Normally, the global press would not devote page-one coverage to a provincial election. In Germany, the world’s media did, and rightly so. In Saxony-Anhalt, one of the 16 federal states, the voters have delivered a horrifying verdict, rewarding the ultra-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) with 44 per cent of the ballots cast. This far-out party is within reach of the state’s prime-minister’s office, a first in the history of the Federal Republic.
In the new parliament, the AfD just needs three more seats to anoint its local leader Siegmund Ulrich as Chief Executive. But it has a problem. The other parties have erected a Brandmauer, a firewall. They want no truck with the pariah. Yet help may be on the way from a weird bedfellow. That would be the BSW, which stands for “Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht. ” It is as far out left as the AfD is on the extreme right. And yet, It seems willing to pitch in. With its five seats, the BSW could propel Siegmund over the top.
For the country. this cynical marriage of the extremes would turn a fiasco into a disaster. Totally absurd this wedding of ideological foes is not, for on foreign policy they are almost peas in a pod. They are both anti-Ukraine and pro-Russian, no friends of NATO and the EU – the two pillars of German foreign policy.
Among historians of the 20th century, this evokes grim memories. Did not Nazis and Communists, mortal enemies both, bring down the Weimar Republic, the first German democracy? The nightmare is this: AfD plus BSW could conquer a not exactly weighty part of the Federal Republic as harbingers of worse to come for the entire country. As goes Erfurt, so goes Berlin...
Such a take is not as hysterical as it sounds at first blush. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s national government is wobbling. “All politics is local,” runs an old line. Not in this case. In Saxony-Anhalt his Christian Democratic Party (CDU) was decimated; in the new parliament they will have 15, not 40 seats. In the national polls, Merz has been sinking for months. As the rumour mill has it, the CDU is casting about for somebody who could replace him as Chancellor. His only consolation: In his conflicted party, there is no Andy Burnham to play Brutus to Keir Starmer.
Which leads to the less dreary news. To begin, Saxony-Anhalt has only 1,7 million eligible voters; the Federal Republic as a whole has 60. So you can’t conclude from the tiny part the vast whole. Second, the large West of the Fatherland is different from the East, formerly the totalitarian German Democratic Republic. The Westdeutsche have lived for almost 80 years in one of the world’s sturdiest democracies. So longevity comes with a heartening moral. By contrast, the Weimar Republic lasted only for 14 years.
The macro factors add to reassurance, as well. None of the conditions that brought Fascism and Nazism to Europe after the First World War rears its ugly head today. Back then, the Weimar Republic was alone, a pariah; its heir is not. Weimar was encircled and hounded by the victors, aching under reparations it could not pay. Ultra-nationalism was bound to flourish in this setting; today, Berlin is part of a myriad of communities, above all EU and NATO.
The Great Depression unleashed mass unemployment, driving the dispossessed into the arms of Nazis and Communists. Bad for the nation, good for the Hitlers and Mussolinis. Nor can we think about the demise of German democracy without the Führer‘s and Duce’s charisma that mesmerised and seduced the masses. Luckily, today’s AfD grandees do not shine forth with such toxic talents.
Back to the downside. Nor do the likes of Chancellor Friedrich Merz sparkle with appeal and allure, the critical ingredients of legitimate leadership. Merz and his party cohorts generate as much enthusiasm as well-dressed accountants, which, by the way, was true for Sir Keith, as well. And his predecessors Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
Who on the European right has scored? Just to name two, there are Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France. Meloni, La Bionda, is heading Rome’s most stable government in decades. Marine Le Pen could just make it into the Élysée Palace next year. Why?
These parties have ditched their nasty verbiage. Le Pen has driven her wild-eyed father and the antisemites from the National Rally. Meloni has moved toward the centre, no longer questioning the EU and its common currency, She has also stopped flirting with Vladimir Putin. In Holland, the firebrand Geert Wilders softened his rhetoric and joined the government of Mark Rutte as early as 2010. In Sweden and Denmark, the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party managed to join governments once they had mellowed. Apropos of Copenhagen: there, Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, has been prime minister since 2015. Unlike Germany, Denmark has enacted strict immigration policies.
Why the moderation of these once far-out parties? Easy. If you want power, move toward the centre. Alas, this “natural law” does not work in two key Western nations. In the United States, the Big Two are actually radicalising. The GOP is shifting to the right and the Democratic Party to the left. In Germany, the AfD shows no sign of softening its extremist convictions. Why should it? It is easier to watch with Schadenfreude while the once dominant Christian and Social Democrats are shrinking relentlessly. There is no Konrad Adenauer (CDU) or Helmut Schmidt (SPD) on stage anymore. Neither are the likes of Churchill, Wilson or Thatcher in Britain.
The astronomic rise of the AfD reflects the failure of the rest to deal with the “Four Fears”: economic stagnation, inflation, unregulated immigration and Wokism, previously known as PC. Call it, in contrast with the 1920s and 1930s, not aggressive but defensive nationalism. The New Antisemitism is a different, mainly left-wing/Islamist story from Munich via Madrid to Manhattan, but no less frightening. Given the Holocaust, in Germany, naked Jew-hatred is still taboo.
Today, it isn’t armed Brownshirts pounding the streets with their jackboots. The problem is the failure of governments to pick up on the fears of the hoi polloi about stagnating incomes, urban crime, bad schools and unchecked immigration outpacing cultural assimilation. There is nothing “Fascist” about such apprehensions, but these are fodder for the AfD. As they are for Nigel Farrage in the English-Scottish birthplace of liberalism, of all places.
Chancellor Merz has deplored the “worst defeat” of his party. “We are deeply shocked” and “did not expect this to happen.” Yet the handwriting has been on the wall for years. Now, all of us “have to do better,” he orated. He won’t quit. All the other parties have stuck to the “firewall” to encircle and isolate the AfD. Can it be civilised, as have been its comrades in Western Europe?
Why should the AfD reform when the traditional parties have let it act like the “Pied Piper of Hamelin” in the legend, who had lured away all the town’s children. The parents did not stop the seducer. The AfD could just sit back while the established parties let it rise inexorably in the opinion polls.
What now? Build a a bigger and better firewall ? It won’t work as the relentless rise of the AfD shows. The flames are raging all over Germany. The established parties should have seen it coming years ago, soothing the legitimate grievances of the electorate. For the sake of Germany and Europe, let’s wish that Merz’s “shock” will succeed in sending in the political fire brigades before the conflagration spreads beyond Saxony-Anhalt.
All Merz should say and mean right now is what Charles de Gaulle pledged to France: “Je vous ai entendu” – I have heard you. In France, Emmanuel Macron didn’t. Hence the National Rally might well win the presidency next year while the AfD will be forging ahead both regionally and nationally. In the opinion polls, it dwarfs all the other parties.
German democracy is too sturdy to fall. But for now, the country no longer shines forth as Europe’s centre of reliability and constancy.
Josef Joffe is a German author who has taught political science in Harvard. Stanford and Johns Hopkins
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