Sunday’s election victory by Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt was the first by a “far right” party in a German state since before the Second World War. It was not an augury of a future Fourth Reich, but it is an indication that Germany is in a mess, and one from which it has no easy exit.
Much of this is directly attributable to blunders by successive German governments. Blaming the result (in a small state that was once part of East Germany) on a political culture formed by two consecutive dictatorships — the first Nazi, the second Communist — between 1933 and 1989 won’t do. The Berlin Wall fell over 30 years ago. The least likely people to vote for AfD in Saxony-Anhalt were aged over 70 (not a small slice of its electorate), in other words those who lived the longest under the East German regime.
The local factor that did bite, particularly among the middle-aged, was the sense of living in a “left behind” region that, like the rest of the former East Germany, still lags Germany’s West. Unhappiness with the economy helped, as did a strong candidate at the top, but it was AfD’s hard line on immigration that swept it to a victory of such a size. AfD took 43.8 percent of the vote, just three seats short of a majority.
Immigration is the issue that came to define AfD after Angela Merkel flung open Germany’s doors in 2015. It has acted as a vector transforming it from a party of free-market euro-skeptics into a party of the populist right. AfD shot to third place in national elections in 2017 as, above all, a rare place of refuge for voters who objected to the political establishment’s (fraying) “welcome culture.”
Germany’s leading parties reacted to this display of voter discontent by passing laws imposing online censorship and agreeing to a “firewall” (Brandmauer). This faintly post-democratic arrangement involved ruling out entering into any actual or de facto coalition government with AfD. By removing any incentive for AfD to moderate, it effectively locked the party onto its radicalizing path.
This was a risky gamble. With immigration concerns focused on migrants who had already arrived as well as new incomers, AfD’s winning issue was not going away.
Unhappiness over immigration and an economy hobbled by “net zero,” another establishment folly, meant that AfD came second in federal elections last year. The SPD, traditionally the dominant party on Germany’s center-left, was relegated into third place, and the nominal victor, the center-right CDU/CSU “Union,” was left with a relatively modest haul of seats. Their normal coalition partner of choice, the free-market(ish) FDP, didn’t make it into parliament, leaving only AfD as a potential partner on the right, an option that by demolishing the firewall risked demolishing CDU unity too.
And so the Union had no choice other than to enter into (by historical standards) a shrunken “grand coalition” with the SPD, an ideologically incoherent arrangement. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has steered his party, the CDU, rightwards after the disastrous Merkel years, not least on immigration policy, but, yoked to the SPD, there is only so much he can do to convince voters that Merkelism is in the past, something that AfD voters need to hear.
Merz somehow has to retake the initiative, no easy task for an unpopular chancellor heading a nonsensical coalition and a restless party and at a dangerous time in Europe. Nationally, AfD now leads in the polls at 29 percent. The next test will be elections on September 20 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where AfD heads the polls but will be battling the SPD.
So, what should Merz do? Ideally, the Union should scrap the firewall and handle elections and votes on a case-by-case basis, laying down strict conditions under which it would be prepared to work with AfD. Its broader goal would be to incentivize the AFD — or, failing that, some of its voters — to return closer to the mainstream, an approach that has worked under somewhat similar situations in Scandinavia. It would be worth trying. However abused the term “far right,” it certainly applies to substantial elements in AFD, which is also too close to Russia and China and, in some quarters, not particularly fond of the U.S.
As a practical matter, though, tearing down the firewall now would risk taking the Union down as well as the coalition. The alternative at the other extreme, banning AfD, which has been floated, should be rejected for reasons too obvious to recite.
There is no substitute for Merz, or a successor within his party, simply doing a better job at governing and at addressing those legitimate voter concerns driving the rise of AfD.