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AfD supporters in Dresden last month (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Have the worst fears of the Berliner establishment finally come to pass? As soon as the curtain fell on Sunday’s elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the predictable reactions took centre stage. The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) strong showing in the eastern states was seen as a threat to both the nation’s democracy and economy. Vladimir Putin was the real winner. Without a hint of irony, The Economist warned that the AfD was taking Germany into “uncharted territory”.
Granted, in Thuringia at least, forming a stable governing majority in the state parliament might now be tricky and require some unusual alliances, such as between the centrist Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Left-wing Die Linke, which the CDU for decades has denounced as the irredeemable successor to the old GDR’s Stalinist ruling party and thus beyond the pale. The new left-conservative BSW party of Sahra Wagenknecht, who has ruled out collaborating with the AfD, has also signalled its openness to entering into a coalition with the CDU if certain conditions are fulfilled. In Saxony, meanwhile, the current ruling majority of CDU, Social Democrats (SPD), and the Greens will remain in power, even though the SPD and Greens barely passed the 5% threshold needed to win seats.
The outcome of Sunday’s elections, then, is that the AfD will remain an opposition party, Germany’s largest, but still one without any real power. Some privileges come with the AfD’s strong showing in Thuringia: because it now holds more than a third of seats in the state parliament, it can block a number of measures for which two-thirds of votes are needed, such as changes to the state constitution or the election of state judges. An inconvenience, perhaps, but hardly a revolution.
And this seems unlikely to change. Since the AfD was founded in 2013, Thuringia and Saxony have been its strongholds, which means that for now the party seems to have reached a preliminary ceiling. Except for the AfD’s few office holders at the municipal and district level, the Brandmauer (firewall) erected by all other major German parties against the right-populists remains rock solid. There is simply no clear path to power for the AfD short of an absolute majority of votes, which it is extremely unlikely to secure anywhere. The centre and the policies that it represents will hold — until, at least, a major war or devastating economic crisis further destabilises the crumbling European order.
The more interesting question, then, is not what the Right-wing firebrands will do with their newly won seats, but rather how Germany’s leadership class will react to their increased prominence. And if past is present, this is likely to take two forms. First, they could threaten the German Right with legal challenges and bans; and second, they could carefully adopt some of its positions to take the wind out of its sails.
Let’s start with the idea of outright AfD ban, a theoretical possibility which is being discussed openly in the German mainstream media. Such proposals normally start by acknowledging that the Federal Republic of Germany is the legal successor to the Third Reich. To distinguish itself from its predecessor state, the framers of the Federal Republic’s constitutional order wanted to make the nation a wehrhafte Demokratie, which loosely translates to “resilient democracy” or “well-fortified democracy”. As a result, the Federal Republic was given the legal tools to defend itself against challenges from within, including its domestic intelligence apparatus, the Bundesverfassungsschutz, which can monitor political activists and parties even if they haven’t committed a crime. If a party is deemed “extremist” and in opposition to the German constitutional order, it can be banned and its assets seized. The idea is to stop a new Hitler in his tracks before he can even give his first beer-hall speech. A denazification before the fact, in other words.
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SubscribeI’m not a political analyst, and certainly not an analyst of German politics, but it seems as if much of the complexity and dysfunction in current German politics is the result of the establishment’s attempts to thwart the popular will, currently in the form of the AfD.
Am I mistaken? Are these blocking tactics long a feature of German politics, even before the rise of populism?
Good question.
No, this is a new part of wokeness of the last 20 years.
The German constitution was basically a construct of the UK Labour government and the US Democratic Party after the war.
It was inconceivable that the lawyers and civil servants would not do their bidding and make it impossible for an actual non left leaning government to take power.
So was their extraordinarily successful Trades Union system, designed by our TUC to include worker representatives on company boards/ supervisory boards. When the TUC asked the then new Labour government if Britain could implement same, they were told “no”! The same Government that were clever enough to also take over the ownership of Volkswagenwerken AG for free… gratis… nothing!… and just look at the UK car industry and union strife post 1949… Good old Labour party!
addenda and errata above ” who turned down the opportunity to own VW for free” apologies
A somewhat similar situation occurred in 1966 – at the time, Germany had a 2 ½ party system, with CDU/CSU and SPD both just under 50%, and FDP holding the balance. So any government was led by one of the major parties, in coalition with the FDP.
In 1966, the CDU-FDP coalition broke up, and CDU went into coalition with the SPD – the first “Grand Coalition”. This essentially left Germany without an opposition, which in turn fostered an atmosphere in which “extra-parliamentary oppositions”, including at the extreme end the Red Army Faction terrorist group, gained oxygen.
So different framework, but also a situation where the clash of policies which is normal for a living, healthy democracy was suppressed.
Until the mid 1990s the German political landscape was comprised of the “big two” CDU and SPD plus the “king-maker” FDP. Dead simple – three parties with all the clout. Boring but effective The Grünen joined in during the 90s, followed by Die Linke in the 2000s and the AfD from the 2010s onwards. It’s most definitely become more complicated – and now we have the BSW. Bit of a dog’s dinner. And apparently everybody against the AfD – in the interest of “democracy”.
Mein lieber Herr Scholz. It appears that you may have issues with basic mathematics, specifically, that some numbers are bigger than other numbers.
The AfD may offend you – or anyone else – but when there’s a record turnout of over 70% and the opponent gets a third of the vote – the problem isn’t them – it’s you.
A firewall to shut out the AfD may be just all part of the Great Game of politics but it also devalues the democratic franchise of a substantial number of your fellow citizens that voted for them. Every vote counts – not just those cast for ‘acceptable’ candidates.
Nothing shows who is bringing the actual danger to democracy than disenfranchisement of the largest single block of votes.
You are right.
Consider, as one significant example, the concerted efforts by the authoritarian elite in the UK who set out to undermine and destroy the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum, in spite of this being a clear majority of the electorate who voted for that change. Democracy is under very serious threat in the western world. Our futures are in danger.
Indeed it becomes a step along the way to the managed “democracy” of the Communist DDR. You can vote for any party that we allow to stand even if that deprives you of the chance to vote for a party representing your actual views.
Unfortunately this is the issue everywhere. In the UK Labour only believe in democracy until it produces the result it wants, then when it gets into government behaves as badly as the Tories it castigated from opposition. In France Macron is a complete lame duck and currently cannot even appoint a PM. In the USA Trump and the Republican Party are semi-seriously talking about abolishing voting if they win in November, to make sure the Democrats can never regain power. And as for Netanyahu…
The list goes on.
Conclusion: Politicians are not democrats. They want power to do things their way, control people who disagree with them, appoint friends into well paid jobs and often to line their own pockets.
To paraphrase the great statistician Darrell Huff, they use elections and voting like a drunk uses a lamp-post – for support, not illumination.
Not quite in despair, but getting close.
That’s a good quote from Mr. Huff…..yes, agree and, to be honest, we (wherever we are) have been pi**sed on for decades….what’s remarkable is that despite the illumination, it appears few can see it, let alone feel the trickle….
This is the first I’ve heard about the republicans considering abolishing voting. Would love to hear more about this.
It’s bull***t
I did say “semi-seriously” but how about this.
“In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
I know only Trump said it but I’m not aware that anyone on the Republican side publicly denounced the statement:
div > p:nth-of-type(2) > a”>Donald Trump repeats controversial ‘You won’t have to vote any more’ claim | Donald Trump | The Guardian
div > p:nth-of-type(3) > a”>Trump tells Christians they ‘won’t have to’ vote again after election – and calls Harris a ‘bum’ | US News | Sky News
That’s terribly disingenuous. The exact quote is:
““Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
He says: “You won’t have to do it anymore”, not, you won’t be allowed to do it anymore. He is saying that he will fix the country so well that you won’t have to be worried about voting. As usual, he speaks aspirationally and vaguely, rather than specifically.
“Take Trump seriously, not literally.”
Thanks for giving context to this story. It is quite clear that the message is that if you vote us in this time we will do such a good job you won’t need to vote next time because all the doubters will be converted and vote for us anyway. A piece of typical grandiloquent rhetoric on Trump’s part but no threat to democracy.
Ouch!!! Good catch. The real problem is the regime media only plays crafted clips, not the entire quote. You literally can’t believe anything you see in the regime media.
Addressed to “Christians…”, I would assume that he’s referring specifically to the issue of abortion. If he has another term he’ll have opportunities to appoint more Supreme Court justices, as present ones retire. That might lock-in a conservative Court for many years to come. Which is just what conservative Christians want.
If you think Trump and the Republicans want to “abolish voting” then you need to get your funny bone surgically adjusted.
If the Democrats – who claim to be saving democracy after staging a coup, ousting the man democrats voted for, and installing a token whom they wanted to get rid of just last month – manage to steal this election again, the vote in the US will be utterly pointless.
The republic is, if not dead, very nearly dead, unless the oligarchs and bureaucrats running our formerly free nation are put an end to. If they are not, the entire world will suffer unimaginably.
No-one “ousted the man democrats voted for”. He’s still the President and will remain so until January 2025.
What they did is replace him as their candidate for November’s election. Not the same thing at all. I share many of the misgivings about the way that was done, but get your facts right.
And they did not steal the last election. Trump tried to but failed. Biden won fair and square.
As for Trump, see the response to Jim Veenbas for the sources.
The Donkeys replaced the person who got an overwhelming majority of the primary votes and delegates by fiat, without holding an election, caucus, or discussion amongst their party. (recall that they fixed the 2016 race for Hillary, and the 2020 race for Biden within their party)
They are the true enemies of democracy, as shown by their track record.
Your definition of reality is certainly yours to create. But if you believe Biden was democratically removed from the ticket, despite being the candidate that was voted for by democrat voters, and replaced with someone who received zero votes from the same democrat voters only 4 years ago, then I’m from Mars and have a big spiral shaped horn emanating from my forehead.
the Republican Party are semi-seriously talking about abolishing voting if they win in November,
You have a citation for that, right?
Kamala agrees with
your reasoning and echoes your sentiments with some of her own:
“It’s time for us to do what we have been doing and that time is every day. ”
Also, “I do believe that we have rightly believed but we certainly believed that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled…and that’s why I do believe that we are living in real unsettled times”.
“I think that there can be no higher priority than what we have been clear is our highest priority.”
Macron is indeed a lame duck but of its own doing !
The results of the first round of the French parliamentary elections last June gave a resounding 33% to Le Pen’s and Bardella’s RN but subsequent “arrangements” betwen the entire Left and the Centre Right in order to eliminate the RN candidates in key constituencies resulted in in three groups of MPs of roughly equal stature, thus making it nearly impossible to form a viable government…
The ultimate goal – building a firewall against the RN and its cohorts of “deplorables” – has been quite a success, actually!
Until President Macron had to appoint Michael Barnier as Prime Minister after Marine Le Pen told him that the RN would not block his confimation by the Assemblée Nationale. She will presumably have the RN deputies vote for him so that he is elected with a good majority and a cabinet appointed. Mme Le Pen could even keep Barnier in the post by RN supporting Macron’s party (is it still called ‘En marche’?) in votes, until the Presidential election (May 2027). And then talk up that the RN had contributed to France having stable government for 2½ years – so putting her in a position to win the election.
Banning a political party because you don’t like their policies is not defending democracy, it is destroying it. Willfully blocking a political party supported by roughly 20 percent of voters is not defending democracy, it is destroying it. Bringing in obscene numbers of people who are culturally worlds apart from Western democratic values is not defending democracy, it is destroying it.
Somehow I get the feeling that the MSM as well as the main stream political parties seem to be hell bent on destroying democracy in Germany.
It would appear so… and i’m absolutely not promoting the idea of legislative ability to ban political parties which have popular support.
But here’s a genuine comundrum: should it be within the legislative ability of a democratic state to ban a political party whose stated aim was to overthrow democracy, should it gain power?
I ask, since if mass migration were to continue, in addition to differential birthrates, it mightn’t be Germany that finds itself in a position where a certain creed began to politically exert itself via ‘popular’ support.
Since that question has no relevance irt AfD’s policies, it should be asked directly of those who falsely claim to be saving democracy when the opposite result is being realized. (edited for clarity)
I hardly think the AfD is taking Germany into “uncharted territory”. After all, it was ruled by a far-Right party in the 1930s and 1940s.
…as the author of this article strongly hints.
Comparing AfD to national socialism is a way to self identify as an ignorant fascist without blatantly confessing it.
It seems the obvious comparison to me.
Well there you prove my point.
I’m not the only one to make the comparison, but I understand that you are the only clever one, and that the rest of us are stupid.
The psychological effect of never allowing AfD to rule in a coalition is that their demonization, painting them as racist nazis, never gets a chance to be corrected. Lord known they might adopt good policies in some towns that don’t actually involve deporting people.
I’m no expert in German politics, but what is being seen there seems to reflect a pattern being seen across the western world.
It’s clear we’re seeing something like an abandonment of the idea that national borders should be monitored and controlled. There’s this idea that a member of a national community expressing a desire for lower migration is probably racist.
For me, it’s ostrich-like to dismiss political concerns around immigration at the same time as you deplore the rise of a coalition that has emerged as a direct response to your refusal to acknowledge political concerns around immigration.
My guess is that any nation whose political establishment makes a bipartisan commitment to returning migration to more moderate levels of, say, 20 years ago, will quickly see their local ‘far right’ movement dwindle.
Of course due to freedom of speech restrictions, no one can actually now legally, publicly, in print or say the truth: that it is manifestly NOT ” all immigration” that the vast majority in Europe fear and detest… it is one specific group of immigrants.
And the quantity of immigrants, Francis. We are being overwhelmed.
The government won’t win a ban of the AfD, because the Constitutional Court in Germany won’t allow it. There is nothing in the Party’s manifesto, which shows the slightest wish to abandon or change the German Constitution. As a matter of fact AfD’s agenda reads more libertarian than most other main parties manifestoes. The AfD has a right wing element in it, which many other countries in Europe or abroad might call patriotic. As I mentioned before in an UnHerd comment, there is nothing more radical about their patriotic pronunciations than any other European right wing parties or Donald Trump and the current GOP. Only in Germany it seems you can say that “Germany is a piece of shit” and you’ll get away with it as a court recently decided that it is part of your right of freedom of speech.
Well, you’ve got away with it here too !
We really will have lost freedom of speech when we can’t insult the French and Germans any more (nor they us).
But it (Germany) isn’t anyway. Very sad what’s happening to Germany. Democracies tend to auto-correct (reversion to the mean) over time. Let’s hope so – and that the era of luxury beliefs is drawing to and end.
I agree somebody can call Germany anything they want, but then on the other hand other people can also pronounce “Alles für Deutschland“! Why do you get fined by a German court because the SA said it in a different context. Anyway the Social Democrats came up first with this slogan in the Weimar Republic.. I just get furious about the total double standards in Germany right now, which is supported by all State Institution and most of the press…
“Era of luxury beliefs…” I like this. Thanks
In the recent South African elections several parties with hardline anti-immigration policies (ie people from elsewhere in Africa) did well. Over the past twenty years anti-migrant and refugee sentiment has led to outbreaks of communal violence (real violence, not just property damage). The ANC government has considered withdrawing from the UN refugee convention to harden its response to illegal migrants. The ANC being the poster-child human rights cause of the 1980s.
So any society has a tipping point beyond which immigration becomes a serious issue for the people that live there. In South Africa nobody is talking about this in terms of the far right.
I think it’s long past time the entire world puts a full stop to immigration and force basket case countries to join the 21st Century in their own lands and clean up their own d*mn societies. Uncountable gazillions in money and man power have been sent to the Third World. Why can’t they get their sh*t together? And if they can’t, why is it our problem?
Genius! Why didn’t anybody think of that?
What policies do you want t them to imitate?
As is often the case on Unherd, the commenters underneath have a better understanding of reality than many of the authors who have a more “establishment agenda”. The article is right about some things, that the establishment party will probably use lawfare against the parties they don’t like, and we should understand that it’s not just the AfD that made gains, but the good old-fashioned socialists also made some political gains. So, it is wrong to simply characterize this as a right wing takeover.
This is just Germans being sick and tired of the middle parties having no answers for the economic and social malaise that Germany is in. The problem is that they’re putting 2+2 together and recognizing that it’s the policies, and doubling down on policies that these tired old politicians are doing that the people are holding them accountable for.
So, calling those who throw you out “extreme” (Which some of the people in the AfD no doubt are.) and then doubling down on it and trying to go after them in every way you can is the establishment playbook.
Narratives, when they run contra to reality eventually wear out. You can say the sky is red all you want, but eventually people choose to believe their own eyes, and that’s when the true extremists seek to crush them.
These centrist globalists being ordered around by the US, and ceding control to Brussels have a very limited shelf life at this point. Those on the left and more so right of them are going to be getting the votes of more people than ever. That is the trend.
That is where Orban was correct. He said children, when they play football all run to where the ball is, but the pros, they run to where the ball is going to be.
A smart politician would position themselves where the ball is going to be.
Angela Merkel stayed one term too long. She casted about for new mountains to climb and wound up with open borders. It was too hard for her to stick to her successful policies and positions because they had solved all the problems confronting Germany. It’s government had nothing left to do and should just have declared victory over everything.
Angela Merkel will be remembered as one of the worst German Chancellors in German History. She probably sits right now at home biting her finger nails, shaking and reflecting on the recent election results in East Germany…
She started out quite promising, becoming head of the CDU by exposing some of the corruption under Helmut Kohl and also wanted to continue Schroeder’s new welfare agenda and reform the complicated tax system. But after coming to power, she immediately dropped all her ideas at the first hurdle and moved to the left, abandoning any reforms. Instead Merkel invented at every EuroCrisis new ways to save the Euro. One rescue package followed the next one, burdening Germany with huge future debt. She answered criticisms with: “There is no Alternative, because if the Euro fails, so will Europe”. This was the birth of the AfD, who originally wanted to reform the Euro into a Southern and Northern currency…
She also tried to please the Greens with anticipated future NetZero policies, and if that wasn’t enough burden on the economy, she declared an early end to future German nuclear power after the Fukushima earthquake. Her politics were now decided by current public moods, usually left of the CDU. If you read some headlines in the news on one day, you knew Merkel would follow with the same headline policies weeks later. MSM and Merkel fed off each other, becoming a happy partnership. In Parliament she once declared, that “Multi Kulti” (multi cultural politics) is over, and half a year later she opened up the borders, because the media pictures of German border police refusing entrance to thousands of migrants would be a bad look for Germany.
Modern German politics became Merkel’s child, with all political mainstream Parties following in her political Zeitgeist, but it finally seems Germans are waking up to the aftermath of her disastrous decisions: inviting millions of migrants, importing 3rd World cultural problems, many of them not integrating, moving into cushy social systems, which were supposed to function as a safety nets. The Green policies are now slowly deindustrialising this former industrial powerhouse of a country.
And please stop with this stupid nCAPTCHa crap Unherd!
The Verfassungsschutz is unfortunately not an independent agency, but subject to the directions of the Federal Ministry of the Interior; e.g. in 2018, the then-president of the Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maaßen, was summarily fired after he refused to produce reports that reflected the government’s desired narrative.
“Scandal at the Verfassungsschutz” is a recurring headline in the German press.
So relying on the pronouncements of the Verfassungsschutz is a bit like relying on the tobacco lobby for medical information on smoking.
“Verfassungsschutz” could be compared to a partisan FBI… But thank God for the “Bundesgerichtshof”( Constitutional Court) which still seems to be independent
Alles umsonst – ‘All for nothing’ is the title of an evocative novel by Walter Kempowski set in East Prussia in 1945. He also wrote ‘Swansong 1945’, a documentary history of the last months of the war.
Alles fur Deutschland is effectively the same as Deutschland uber alles – Germany above all else.
Just noticed that AfD is also an acronym for Alles fur Deutschland. Probably intentional.
But the meaning of Deutschland uber Alles is a love of Germany above all…NOT that Germany should be above all…
Alles fur Deutschland similarly means to give everything for Germany not that Germany should have everything…
They are patriotic phrases made by individuals expressing love of Germany…not phrases of imperial expansion.
Same old Germans….
Two items of information: My latest reading of the results is 1) the AfD in Thurigia did not quite gain the number of seats for a Sperrminorität, and 2) the preceding coalition in Saxony (CDU, SPD and Greens) did not gain enough seats to establish a majority. Therefore, the CDU may well have to offer talks with the new BSW.
Aside from their obvious fascist nature, the traditional parties from the most far left Marxists to the supposedly moderate Christian democrats have confirmed that they have more in common with each other than a Conservative Party that wants reasonable immigration restrictions. This is how the uniparty works.
As Katja Hoyer said: The revolution ends when the issues being leveraged by the AfD are addressed by politics.
Both Thatcher’s and Merkel’s mantras were “there is no alternative.”
For the AfD, the programme is in the name: “Alternative für Deutschland.”
Running out of other people’s money doesn’t leave you with much choice
The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) strong showing in the eastern states was seen as a threat to both the nation’s democracy and economy.
The people voting is now a threat to democracy. Let that one roll around for a while. Once more, there is handwringing over “the German right,” “the right wing,” and “right populists” and absolutely no introspection on how the AfD has gained relevance. Such parties don’t spring up from nowhere; they reflect a populace that increasingly feels ignored.
POPULIST! Ah! the cry of the crypto-democrat who fears his hegemony is under threat.
Rather similar to the socialist ‘democracy’ policies of so many African countries – ‘one man, one vote, one time’!
Democracy is dead as proven in France. These Uni party’s will do anything to remain in power. They cry this is not democratic and do anything to defy the people. Starmer is running around the EU to support the end of democracy
Forgetting (suppressing) (censoring) the actual roots of the 1930’s /1940’s has assured that the current coalition/oligarchy/puppets are now what they allegedly hate.
The “analysis” presented by the author reminds me very much of the non-analysis presented here in the German mainstream media: “Oh my god, the nazis are on the rise!”. Not a very constructive view on the current developments, and a highly partisan view above all.
One key piece of information missing in this article (as well as from the vast majority of statements) is that the policies put forward by the AfD are more or less exactly the non-controversial conservative positions the Christian Democrats (CDU) held at around 2005; the conservative values the CDU represented before Merkel changed the CDU to align with the left-green-leaning mainstream media to win elections without regard to the long-term outcomes for the country.
As soon as the CDU has the guts to reinvent itself as the party it was 20 years ago, at least half of the votes for the AfD will return to the CDU. If Friedrich Merz can convince voters that he will “de-merkelize” his party, the CDU will be back at 40+%.
The main message of these regional elections is that there is a striking conservative majority of about 60% of the popular vote. This is in line with the current representation in the federal parliament: there is already a conservative majority in the Bundestag since 2021. CDU, Free Democrats and AfD could be in power if they only worked together (369 vs. 362 seats). Instead, because of the “firewall” against the AfD Scholz, Habeck, and their cronies are forcing self-destructive policies onto a country that had voted differently.
The assumption that defending one’s culture, language and borders is “revolutionary” or “anti-democratic” seems to be the radical, destructive position. Making common cauae with communists has never worked out well for a civil society.
No question. AfD is Literally Hitler. In the AfD manifesto it says:
“We want to limit the power of the state over the citizen… we want a mandatory ceiling on taxation and duties to be incorporated in the German Constitution. This will define the maximum permissible tax rate as a percentage of the gross domestic product.”
I understand the reaction of the ruling class. This Shall Not Stand!
It seems Germany has some difficult challenges concerning the operation of democracy . But surely the U.K. has these too. A party for whom 80% of the electorate did not vote is in dominant control of the legislature with a huge overall majority of the seats. Furthermore it is behaving as if the electorate gave it a mandate to effect significant change in almost every aspect of policy. Personally I think it is a recipe for significant unrest. Worse still it is evidence that our democratic system is wholly susceptible to takeover by a determined clique if others around it fall into dispute and disarray. In fact that is exactly what has happened!
Mainstream conservative parties can not successfully counter the Extreme Right by adopting their policies on immigration for the simple reason that the grievances which the likes of Afd and similar parties try to blame on immigration, expensive housing, lack of good jobs, run down public services and crime, would continue regardless, even if a immigration stopped tomorrow.
The same is true in other countries, in the UK, with our shrinking population of working age and ever growing number of pensioners, without working age immigrants filling vacancies and paying tax, we would face even worse public services, increasing the retirement age to 70 or beyond and higher taxes on everyone.