The
Hate Preachers: Inside Germany's Dangerous New Populist Party
The
Alternative for Germany was born as an anti-euro movement. But it has
since positioned itself far to the populist right. Despite its
efforts at maintaining respectability, the party's extremist flank is
wide open.
February 10, 2016 –
06:50 PM
The settling of
accounts with Frauke Petry, head of Germany's right-wing populist
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, was done by telephone early in
the morning. The party's national leadership came together for a
long-planned conference call at 7:30 a.m. last Tuesday, but before
they began working through their agenda, talk turned to Petry's
leadership.
"Everything you
are doing at the moment is complete shit," hissed one board
member. "How am I supposed to interpret that?" a
dumbfounded Petry replied. "What about the word 'shit' is
difficult to understand?" came the answer.
The tribunal lasted
for half an hour and virtually every board member had something
negative to say about the AfD leader. They complained of her frequent
unwillingness to consult with other party leaders and of her chronic
distrust. More than anything, though, they criticized "this
incredible stupidity:" namely, Petry's comment in an interview
with the newspaper Mannheimer Morgen that police should "use
their firearms if necessary" to stop refugees at Germany's
borders.
What, though, were
they angry about? Was their concern analogous to media commentators
across the political spectrum, for whom Petry's words were
reminiscent of the mass shootings of World War II and of those who
lost their lives trying to cross the East German wall? Were Petry's
colleagues as upset as the so-called establishment parties, who
doubted that the AfD, to quote Social Democratic Party (SPD) head
Sigmar Gabriel, "remained committed to the country's
free-democratic foundations?"
No, they weren't.
Most of the board members were more concerned about Petry's tactical
error: Both her disclosure of the AfD's true attitudes and the timing
of that disclosure. Petry, after all, had violated the right-wing
populist formula for success. Stoking fears, particularly against
foreigners and newcomers is part of that formula. Insinuations that
the West, or German-ness, is facing collapse are likewise perfectly
acceptable. But one shouldn't be overly precise about how to confront
the threat: The idea of shots fired at the border is not likely to
find acceptance beyond a very narrow, extremist slice of the
electorate. And there are just a few weeks to go before a trio of
important state elections.
At the very least,
Petry's comments were awkward. And negligent.
Yet after the wave
of indignation rolled through Germany -- and after Petry's fellow AfD
board member Beatrix von Storch added that, if necessary, even women
and children should be fired at -- it quickly became clear that in
these rancorous, abrasive times, the rules that once governed
political dialogue in Germany no longer apply. The AfD, it seems, may
even have benefited from Petry's comments: The ARD-Deutschlandtrend
survey recently found that support for the right-wing populists has
risen to 12 percent, making in the third strongest party in the
county.
A Dangerous Party
Volker Kauder,
parliamentary floor leader for Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), commented that Petry's
utterances exposed "the true face of the AfD leadership."
But there are apparently many in Germany who find that true face
appealing -- whether openly or not -- and are prepared to vote for
people like Petry.
There are many
conservative, upper middle-class voters -- most of them older, white
males -- who had hoped that the AfD would provide them with a new
political home reminiscent of the Helmut Kohl-era Christian
Democrats. For these voters, Angela Merkel's CDU has become too
liberal, too unprincipled, too un-Catholic and too multicultural. It
is a natural pool of voters for a party to the right of the CDU.
But the AfD is more
than that. It is a dangerous party. The party leadership may have
sought to distance itself from Petry's comments, but it was a
half-hearted attempt, based more on tactical concerns than genuine
condemnation. Indeed, along with dissatisfied conservatives, the AfD
has also become a catchment basin for right-wing extremists and
anti-refugee, Islamophobic rabble-rousers. Increasingly, the party's
existence, and growing popularity, is raising questions as to whether
Germany has truly learned the lessons of World War II and the Nazi
dictatorship. Lessons such as: xenophobia has no place in
democracies; European values and laws are binding; the right to
asylum is non-negotiable; and even people who cross borders illegally
should not be shot at. The AfD is slowly becoming Germany's answer to
the Front National in France: a xenophobic, chauvinistic,
anti-European party.
Should the party's
hardliners prevail, Germany's political landscape will change
significantly, as will political debate in the country. Currently,
Chancellor Angela Merkel is governing in a coalition together with
the Social Democrats, Germany's large, center-left party. That means
that those who disapprove of Chancellor Angela Merkel's handling of
the refugee crisis don't have many choices when it comes to casting a
protest vote, particularly given that the Greens are reliably
pro-refugee. The AfD seems poised to be the beneficiary, despite
Petry's apparent willingness to use deadly force against migrants.
Meanwhile, Germany's
established parties are facing a dilemma. Years ago, the Left Party
emerged on the far-left wing, but it has long been viewed with
suspicion and never been seen as a viable option when assembling a
governing coalition at the federal level. Now, the AfD threatens to
play a similar role on the right wing. That would mean that so-called
"grand coalitions," pairing the conservatives with the SPD,
will become the rule rather than the exception.
Repudiation of
Merkel
The AfD is far from
being a single-dimensional party. A young party that does not yet
have a clearly established identity, it is home to many different
currents and voices. Not every sentence is openly xenophobic and its
missteps are sometimes the product of inexperience rather than
iniquity. Since its split last year, the party hasn't had a true
platform or an established set of values that would clearly keep the
extremists at bay. The AfD leadership is a collection of
radical-Christian ideologues, arch-conservative military veterans,
buttoned-up business professors and disillusioned business owners. It
is an odd collection -- and one that has proven vulnerable to radical
temptations, as demonstrated by Petry and Storch.
What unites this
camp is the rejection of all competing political movements and, in
particular, the repudiation of Merkel's refugee policies, which AfD
deputy head Alexander Gauland described last year as a "gift"
to his party. But there are two approaches to politics: The one
involves finding alternative answers to political questions that are
still consistent with human dignity and the constitution. The other
is that of calling the state as such into question and threatening
its structures. Right now, it doesn't look as though AfD leadership
is poised to make the correct choice. In recent months, it has become
all too clear that the AfD leadership prefers to surf the wave of
anger among its followers. And the party doesn't always have control
over that wave.
That was all too
apparent two Thursdays ago in Mannheim. Frauke Petry had yet to make
her controversial comment about the use of firearms against incoming
refugees when she stepped up to the podium at a restaurant in the
city. Some 400 AfD followers had come to see her speak while outside,
police were trying to keep a left-wing, anti-AfD demonstration under
control. For a solid hour, Petry decried all that was going wrong in
Germany: the refugee crisis, problems with the education system, the
"premature sexualization of children." The audience
listened intently and applauded occasionally. Then, during the
question-and-answer session, tempers flared. A man asked how the AfD
planned to prevent German schoolchildren from "being beaten and
extorted by the foreigners."
Petry was clearly
surprised by the question. She said that in such instances the
parents' association must get involved, as should teachers and school
directors. "Democracy is slow," she said. "Those who
make such claims have to prove they are real." The hall erupted,
with furious shouts piercing the air. The man who asked the question
yelled: "Our country is facing an emergency! Millions are coming
to us! It's crazy what is happening!"
Amid the applause,
Petry tried to regain the crowd's attention. "Let me just ..."
But she was ignored. "You can't just beat around the bush and
sugarcoat the problem," the man called out. "We want
concrete proposals. How can we get black Africans to stay in their
home countries?"
A Wave of the Hand
Slowly, Petry
regained control of the situation. She said she understood the anger
and dissatisfaction. But even the AfD, she added, couldn't "solve
the problem of illegal immigration with a wave of the hand."
It was a rare moment
of honesty. For months, right-wing populists from the AfD have been
suggesting that there were simple solutions to the refugee crisis:
the introduction of upper limits; closing national borders;
suspending the Schengen border-free travel regime; suspending the
right to asylum. Petry's suggestion a few days after the Mannheim
incident that firearms be used to defend the German border was of the
same ilk. But what they don't like to talk about is the fact that
hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis who have a right to
asylum are already in Germany and must be integrated, even if the
country were to seal off its borders tomorrow. But the party has no
answers for how to do that.
It is a problem that
has dogged the party from the very beginning. The AfD was originally
founded in opposition to the euro and, particularly, to Angela
Merkel's handling of the euro crisis. But even then, under the
leadership of economist Bernd Lucke, the AfD was unable to
convincingly explain how its approach would be an improvement on
Merkel's. The party initially urged Germany to withdraw from the euro
zone before shifting to demands that Greece be thrown out. Then it
began promoting a smaller, northern European euro zone. More than
anything, though, the party's message was a populist one: We'll end
the bailout insanity.
That kind of
simplistic approach quickly became the party's calling card -- and
the strategy worked, even if Lucke is no longer among the party's
leaders. The problem, however, is that the questions the party is
addressing have become more sensitive and social harmony is at stake.
Asylum hostels are being set on fire, refugees and journalists are
being attacked, the xenophobic PEGIDA movement is marching through
eastern German cities and Facebook has become a platform of hate.
Nevertheless, the
AfD leadership continues to hint to their followers that simple
solutions are available -- that one could simply stop the "asylum
chaos" or back out of NATO. One leader of a state AfD chapter in
eastern Germany has taken to chanting: "Those who don't love
Germany, should leave Germany," and "Hop, hop, hop, asylum
stop!" And just like during the euro crisis," few AfD
supporters are asking for policy details.
For the AfD of today
and its supporters, the party's split amid the 2015 departure of
Bernd Lucke -- and his accusation that the party has become a
"right-wing swamp" -- is ancient history. Voters tend to
know little about the AfD candidates on state party lists. But they
don't really care either. Mostly, they want to register their protest
against the establishment parties. According to the recent
ARD-Deutschlandtend survey, 81 percent of respondents believe that
Merkel's government doesn't have the refugee crisis under control.
Fewer than half are satisfied with the job the chancellor is doing.
Disappointed by Life
in the West
Indeed, the weakness
of Merkel's CDU and her coalition partners from the SPD is AfD's
primary strength, with the refugee crisis having given the party a
boost. But instead of looking for a conservative political solution
to the problem, the AfD has succumbed to the temptation of shrill
populism. Most recently, that has been particularly evident in the
pro-firearm comments emanating from Frauke Petry and Beatrix von
Storch.
Petry spent her
early childhood in communist East Germany and only moved to the West
at the age of 14 once the Berlin Wall fell. There, she joined her
father, who had earlier fled East Germany. Petry once told the German
weekly Stern that she had been disappointed by life in the West. East
Germany, she said, felt too constrained, but the West felt too
arbitrary. In the interview, she sounded like a lost soul, like a
woman without roots.
Petry has undergone
many political shifts. As a young businesswoman, she was in favor of
gender quotas, but is now opposed to the idea. A chemist by training,
she was able to start her own business with the help of state
subsidies, although she now says that the state should keep out of
the business sector. The mother of four children, Petry initially
sought to make family policy a foundation of her political career and
insisted that German mothers should have many children. But since she
made public the fact that she left her husband for fellow party
member Marcus Pretzell, family policy has become something of a taboo
subject for her.
Although she may be
flexible when it comes to policy, her leadership style is anything
but. For the last several months, the Saxony state parliament has
been pursuing an inquiry into why the AfD in Saxony, where Petry is
chapter leader, suddenly removed a candidate from its list shortly
before elections there. The man in question says he was punished
because he refused to make a campaign loan to the party. Petry has
angrily dismissed the accusation. But in testimony before parliament,
she and a fellow party member repeatedly contradicted each other --
and both were under oath. "We strongly believe that state
prosecutors will file charges," Petry's general secretary wrote
in an email to grassroots supporters. He added, however, that he is
convinced that "the charges will not be substantiated."
Still: "a bit" will "stick to us." Should Petry
be found guilty of perjury, she faces a minimum penalty of one year
in prison.
Petry has not shied
away from identifying AfD with other right-wing populist parties in
Europe and is planning a joint appearance with Heinz-Christian
Strache of the Austrian Freedom Party on Friday in Düsseldorf.
Indeed, observers in Berlin and in the rest of Germany are growing
increasingly concerned about the party's path, and not just because
of Petry and the AfD's climbing survey results. In contrast to
earlier right-wing populist parties from Germany, the rise of the AfD
is firmly rooted in a broad European trend whereby right-wing
political groups and movements are gaining support. In France, Front
National even came out on top in the first round of December regional
elections.
Angry White Men
It is a pattern seen
across all Western democracies: anger, frustration and resentments
are increasingly finding expression on the political extremes. And it
tends to be the same demographic that joins such rage-driven
movements: middle-aged, white men.
The pattern is the
product of changing demographic and political realities. It used to
be that all influential positions in politics and industry were
occupied by a man in a suit. And even in the case of political or
professional clashes and disagreements, one's adversary was also a
white man in a suit. No matter how bitter the debate, a chat about
football over a drink was often enough to smooth even the most
ruffled of feathers.
But such elemental
certainty doesn't exist anymore. The most powerful man in the world
has dark skin and it seems eminently possible that he will be
succeeded by a woman. Our most important strategic partners and
competitors are men and women from China, Indonesia and Brazil,
people with different beliefs, cultures and values. People who are
much more difficult to assess and understand. And then comes a woman,
the German chancellor, who asks even more from this already stressed
group by allowing a huge number of young men from foreign cultures
into the country.
Those who feel
threatened often feel that violence, or at least outbursts of rage,
are justifiable. Self-defense! It is this approach that is the
bread-and-butter of right-wing populist movements -- and Frauke Petry
knows, or senses, as much.
In truth, it seems
likely that most people realize that recent trends in our globalized
world cannot be reversed. But it is not a realization that makes the
situation any simpler. We are, after all, also experiencing a crisis
of faith in present-day political and social institutions -- one that
has been fueled by a series of recent crises. The century began with
the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 in the United States. The West
responded with Iraq and Guantanamo, crimes that seriously damaged its
claim of moral superiority. Furthermore, surveillance programs
undermined our fundamental rights. Thus far, not a single Western
policymaker has been held accountable for these missteps.
In a constitutional
democracy, that is a problem -- and that too is a feeling that
right-wing populists have been able to exploit. The feeling that
something isn't quite right, that there is no fairness anymore. And
that it is up to us -- it is our right -- to reestablish fairness.
Populists are adept at painting a picture of a world that is out of
control.
Then came the global
economic crisis, triggered by the finance industry. The crisis was
managed in a manner that many people found to be profoundly unfair:
Debts were nationalized and the finance industry was allowed to
continue with business as usual. The consequences remain with us
today: slow growth, high unemployment, particularly in southern
European countries, and faith in the state, in the judiciary and in
politics has vanished -- in Germany too. The state, which was granted
the monopoly on the use of force at the outset of modernity, has
proven itself to be too weak to confront such crises in a manner that
is consistent with Western values.
An Eloquent
Right-Wing Ideologue
Those who perceive
this dual crisis do not automatically drift to the right. But they
certainly don't develop a passion for the status quo. Who, after all,
takes to the streets to demonstrate in favor of the chancellor?
That's why the streets and digital forums belong to those who espouse
hatred at the moment.
It is hardly to be
expected that Beatrix von Storch will be the one to stop AfD's drift
toward the extremist fringe. An eloquent right-wing ideologue from an
old noble family, she could ultimately become even more powerful than
Petry. Born Duchess Beatrix Amelie Ehrengard Eilika of Oldenburg, she
has engaged in several conservative battles in her past. In law
school, she fought for the return of eastern estates lost in the wake
of World War II. She also joined marches in opposition to abortion
and collected plaintiffs for legal challenges to the European Central
Bank. As a member of the European Parliament with the AfD, she has
joined the fight against gender mainstreaming.
Via her husband Sven
von Storch, she also maintains a far-flung network that extends as
far as the German exile community in southern Chile. Germans there
dream of the good old days under the last German Kaiser, pay homage
to the German fatherland and pursue a Christian-fundamentalist
lifestyle. When Beatrix von Storch spoke on a primetime talk show of
rumors that Angela Merkel could soon seek exile in Chile because of
the refugee crisis, she didn't necessarily mean it as an insult. For
Storch, Chile is a dream destination.
In contrast to
Frauke Petry, Storch is an excellent networker. Together with her
husband, she established the Zivile Koalition, or Civil Coalition, a
digital campaign collective of right-wing conservative blogs and
email distribution lists that the couple uses to spread its ideology
and to ask for donations. The Storchs are less communicative about
how, exactly, they spend those donations.
One of their
strengths is also that of performing a timely and orderly retreat
should the situation call for it. Whereas Petry continued the next
day to defend her comments about using firearms to fend off refugees
from Germany's borders, Storch unequivocally admitted to having
"screwed up," say fellow party members. Still, it was
Storch's Facebook comment indicating that women and children could
also be shot at which triggered the most intense outrage. She said
that she had "only wanted to help" Petry, and that she was
terribly sorry. She said that the Facebook post was a "technical
error" and that she had "slipped" with her mouse.
Currently, even as
it continues drifting to the right, the AfD is suffering from a power
vacuum at the top. Nevertheless, when voters go to the polls on March
13 in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt, the
party will in all likelihood end up with representatives in all three
state parliaments.
Soldiers of Fortune
Essentially, though,
the AfD is suffering from the same malady that has affected all of
its right-wing populist predecessors in Germany. Similar to the (now
banned) Republikaner, or the Hamburg-based Schill Partei, the AfD has
become entangled in internal intrigues and infighting. Furthermore,
it has attracted the same collection of careerists, soldiers of
fortune and failures that has doomed many previous political
movements in Germany.
People like André
Poggenburg, for example. Poggenburg is leader of the Saxony-Anhalt
chapter of AfD and the party's leading candidate ahead of elections
there next month. He is fond of speaking about credibility and the
importance of maintaining close contact with voters -- and of
accusing politicians from establishment parties that they would be
welfare recipients were they to lose their seats in state parliament.
But the problem of
the self-proclaimed "successful businessman" is that he
himself is in desperate need of a financial bailout in the form of a
parliamentarian salary. The owner of a company that sells automobile
cooling systems in Saxony-Anhalt, there is an almost 95 percent
chance that he won't be able to pay off the debt he currently holds,
warns the credit agency Creditreform. The agency "advises
against" entering into business relations with him.
AfD supporters seem
unconcerned. They even cheered him on during a recent appearance in
the state capital of Magdeburg as he spoke about the ups and downs of
his business life and admitted "certain lapses in the proper
keeping of the books." Were he a bank, Poggenburg complained,
the state would likely have handed over "a half million."
The grassroots
clapped, but others in the party are critical of Poggenburg. People
such as Jörg Meuthen, AfD lead candidate in Baden-Württemberg and
Petry's co-leader at the top of the party. An economics professor,
Meuthen was once a faithful follower of party founder Bernd Lucke and
is now one of those who would like to see the party focus on national
issues without becoming nationalist. He is in favor of conservatism,
but rejects right-wing extremism.
Last Wednesday, he
spoke at a party event in Kirchberg an der Murr, a small town just
northeast of Stuttgart. The parking lot was full of expensive cars
and, with the venue having quickly filled up, many visitors were
turned away at the door. The crowd outside bulged into the street.
In the wake of the
controversial statements from Petry and Storch, Meuthen used the
opportunity to present himself as a member of the party's reasonable
wing. He admitted to having "Muslims in my circle of friends"
with whom he "gets along excellently." The AfD, he said, is
"not a xenophobic party," rather it demands a "clever
approach to migration." But it also became clear that he was
disinclined to clearly distance himself from Petry's comments.
'Attack on the
German People'
That is typical of
Meuthen. He is fond of presenting himself as an adversary of
right-wingers like Storch and Gauland, but when he is confronted with
radical comments from within his own state chapter, he plays the
indulgent party leader. Meuthen, for example, declined to say
anything critical about Freiburg-based attorney and AfD politician
Dubravko Mandic, who recently posted a video on Facebook showing
soldiers shooting at civilians behind a fence. The title: "Border
Protection in Practice."
Meuthen also had
nothing to say about Stuttgart AfD politician Heinrich Fiechtner who,
in reference to the refugee crisis, spoke of an "attack on the
German people." Nor did he say anything about fellow AfD member
Markus Frohnmeier, head of the party's youth wing Young Alternative.
Frohnmeier was quoted on a television report about the New Year's Eve
sexual assaults in Cologne as saying: "In my opinion, people
like (senior Green Party member) Claudia Roth indirectly participated
in the rapes." After the events, Roth had warned against taking
advantage of the situation in order to stir up public sentiment
against refugees.
Amid such
surroundings, Petry is likely facing tough times. Ever since she drew
attention to the party's rightward drift with her blather about
defending the border with gunfire, her authority is being called into
question. Indeed, many of those who helped her last summer during her
putsch against Lucke are now beginning to doubt her leadership.
It is unlikely that
Petry will be ousted before federal elections in 2017. "More
likely is that her freedom will be limited by way of party
resolutions," says one member of the party's national board.
That could include rules forbidding her from traveling or giving
interviews without first consulting party leadership, in addition to
limits on her political solo acts together with her partner Pretzell,
whose reliability many AfD leaders already question. Meuthen,
meanwhile, as head of the Baden-Württemberg chapter of the AfD, will
likely gain influence, particularly after what promises to be a
successful election result in March.
"What we have
to return to in the party," Petry said during her appearance in
Mannheim, "is the willingness to acknowledge mistakes."
Meuthen said recently that the AfD is not made up of "political
professionals who are polished to the point of flatness. Sometimes, a
sentence or two slips out of people who have never before worked in
politics."
If only that were
sufficient explanation. In actuality, though, AfD leaders -- who one
might assume have a fair amount of control over their words -- are
among those who incite. Uwe Junge, head of the Rhineland-Palatinate
chapter of AfD, is a lieutenant colonel in the Bundeswehr, Germany's
military. In the "Center of Operative Communication" in the
small town of Mayen, he trains political agitation experts who focus
their efforts on target groups via radio shows or the Internet. Junge
presents himself as a middle-class conservative. In his application
for a position in the AfD state leadership committee, he wrote that
he left the Christian Democratic Union in 2009 "in
disappointment" after more than 30 years of membership. What he
didn't write, however, is that he initially joined the Islamophobic
party Die Freiheit after leaving the CDU. Die Freiheit is under
observation by the Bavarian state intelligence agency.
Rightward Drift
The calm tone Junge
uses in his speeches stands in marked contrast to the at-times brutal
message they convey. At a party event in Bad Kreuznach in
mid-January, he accused his commander-in-chief, Chancellor Merkel, of
"treason" committed against the "fatherland." He
blasted state interior ministers and governors as a "dishonorable
gang of cowards." He also said that all those in power "should
be held accountable" because of their asylum policies. As his
audience applauded, Junge hastily added that such accountability
should come in the form of elections.
The AfD's rightward
drift can be seen across Germany, but nowhere is it as clear as in
the country's eastern states. Supporters of eastern German AfD
chapters are not looking for a conservative alternative on the
political spectrum. They are interested in opposing and resisting the
established political system.
In the wake of AfD's
success in state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg
one-and-a-half years ago, pollsters from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen
wanted to know what AfD voters expected from their party. "A
solution to concrete political problems" was not among the
reasons given, the pollsters found.
So what is it?
Protest! Like at the PEGIDA demonstrations held every Monday in
Dresden, where everybody gathers in opposition to everyone and
everything. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen found that in eastern Germany,
AfD has become the political home of the politically and economically
disillusioned. It has become a "platform of dissatisfaction."
The empirical social research department of the Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung, a foundation that is closely linked to the CDU, wrote of a
"fluid matrix of protest."
In eastern Germany,
this protest role was long occupied by the far-left Left Party, which
grew out of the East German communist party. Those who felt
uncomfortable with the western German party system, were unemployed
or yearned for former East German Communist leader Erich Honecker's
return voted for the Left Party. Such protest votes hardly counted,
as everyone knew, but at least they annoyed everyone else.
Those days are now
over. Twenty-six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Left
Party is now seen as being part of the political establishment and
the disillusioned have moved on. Most of the votes received by the
AfD in the three 2014 state elections in eastern Germany came from
former Left Party supporters, often because they were perceived as
being the only ones "who talked about the problems," as the
pollsters discovered. In Saxony, 15,000 voters switched allegiances,
in Thuringia it was 16,000 and in Brandenburg, 20,000 defected. In
the latter state, AfD party head Alexander Gauland even approached
Left Party supporters with targeted mailings.
Mainstreaming
Extremism
Dresden-based
political scientist Werner Patzelt sees the shift as a systematic
protest of the kind experienced in Germany in the mid-2000s after
tough welfare reform laws were passed by then Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder. The opposition is no longer a political opposition but a
systemic opposition. Back then it was fed by the Left Party, today it
is agitators like Björn Höcke, head of the AfD state chapter in
Thuringia. Höcke has developed a dubious reputation for having waded
particularly deep into the nationalist swamp. In western Germany,
even the most ardent AfD supporters shake their heads when Höcke, in
his speeches, adopts the demagogic tone often used in in the latter
years of the Weimar Republic. But in eastern Germany, they celebrate
even his most racist utterances because no one else is willing to
break with Western political conventions to such a degree.
Indeed, that is
perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the AfD's rise. It makes
extremism acceptable and polarizes societal debate. It promotes
xenophobia and feeds a societal climate wherein it becomes acceptable
to offer resistance to presumed legal breaches committed by the
country's political leaders.
The result is a
radicalization of thought -- and, with some, of action -- which could
ultimately follow patterns seen previously by left-wing extremist
movements: The more radical the arguments of the movement's
intellectual leaders, the more radical the street protests, and vice
versa.
It still hasn't
become clear how far to the right the AfD as a whole will ultimately
drift. It isn't even clear whether the party will, in contrast to its
many predecessors, manage to become a lasting fixture within the
country's political spectrum. Part of the answer to that question
will ultimately be provided by the party's political adversaries --
establishment parties from the CDU to the Greens -- and how they
choose to deal with the AfD. Conservative floor leader Volker Kauder
has suggested simply ignoring the party. Baden-Württemberg Governor
Winfried Kretschmann of the Green Party, for his part, has sought to
avoid televised political debates with AfD leaders. And Social
Democratic head Sigmar Gabriel has called for the party to be placed
under surveillance by German domestic intelligence officials.
Pulling the Rug Out
Not even security
officials, though, believe that Gabriel's proposal is expedient, or
even legal. And Kretschmann's attempt to keep AfD candidates out of
the television debates was likewise conter-productive. Matthias Jung
from the pollster group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen said it looked as
though establishment politicians were trying to use formalities in
order to avoid substantial political debate.
Decades of
experience with other right-wing populist parties in Germany suggest
a different approach: One must confront the AfD with rational
argument and policy. Establishment parties have to put forth
solutions to the large problems that are driving support for the AfD.
If the government succeeds in reducing the number of refugees coming
to Germany and comes up with a convincing plan for the integration of
those migrants who are already here, it could manage to pull the rug
out from beneath the AfD.
Refugees will
continue coming, cultures and religions will continue to mix, German
families will look different than they did 40 or 50 years ago, love
is many-sided and stubborn -- the German reality will become more
complicated, and why not? Most people have no problem with that. Our
lives today are freer, safer, healthier and, in most western and
eastern German cities, better than they were 30 years ago.
But those who reject
all that, fight with the courage of desperation. And it wouldn't be
the first time in Europe that the advance of freedom was forced by a
radical minority to take an extended, years-long detour.
By Melanie Amann,
Matthias Bartsch, Jan Friedmann, Nils Minkmar, Michael Sauga and
Steffen Winter
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