A common stereotype about Germans is that they love to complain – and there is certainly a kernel of truth to that. Grumbling is part and parcel of everyday German life, often with complete strangers. But on my recent trips to Germany, I felt that general expressions of dissatisfaction have acquired a new sharpness. Whole communities seem angry and disillusioned with the status quo.
More and more Germans seem to have turned their backs on mainstream politics. According to a survey released last week, the ruling coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) would now only accrue 38 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) would gain 19 per cent on its own, more than any of the three parties currently in power, including chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD.
At the federal level this is the highest the AfD has ever polled in its ten-year history. That this can easily be converted into actual political power was proved by Sunday’s local elections in Sonneberg, a tiny district of only 56,000 inhabitants in the eastern state of Thuringia. There the AfD gained its first governing post, after the area voted a local lawyer called Robert Sesselmann into office.
A frantic search for explanations has ensued. But instead of asking why voters might be looking for alternative solutions to the problems they see – or what these problems are in the first place – the debate has centred around whose fault it is that people have turned to the AfD.
Dorothee Bär of the Christian Social Union (CSU), which is currently in opposition, says the governing coalition is mainly to blame, particularly the Greens due to their ‘badly drafted proposals’. The political scientist Ulrich von Alemann points to the media and their ‘campaigns’ against the coalition. Michael Strempel, a political correspondent at the public broadcaster ARD, says the main opposition is too weak to absorb the disillusionment due to their own ‘inner-party struggle for direction.’
While there is certainly some truth to the old adage that divided parties don’t win elections, it would be a mistake to assume that the palpable anger in Germany is caused by political infighting alone. The fact that nearly a fifth of people are now willing to vote for a relatively new party which contains many far-right extremists shows their lack of trust in the established political spectrum, in its ability and even its willingness to solve the big issues of the day.
All too often expressions of such concerns – be that the increasing number of street demonstrations in Germany, voting for fringe parties or not voting at all – have been belittled or met with contempt by the old parties. In the past, it has even been treated as a problem particular to the regions that formed East Germany before reunification in 1990.
It is true that the AfD is particularly popular in the eastern states, where it currently polls as the strongest political party and uses targeted slogans like ‘The East Rises Up!’ This led politicians like Marco Wanderwitz, formerly Angela Merkel’s Minister of State for East Germany, to quickly diagnose the AfD as an East German problem for which there was no cure. East Germany’s ‘dictatorship socialisation’ meant that some former East Germans ‘still haven’t arrived in our democracy even after 30 years,’ he claimed in 2021 – adding that only a small proportion of them can be ‘brought back’ from the political brink. In the media, such views were commonplace too. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of one of Europe’s largest media groups, claimed in leaked texts that East Germans ‘are either communists or fascists’.
This writing off of millions of Germans as incapable of being democratic was as wrong as it was dangerous. For once thing, the first free elections East Germans had in 1990 saw the vast majority of them vote for centrist parties. It wasn’t their ‘dictatorship experience’ that caused many to turn their back on these parties later but what came after. Indeed some of the angriest street demonstrations in the former East today use the slogans of the 1989 revolution that helped bring down the socialist regime, such as ‘We are the people.’ Many of those who are angry today were also angry in 1989.
The fact that the AfD is rapidly gaining popularity in almost all of the states that formed West Germany also points to the fact that other factors are behind the disgruntlement. Indeed the party has made the biggest gains not in any of the eastern regions but in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and industrial heartland in the far west of the country.
The nature and scale of the growing support for the AfD suggests people don’t flock to it due to a disregard for democracy but because they feel there is no other way to exercise their democratic right, to make their voices heard.
Nico, a 27-year-old carpenter from the small town of Storkow, south-east of Berlin, told me he doesn’t even think of the AfD as a right-wing party. ‘They are a party for the people, for us as a nation. They want to change things and we need that. I mean child poverty, old people whose pension isn’t enough even though they worked hard for decades, high crime rates that never seem to get addressed. The AfD should be in parliament because it’s against current politics, which clearly aren’t working.’
His friend Sven agreed, adding that ‘the AfD is the only party that wants to tackle the problems in this country. They may have some policies I don’t like, but they are not extremists.’
For others, it’s precisely the AfD’s right-wing populism that is the attraction. Sigrid, a 65-year-old pensioner from the Berlin borough of Pankow said she was concerned about ‘mistakes in the country’s refugee policy’ and about a government ‘that doesn’t care about Germany.’ Most of all she is angry about what she perceives as state control. ‘They tell us how to live, which cars we should drive, what we should eat and how we should heat our homes.’
The AfD is not the cause of but a vent for the widespread sense of crisis. Discussions on how to stop, ban or exclude the AfD from government don’t address the concerns that draw large sections of the electorate to them. As uncomfortable as it may be for the politicians of Germany’s mainstream parties to listen to the fifth of the public who are currently on track to vote for the AfD, listen they must. Assuming the electorate is wrong makes a mockery of the principles on which democracies are built.
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