Populism Is Laying Waste to the German Establishment

‘A political earthquake.’ ‘Historic.’ ‘A mass rejection of our democratic state.’ These are just some of the phrases that have been used to describe Sunday’s elections in two eastern German states – Saxony and Thuringia.

For the first time ever, the right-populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a state election. In Thuringia, the party gained 32.8 per cent of the votes – nearly 10 points ahead of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which came in second with 23.6 per cent. In Saxony, the AfD won 30.6 per cent and came just 1.3 per cent behind the leading CDU.

The success of the left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is no less spectacular. It managed 15.8 per cent in Thuringia and 11.8 per cent in Saxony. This was a particularly impressive feat, given the BSW was only founded in January.

Meanwhile, the three parties of the ruling coalition government lagged far behind. Combined, their vote share amounted to less than 15 per cent in Saxony and just over 10 per cent in Thuringia. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) gained a measly 7.3 per cent and 6.1 per cent respectively.

‘The German government has lost its legitimacy’, wrote Wolfgang Kubicki, a leading politician of the liberal Free Democratic Party, in the aftermath of the elections. ‘People have the impression that the ruling coalition is harming the country. If such a significant proportion of the voters refuse to support it, this must have consequences.’ Kubicki’s party, also a member of the coalition, has been catapulted into insignificance in both regions. It received around one per cent of the votes.

None of this came as a surprise. For months, members of the establishment have looked to the upcoming election with trepidation. The results are pretty much in line with the predictions. But there was also an unusually high voter turnout – well over 70 per cent in both states.

If it were any other party, the AfD would now provide Thuringia with its minister-president and become part of a government coalition in Saxony. But as soon as the results were published, Scholz and many other losers of this election called for the AfD to be excluded from governing. In both states, Scholz said, ‘stable governments must be formed without right-wing extremists’. Bodo Ramelow, incumbent minister-president of Thuringia, similarly called on the CDU to form a new government. The job, he said, was up to the ‘democratic’ party with the most votes. Clearly, he did not mean the AfD. But nor could he mean his own Left Party, which managed to win just 13 per cent.

Such moves were expected, but look increasingly untenable. The AfD’s gains are not a one-off slip-up, but a continuation of its successes. The party was already the second-strongest force in both federal states in the last state elections in 2019. On a national level, the AfD came second in the EU elections this June.

The claim that the AfD is not a democratic party is based on the fact that, earlier this year, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), classified it as a right-wing extremist group. Though purportedly an independent state organisation, BfV chief Thomas Haldenwang is a member of the CDU.

The attempt to combat the AfD by merely dismissing it as beyond the pale clearly isn’t working. Even those who don’t like the AfD, but are principled democrats, can see the problem with freezing out a party that just won a democratic election.

Forming a coalition without the AfD will also pose problems for the CDU. According to current projections, a coalition without the Left or the BSW would be impossible. In Thuringia, the CDU would have to join forces with both parties to form a government. This doesn’t bode well, given that the CDU has always ruled out cooperation with the left just as much as it has with the AfD. None of the established parties seems able to put together majorities anymore.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike the AfD. Björn Höcke, the party’s leader in Thuringia, is undoubtedly one of Germany’s most obnoxious politicians. He loves to provoke controversy by making allusions to the Nazi era. Just this year he was fined €13,000 for using an old Nazi motto, ‘Alles für Deutschland’ (‘Everything for Germany’). In one of his first major TV interviews in 2015, he insisted on draping a German flag over his chair – a lame stunt masquerading as patriotism. Despite trying to appear assertive, he comes across as insecure, and he regularly loses his temper when journalists ask him questions he doesn’t like.

Unsurprisingly, only 21 per cent of Thuringians believe Höcke is a good politician. Despite the AfD winning overall, he wasn’t able to win in his own constituency. But he secured a seat in the state parliament due to him being at the top of the party list.

The more success the AfD enjoys, the more the establishment will insist that Thuringia and Saxony are riddled with right-wing voters, hoodwinked by the likes of Höcke. This is the only way the German elites can justify excluding the AfD from government. In their words, they are upholding a ‘firewall’.

Much has been made of the fact that Thuringia was where the Nazi Party achieved its early successes. But such comparisons are utterly ahistorical. You could just as equally claim that Thuringia should be left-wing, because it was a stronghold of the Social Democrats in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After all, it was in Thuringia’s capital of Erfurt that the SPD’s famous Erfurt Programme was passed in 1891.

Government failure is a much more honest explanation for why the AfD, despite all its problems and unsavoury characters, is winning elections. The polls are crystal clear about which topics matter most to voters – rising crime rates, unregulated migration, a sinking standard of living and the growing influence of radical Islam. These are all real, rational concerns. The increase in crime involving dangerous bodily harm (including deadly knife attacks) ought to worry everyone. The deadly threat posed by Islamism remains unabated, as the series of terrorist attacks in recent months and years has shown. Just last month, three people were stabbed to death by an Islamist in the west German city of Solingen.

The turn to populism shows that a great number of people no longer believe the established parties will get the country’s many problems under control. Why should they? After the deadly attack in Solingen, a leading SPD politician said that nothing could be learnt from the incident. In July, the chancellor was still predicting an economic miracle fuelled by Germany’s adoption of renewable energy. In reality, the economy has been contracting. Just days after Scholz’s speech, it emerged that the economy had shrunk by a further 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2024.

Voters are turning to the AfD because it has, for some time, been the only party willing to address their concerns. But that might be changing. The left-populist BSW is touching on many of the same issues as the AfD. The BSW has promised to fight against uncontrolled immigration. It opposes extreme transgender ideology and multiculturalism. Meanwhile, its economic programme leans heavily on redistribution, in contrast to the more economically conservative AfD.

Unfortunately for the establishment, it is much more difficult to dismiss the BSW as far right. Wagenknecht, the party’s leader and namesake, is a former leading member of the Left Party. Her new party also includes a significant number of politicians from migrant backgrounds. One of the BSW’s party chairs is Amira Mohamed Ali, the daughter of an Egyptian father and a German mother. One of its main candidates in the recent European elections was Fabio De Masi, the son of an Italian trade unionist.

The BSW has been careful to distance itself from the right-populists and has ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD. It is closely vetting those who want to join the party. Political oafs like Höcke certainly wouldn’t be tolerated.

The BSW’s appearance on the Germany political stage shows how fast the populist scene is changing and growing. The hope, expressed by mainstream commentators, was that the BSW would weaken the AfD. This has evidently proved to be an illusion. These elections have shown that there is still much scope for populism in Germany, beyond these ‘historic’ elections.

Source: Spiked