sustained flame.

Each accusation of xenophobia or right-wingery had the same effects seen in other countries in Europe; some moderate conservatives were chased away for fear of being associated with anything even accused of being “far-right”, while people who were genuinely far-right tried to migrate towards what they believed or hoped could be their home. People who were already in the party had to judge where their own personal political limits might lie.

In the aftermath of the migration crisis the AfD’s poll performance made a set of predictable leaps. In regional elections in Pomerania in September 2016 the party beat Merkel’s CDU into third place, while in Berlin it entered the state capital’s Parliament for the first time after receiving a 14.1 per cent share of the vote. Within four years of its founding the AfD was represented in most of the country’s states.

Of course this did not go unopposed. The day before the AfD’s success in Berlin the city’s mayor, Michael Müller (of the centre-left SDP) declared that a double-digit percentage return for the AfD would “be seen around the world as a sign of the return of the right wing and the Nazis in Germany”.

Despite such warnings, and increasingly fractious internal wrangles, the party continued to do well. Their success culminated in September 2017 when voters gave Merkel’s Christian Democrats their worst result since 1949 and the AfD became the third largest party in the Bundestag, with 94 seats. By any standards it is one of the most extraordinary political rises in recent European history: from nowhere to the official opposition in the Bundestag in just four years.

An hour after the Bundestag results came in the AfD’s joint leader, Alexander Gauland, declared that he would “hunt down the government, Mrs Merkel, and get our country and people back”. It was not exactly the sort of overheated declaration that would ease worries about the rise of the party, and that discomfort has grown since, both at home and abroad.

Outside of Germany this alam stems from a range of factors, one of which, without doubt, is sheer laziness. Then there is opportunism, so that in April 2019, when Jacob Rees-Mogg retweeted a speech by Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD’s deputies in the Bundestag, criticising the Merkel government’s handling of the Brexit negotiations, it was seized on by Labour MPs, who sought to paint the AfD as an out-and-out racist and even Nazi political party.

This is simplistic and incorrect, based on a very limited knowledge of the situation in Germany, yet there are certainly individuals near the top of the party who cause concern not only to outsiders but to party members themselves. For instance, I have spoken to several figures in the AfD who have expressed concern over the views of the leadership in Thuringia, in the former East Germany.

Bjorn Hocke in particular has become a lightning-rod of such concerns, not least after a 2017 speech in which he appeared to minimise the Holocaust. In contrast, in most of the statements of a figure like Beatrix von Storch there is nothing that would not be deemed perfectly normal political sentiment in the Conservative Party or Ukip in the period of Nigel Farage’s leadership.

Within the party there seems to me a knowledge that the whole thing could go in any number of ways, towards the more mainstream right or further towards and beyond the boundaries. A party in such flux and on such a swift trajectory as the AfD has been is worthy of serious psychological analysis, yet such analysis has been almost completely lacking in the German media, let alone in the wider international one.

The story of “far-right on the rise in Germany” is simply too potent — and legitimately potent — a force to be responded to by a phrase like “It’s more complicated than that”. But it is more complicated than is currently assumed, and a huge amount will be riding on whether Germany can cope with the complexities involved.

This will include the question of whether sentiment against mass immigration is permissible in Germany, as it has become permissible across the rest of the continent. It will rely on whether the right to defend or speak up for European identity are considered respectable in 21st Century Germany or not. And hardest of all (and this is something that people can reasonably feel torn over) whether any defence of German cultural identity is possible in the wake of the 20th century and the painful, jarring ringing that such calls inevitably cause for very many people.

Personally, I remain torn on these questions. From my many visits to the country I have come to think that there is something not just wrong but cruel about saying to young Germans that they should in some way be treated with suspicion, or deprived of the right to feel pride in their culture, because of the reprehensible things that went on in their country before their birth.

And yet, like many others, I also feel nervous. Can anyone say with total confidence that they know what could and could not bubble up in an era such as the one we are entering? Could anyone honestly put their hand on their heart and say that they are as willing to allow the Germans to be nationalistic, as other nations are allowed to be? The question remains almost impossible to answer in the affirmative, and yet Germans must also be allowed to feel pride in their culture and wish to protect it.

These are not just civilisational issues: they are issues of deep, practical, day-to-day political concern. A concern that the AfD has the opportunity to answer, or to blow apart.

 


Douglas Murray is an author and journalist.

DouglasKMurray

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Andy Redman
Andy Redman
4 years ago

No-one ever agreed to anything more than highly skilled, low level immigration (historically excepting marriage to citizens) – immigration for its own sake has always been massively opposed, not for hatred of the foreign, but for love of one’s own culture and civilisation. The tree is going to bear awful fruit either way, as we now see the subsequent generations from immigrants expressing their own love for their own cultures and loathing of the host cultures and peoples, perhaps a search for some seemingly necessary authentic identity they themselves believe in. There’s no way off the ride, and it’s been done deliberately, as a way of mitigating the threat of democracy to the status quo of major capital. There’s no fixing this.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  Andy Redman

Yes, and that worrying phenomenon that was pointed out to me recently, that many Muslim families who were relatively secular/mild in their home countries naturally become more fundamentalist/intolerant in their new-found desire to retain their identity (and protect their daughters) in the “swamp of Western immorality” they now find themselves in.

Andrew Shaughnessy
Andrew Shaughnessy
4 years ago

Douglas Murray pointed out in “The Strange Death of Europe” that mainstream parties and the media tend to label ANY party or politician opposed to mass immigration as “far-right” regardless of their other policies. This is done in the hope that they will attract people with genuine far-right sympathies in a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was a gay libertarian Marxist but was labelled far-right because he opposed mass immigration and multiculturalism.

Brian Dorsley
Brian Dorsley
4 years ago

Yes, I’m considered far-right because I believe that humans are sexually dimorphic.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  Brian Dorsley

Tut tut. You will need to be re-educated through labour.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
4 years ago

“This will include the question of whether sentiment against mass immigration is permissible in Germany, as it has become permissible across the rest of the continent.”

Permission will not be sought. If we do not like a nationalistic backlash we should not provoke one. We should remember that the only difference between German nationalism and everyone else’s nationalism, is that there are a lot of Germans.

Steve Craddock
Steve Craddock
4 years ago

The saying is never more true than in our present times “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But may be it should form a couplet with … “We who miss-remember the past are feighted to cause it to happen again.”
Were the World Wars, which are fairly undeniably linked to one another, really triggered solely by German nationalism as the article suggests or were they possibly more closely coupled to the last dying days of the imperialist global empires and their accompanying expansionism along with other cultural and external factors. The huge standing armies that were hanging around during those times led by a belligerent officer class wouldn’t have helped keep things calm. Perhaps the first thing we should all do is stop the name calling and the bullying and authoritarian suppression of alternate views as these breed the dark shadows and underground areas in society where evil can grow to extremis, invisible to and untempered by more moderate views. My greatest fear in our ever more fragile world is not some vague small minded worry about local nationalism, as I think that is an easy target for the lazy amongst us, but the very real threats posed by both the backlash from our own stupid policies both foreign and domestic and from the expansionist and imperialist theological and ideological actors who are making their presence felt every day on the world stage.

benbow01
benbow01
4 years ago

If you get the diagnosis wrong, you get the treatment wrong.

All wars have been/are/will be fought over territory – who owns it, who collects the rents… these days called taxes.

All wars have been/are/will be caused by an individual or group who believe they should get the rents/taxes.

Exhibit A: the EU. Isn’t that about territory and who rules it, and aren’t those in charge insatiably greedy for ‘rent’? If not why is it so difficult for the EU oligarchy to concede the UK is no longer part of THEIR territory?

As for Nationalism. Was it really an upsurge of German Nationalism, did Germans suddenly rise up and demand Poland, that caused WWII, or a small bunch of thugs who wanted to rule and plunder Europe?

Nationalism, religion, external threat real or imagined, injustice, promises of riches are all used to rally the people behind the would-be, rent-seeking masters of all. People are easily panicked, gullible, stupefied, made compliant – look at current events – when pitched the right propaganda.

Nationalism does not cause wars, ambitious, ruthless people do.

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
4 years ago

Germans tend to take ideas to extremes. They were extreme in their national pride in the previous century, and extreme in their anti-pride in this one.

Lindsay Gatward
Lindsay Gatward
4 years ago

Odd how Far Left is somehow more acceptable than Far Right when it is the National Socialist German Workers Party that murdered almost as many as the Soviet Communist Party who murdered almost as many as the Chinese Communist Party who all are left wing by name and action. Where are the parties carrying a right wing name and actual action to compete with this record of nastiness. The local European problem is that there is a deep desire for one power to control all of Europe and the latest hope is the EU doing it by Judicial Imperialism through the ECJ rather than the previous method of Blitzkreig. Fascinating that their iconography is everywhere and even on our car number plates as would be the case had the Blitzkreig version worked but it is blue and yellow instead of red and black……seems like some things just have to happen regardless of the result?

Lee Johnson
Lee Johnson
4 years ago

‘.. the motherlode of bad ideas.’

Was hoping Murray would develop this idea. Schwarmerei maybe, or the German propensity for big sudden change or action instead of gradual development. Blitzkrieg, energiewende, unlimited entry of migrants…..

Maybe its a cultural thing.

David Bell
David Bell
4 years ago

Germany Nationalism has been very destructive and was responsible for 3 wars, 1870, WW1 and WW2. But was it the idea, or the people who followed the idea that was the problem. My instinct is that a certain type of person is attracted to the idea of oppressive nationalism.

But is Germany Nationalism the only problem. The EU is developing it’s own from of nationalism and (as John Bowman says below) their desire to expand their territory indicates a very unpleasant strand of nationalism. Guy Verhofstadt speech to the last Lib Dem conference is a case in point where he appeared to be calling for an EU Empire in Europe. Anyone with a passing knowledge of real history (not the re engineered woke culture version) knows that European Empires require wars on the continent of Europe that often engulf the world.

Then we have Irish nationalism. In it’s extreme version, Republicanism, it is quite happy to kill people because they have a different political view or were born into a different religion. To slightly misquote a well known republican, those views “haven’t gone away you know”. It may not have killed as many people as other nationalist ideas but it has destroyed more lives that it should have and it has been brushed under the carpet.

Then we get to the new upcoming nationalism of The SNP. They are already well versed in demonising people and the concept of “British”. We have seen attempts at closing the border, well directed propaganda which the press is swallowing or repeat out of fear of the “pile on” if they don’t. We even have them covering up bad news in the form of an outbreak of Covid 19 at the Niki conference. This nationalism is not violent (yet?) but those hyping it up need to be very careful not to push it to the brink where the people who follow it think the end justifies the means

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago

Douglas Murray has an almost Zen-like ability to create the most exquisitely rational balance of opposing ideas, providing a tonic that is enough to purge one of any overly zealous or angry thoughts, which ever way your politics lie. And yet he is seen as extremist by the contemporary Left.

David Morley
David Morley
4 years ago
Reply to  Dan Poynton

And that’s why! Imagine if people read him and found him to be both reasonable and insightful. You don’t really have to warn people off real extremists – their own writing does that for you.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago

A little more surgical skill might have been useful here. The resurgence of Germany will also raise the spectre of a resurgence of Nazism, yet the word Austria is barely mentioned.

Austrians, a sub species of Germans, inhabiting the bottom right hand corner of the old Reich were disproportionately well represented in the horrors of the Nazi machine. Although only 8% of the population of the Reich, they accounted for 14% of the SS, 40% of Concentration/Extermination camp guards and a staggering 75% of the Commandants. It is estimated that the Austrians accounted for some three million of the six million Holocaust victims. All this in addition to Adolph himself.

Somehow this has been airbrushed from history and we remain obsessed with Germany and the rise of the AfD, completely ignoring the fact that heart of the Nazi beast, beat(s) stronger in Austria and its neighbour, Bavaria, than anywhere else. Why so?

chrisjwmartin
chrisjwmartin
4 years ago

A potential Nazi in the ranks of the German army is more concerning than a potential Nazi in any other nation’s army, for reasons too obvious to be spelt out.

In my experience, a writer who blithely describes something as “too obvious to be spelt out” is carefully covering over the weakest point in their argument. So please, spell out exactly why Nazis in the small army of a regional power are more concerning than Nazis in the army of a heavily armed military superpower would be.

The only real justification I can think of is if you believe that Germans are so innately superior to all other humans that they uniquely have the ability to enact epochal atrocities if given any leeway. So much woke hand-wringing reduces down to this racist belief: that whites are so innately superior to everyone else that they must be actively held back in order for equality to have a chance. The saying is true: the woke are just white supremacists with a guilty conscience; they then assume that everyone else is as racist as they are. Well, hand on my heart, I am happy to trust Germans to be nationalistic as much as I trust anyone else.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
4 years ago

We fear the Germans because we have been taught to fear them.

Plus, there the the envy factor, that the Germans invented everything from modern philosophy to modern physics, and modern psychology.

Oh, and it was German rich kids like Marx, Engels, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, that invented the most murderous slave politics ever.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago

“We have been taught to fear them”.
Historically that is very recent idea, dating back to 1914-18. Prior to that we great allies in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The great tragedy of a Modern European History, is that this friendship was destroyed by the rivalry and enmity that appeared after Bismarck stood down and others, less capable took over.

Incidentally, the greatest event in human history, the Industrial Revolution, owed absolutely nothing to Germany.

David Barnett
David Barnett
4 years ago

What we think of as pernicious German nationalism is really Prussian nationalism. Prior to Bismarck’s unification of Germany with “blood and iron” in 1866 there was a large number of independent german states that proved to be a very fruitful laboratory of intellectual and cultural ferment, throwing up many ideas – good and bad. Bismarck cemented Prussian rule by the invention of the modern welfare state (soon to be emulated by most of the world). The welfare state extended the bonds of patronage to the lowest levels of industrial society. State sponsorship of higher education served the same purpose.

After WW-1, Weimar was chosen as the capital of the new Republic, in an attempt to capitalise on the rich cultural heritage away from Berlin of Prussia. Unfortunately, the worst aspects of Bismarck’s legacy remained – the entrenched mindset of dependence on the state.

The demographics of Germany are very different from what they were in the early 20th century when the German ethnic population was rising. The demographic youth deficit has been filled by immigration, so any resurgence of nationalism will play out differently.

I think it would be a mistake to to view Germany through the lens of fearfulness, and even more so to act based on fearfulness. Such fearful anticipation has a way of becoming self-fulfilling. Germany has a heritage of plurality and innovation to be proud of. Focus on that, if you want to avoid a Prussian resurgence.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  David Barnett

” intellectual and cultural ferment, throwing up many ideas- good and bad”.
However very little to do with the Industrial Revolution which seems rather odd given Germany’s subsequent history, don’t you think?

The current ’emissions scandal’ is also interesting, and seems to have been massively downplayed. The arrogance involved is very depressing for anyone looking for a ‘new’ Germany, but perhaps that is asking too much?

David Barnett
David Barnett
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

The industrial revolution began in Britain, but was paused by 20 years of world war while revolutionary/Napoleonic France was brought under control. After 1815, the industrial revolution penetrated rapidly. Between 1815 and 1865, Britain (along with British liberalism) was seen as the model to emulate. Then, as Prussia caught up with a more politically directed economy and education system, the “national competitiveness” technocratic model became the fashion.

Prussia had a reservoir of creativity to exploit from the states it absorbed. However, it was inevitable the the creative edge would blunt after a few generations of stultifying bureaucratic expansion.

I fear the same blunting is happening to Britain and America.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  David Barnett

I think you may have misunderstand my point. Prior to say 1806, Germany, as represented by the Holy Roman Empire, consisted of over three hundred sovereign states.

Throughout the 18th century, none of them, including the perhaps more energetic Protestant ones, seem to have contributed anything towards the Industrial Revolution. Nor for that matter, rather surprisingly, did the Dutch.

In complete contrast England was a veritable inferno of ideas, from Thomas Newcomen, John Lombe, Abraham Darby and so many more. Axiomatically they were funded by splendid investors such as Francis Egerton. The perfect combination, invention married to copious amounts of risk capital.

So what was it that so inhibited Germany. Lack of capital? Lack of ideas? Why did that mercurial figure Frederick the Great for example not pick up on what was going on in England? He is reputed to have introduced the potato to Prussia, so why not a Newcomen steam engine or a Brindley canal?

David Barnett
David Barnett
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

I will hazard a guess that steam power was the key. It meant that a powered factory could be located anywhere.

Why was steam power developed in Britain? Partly because there was a lot of accessible coal. That was just as well, because the growing need for iron from the 16th century onwards had depleted the country of wood (and what was left was needed to build ships). So scarce was wood that they had a hard time finding enough to smelt iron for the railings of the Wren’s new St Paul’s Cathedral.

In addition to the presence of coal, steam pumps were needed for the mining industry.

Perhaps having a large enough local market for manufactured goods also help.

As to Frederick the Great: he could only give attention to a limited number of things. A true industrial revolution comes from the independent enterprise of a lot individuals who develop it. I don’ think top down really works at the invention stage, before a system becomes “turnkey”.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  David Barnett

Thank you. I agree with you, independent enterprise seems to be the key ingredient. This seems to have abjectly lacking not only in Germany, and France, but even more surprisingly in the Dutch Republic.

So a great cheer for Cornwall, for the greatest human achievement since we crawled out the antediluvian swamp, and the adjacent Neanderthal valley.

Jane Jones
Jane Jones
4 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

“Nor for that matter, rather surprisingly, did the Dutch.”
Bwa ha ha. The Dutch only invented modern mercantile economies and the financial tricks that made them possible. Very limited notion of Mark’s as to what constitutes creative thinking and an intellectual product. I hear the same silliness in connection with China—and the Arabs, BTW. Euro- and Brit-centric ideas of what constitutes an invention (e.g., “Chinese invention of gunpowder doesn’t count as invention because the Chinese didn’t use it for weapons” — Oh, I see!!!!). Embarrassingly provincial viewpoint.

Why can’t Brits just accept the fact that they wanted to smite down a rising competitor, leading, basically, to WW1?

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  Jane Jones

What an odd rant, which is hardly a good example of “creative thinking and intellectual product” is it?

May I ask, do have the misfortune to be an American of German/Dutch descent, possibly masquerading as a woman? If so, you have my deepest condolences.

The financial wonders of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century are irrelevant here. The question is why did they not ‘invent’ the Industrial Revolution? They had cause enough, all those windmills continually pumping the place dry, yet nothing. Complacency perhaps?

I fail to see your point about the idiotic Chinese. That mistake was to cost them dear, come 1840, would it not?

Incidentally, in the great scheme of things, besides perhaps Algebra, what have the Arabs ever done? And who or what are BTW?

You final, banal, Parthian shot about the Great War, is amusingly biblical, but otherwise complete nonsense.

Jane Jones
Jane Jones
4 years ago

A fire hose’s worth of projections, conjectures, faux Weisheiten.

Can’t you think of someone besides Daniel Pipes to cite?

Sidney Falco
Sidney Falco
4 years ago

Alluding to nazism as a perennial evil is a pre-requisite for opening doors (and lucrative invitations) to Murray in America.
Equivocate for a second and he’d be finished there.