Scandals and Missteps Slow Momentum of Germany’s
Far Right
The Alternative for Germany party remains strong, but
a growing pushback at home and abroad may be blunting its surge.
By Sarah
Maslin Nir and Christopher F. Schuetze
Reporting
from Berlin
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/world/europe/germany-afd-far-right-scandal.html
June 1,
2024, 12:01 a.m. ET
The
far-right Alternative for Germany party was poised for a banner year.
Not long
ago, the party, known as AfD, was polling nationally near 25 percent. With
elections approaching for the European Parliament and in three eastern states —
its traditional stronghold — the party looked set to achieve its chief goal of
moving from the margins to the mainstream.
Suddenly,
the party’s future seems murkier. It is still riding relatively high — the
second-most popular party in the country. But recently, as members have been
caught up in spying and influence peddling scandals, secret discussions about
deporting immigrants and controversies over extreme statements, the AfD has
faced a stiffening backlash, threatening the inroads it had made into the
mainstream.
The steady
drumbeat of missteps and scandal has forced the party, already officially
labeled a “suspected” extremist group by the German authorities, to cast aside
even some important members and caused fellow far-right parties abroad to shun
it.
“This week
that is behind us was not a good week,” Alice Weidel, one of the two leaders of
the party, said at a campaign stop on May 25.
The AfD is
feeling the repercussions. Local elections in the eastern state of Thuringia
last weekend did not produce the resounding mandate it had hoped for, though it
still finished strong.
Now, about
a week before elections begin for the European Parliament, the party’s
prospects look a bit shakier. Yet it is still likely to win more seats in both
the European Parliament and state elections than before, polls suggest.
“Some of
the people who had already switched to the AfD have had second thoughts,” said
Manfred Güllner, the head of the Forsa Institute, a political polling agency.
“But the radical right-wing core is not going away.”
In perhaps
a sign that the AfD camel can carry only so many straws, last week the party
censured its own, pushing its two top candidates for the European Parliament
elections from the campaign trail, while not removing them from contention.
One,
Maximilian Krah, gave a recent interview with The Financial Times and the
Italian daily La Repubblica, in which he expressed a belief that not all
members of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary force, were necessarily criminals. The
other, Petr Bystron, is being investigated for receiving money from Russia.
Mr. Krah
declined to comment for this article. Mr. Bystron did not respond to a request
for comment.
Even in a
party known for roguish members who refuse to fall in line, recent months have
been a lot.
Before his
comments, Mr. Krah had already spent weeks in the headlines after his assistant
was arrested on suspicion of spying for China, and his own offices were
searched, a searing revaluation for a party that presents itself as
anticorruption and hypernationalist.
In May, the
AfD leader in the state of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, was fined 13,000 euros,
roughly $14,000, for using a forbidden Nazi slogan in a 2021 speech.
But perhaps
the most consequential airing of the party’s laundry came in January, after it
was revealed that AfD members had joined a meeting where the mass deportation
of immigrants — including naturalized citizens — was discussed.
The news
touched off months of mass protests by millions against the AfD countrywide.
Current polls suggest that support for the party nationally has slipped,
hovering from 14 to 17 percent, by some estimates, from a peak of about 23
percent last December.
In hopes of
recapturing momentum, the party faces something of a strategic tightrope, said
Benjamin Höhne, a professor at Chemnitz University of Technology.
It must
appease an extremist core while broadening its appeal among center-right voters
if it is ever to extend its reach beyond its regional strongholds and into real
power.
“This is a
normalization strategy,” Mr. Höhne said. “To try to create an appeal to the
middle of society, but not go and leave the right-wing stigmatized in a
corner.”
The path
has grown even narrower as the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, the
Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., has pitched toward the right,
potentially peeling off AfD voters.
In
addition, a new party — the Sahra Wagenknecht movement, which blends populism
and far-left politics — may also be a threat.
It is a
predicament some members of AfD bristle at. “The C.D.U. is now offering itself
as a solution to problems that they have created,” said Stephan Brandner, a
senior federal AfD lawmaker.
The most
vulnerable part of the AfD’s support may be those voters who had turned to the
party for the first time — drawn through dissatisfaction with the government,
or perhaps to lodge a protest vote — who are now turned off by the drumbeat of
scandal.
“This
portion of the electorate is now what the leadership of the AfD is fighting
for,” said Johannes Hillje, a German political scientist who studies the AfD.
“They need to be able to mobilize much more than the far-right milieu.”
In Bavaria,
where the party had made inroads, Andreas Jurca, an AfD member of the State
House, says he is now witnessing a retraction. In the past few months, he said,
about 10 percent of new applicants to the party in his region had withdrawn
their application.
“Last year
we kind of managed to enter the middle class,” he said. “Now, their problem was
not our positions; it was that we are kind of made a pariah.”
Last
weekend’s elections in Thuringia offered a mixed picture of the AfD future. The
party fared less well than expected for major seats, like mayoralties and
district leaders, capturing 26 percent of the vote, second to the C.D.U.’s 27
percent.
But it
nabbed a majority of seats in a number of municipal councils, a shift that
could have trickle-up effects on federal elections, said Matthias Quent, a
professor at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences who studies the
far right.
“This is a
new dimension and will change local politics,” Professor Quent said. Having AfD
members running everyday life in Thuringia could add to the party’s legitimacy,
with consequences for future elections. “The idea is the normalization from the
bottom.”
Tatiana
Firsova contributed reporting.
Sarah
Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York ...
and sometimes beyond. More about Sarah Maslin Nir
Christopher
F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics,
society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. More
about Christopher F. Schuetze
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