The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a remarkable victory in Thuringia with 33 per cent of the vote and second place in Saxony with 32 per cent of the vote in the elections in these two former East German L\u00e4nder. These worrying results reflect growing voter dissatisfaction with the centre-left government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It is also an important wake-up call, as Germany will hold legislative elections next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These regional elections reveal the continued rise of the German far right over the past 10 years despite efforts to contain it. Thus, despite attempts to label it a Nazi party, the AfD continues to gain support and increasingly establishes itself as a legitimate political force in eastern Germany, rather than merely a protest vote. The party’s rise is especially strong in small towns and has become the dominant local political power in many places, showing the disillusionment of many voters in these towns with traditional parties, institutions and the media. In addition, while the other parties have tried to maintain a cordon sanitaire by refusing to enter into pacts with the AfD, this is weakening in certain cities, as some parties collaborate on local issues such as road repairs and rubbish collection, normalising relations with the far right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the elections also reveal the emergence of the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) as a key political force, as this new left-wing populist party has achieved remarkable results, coming third in both L\u00e4nder. BSW’s discourse includes tough positions on immigration and calls for an end to military aid to Ukraine, arguments that resonate strongly with voters in the former East Germany, with a provocative and controversial narrative that contrasts with traditional left-wing political correctness. This approach has particular resonance in the former GDR, where Wagenknecht’s rhetoric has been well received and challenges the right-thinking narrative, suggesting that real social and economic change requires difficult and courageous measures that may not conform to the more comfortable expectations of traditional progressivism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Particularly in the former East Germany, citizens fear a decline in their welfare levels because of the economic crisis into which Germany is entering. Indeed, two years after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the German economy is stagnating. Industrial production has been falling for seven months, and is now 10 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. The decline is particularly marked in the gas-intensive chemical industry. Energy has become more expensive despite subsidies, the trade relationship with China has become more complicated and the US offers interesting incentives to European industries that want to establish themselves there. The competitive advantage gained by Germany during the colossal financial crisis of 2008 is fading, and good relations with Russia have been shattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, the results underline the difficulty of forming coalition governments in the current scenario, since although the CDU, BSW and Die Linke<\/em> could in theory form coalitions, the fact that the CDU has ruled out a pact with Die Linke<\/em> makes this highly unlikely. This complexity in reaching stable majorities – which we are seeing emerging in other European countries such as the Netherlands and France due to the rise of radical right-wing populist forces – could mean that government formation could be delayed for many weeks, providing the AfD with arguments to denounce the alleged disregard for the rights of its voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking beyond the election results, one has to ask why the rise of the extreme right – and of the populist extreme left – reflects the deep divisions that still exist between East and West Germany and the emergence of a different political identity more than thirty years after reunification. As early as the 1990s, Nobel laureate G\u00fcnter Grass warned of the risks of hasty unification because, in addition to the wall, a major divide had been created between the two societies. He considered that an accelerated unification would lead to the colonisation of the East by big business in the West, which would – as it has turned out – result in the emergence of great resentment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the sustained growth of the AfD cannot be attributed solely to regional grievances linked to economic differences and the feeling of being treated as \u2018second-class citizens\u2019, but must also be linked to broader European trends of right-wing extremism. Indeed, the political landscape in eastern Germany follows paths common to the whole of Europe, where social democracy has been weakened and radical right-wing movements have increasingly become forces that occupy an important political space and manage to impose their issues on the agendas of mainstream parties. Thus, although the Christian Democrats of the CDU refuse to form coalitions with the AfD, the influence of the far right is reshaping national debates, especially on immigration, as evidenced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s change of position on asylum seekers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A scenario that is reminiscent of what is happening in France after the unexpected call for legislative elections that gave victory in votes to the radical right of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National<\/em> (RN) (with almost 11 million votes) and in seats to the coalition of the left and far left of the New Popular Front (NFP). After almost two months of negotiations, the President of the Republic ended up appointing as Prime Minister Michel Barnier, a veteran right-wing politician known for having been the chief Brexit negotiator. This controversial appointment, contrary to the expectations of the voters of the two main winning blocs in the elections, can be explained in the light of this transversal European phenomenon: the takeover of the favourite themes of the radical right – immigration and security – by the traditional parties. Indeed, Barnier stood in his party’s primaries as a candidate for the presidential elections with a programme that included a referendum on immigration, while proposing a moratorium on the reception of migrants and refugees. A nomination that can therefore be read as a concession to Marine Le Pen so that she does not automatically present a motion of censure when the new government is formed, as the NFP has already announced it would do. In a way, the centre has used the so-called \u2018republican front\u2019 against the RN to form a government that will only be able to sustain itself thanks to the RN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, behind the conflict in French politics lies a structural reality: France functions as if democracy had never been fully established, favouring conflictive positions and leaving revolt as the only solution. The political system involves a permanent duel between power, in whatever form, and citizens, however broad their rights may be. Because of its Jacobin character, the Fifth Republic continues to maintain this dramaturgy and designs a political landscape where all events seem to be linked to the presidential election and subsequently to the actions of the head of state, who is somehow condemned to a permanent struggle with the society that elected him. This in a current context where this structural factor is aggravated by the rise of populism, which reinforces binary thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, the rise of populist forces on both right and left reveals the Achilles heel of the European left: their leaders denounce that progressivism has focused in recent years on issues that affect and interest very minority groups; sexual rights and gender visions that many people do not understand, the defence of a multiracial society that they do not share, and in general the assumption of political correctness as a doctrine. In other words, the adoption of an ideal that focuses a lot on language and on the balances between all human sensibilities and causes, however small they may be, while the dominant impression is that politicians are distancing themselves from the lower classes and their problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photography: Grafitti in Frankfurt. “Slap AfD in the face” (AfD auf’s Maul). CC-BY-2.0<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a remarkable victory in Thuringia with 33 per cent of the vote and second place in Saxony with 32 per cent of the vote in the elections in these two former East German L\u00e4nder. These worrying results reflect growing voter dissatisfaction with the centre-left government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It is also an important wake-up call, as Germany will hold legislative elections next year. These regional elections reveal the continued rise of the German far right over the past 10 years despite efforts to contain it. Thus, despite attempts to label it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":76711,"template":"","category_newspaper":[584],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-76751","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-584"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\n\n\n\n