‘Berlin is more East than West’, said Thilo Sarrazin. A member of the centre-left SPD, in 2010 he published Germany Abolishes Itself, a book which warned about the impact of mass immigration. It sold over one million copies in a year but it went down less well with his own party, which tried to kick him out for writing the book. In 2020, after three attempts, the party finally succeeded, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Over the course of those ten years, the SPD’s grasp on Berlin, which they had ruled since reunification, slipped away from them, as mass immigration not only changed the country but also its politics.
Berlin has a reputation for being left-wing, yet it now has a CDU mayor, and in last week’s federal election the hard-right AfD won several districts. Strikingly, the party did best in former communist East Berlin areas: Pankow, Lichtenberg, Marzahn-Hellersdorf and Köpenick all turned blue.
Despite being the capital and home to a growing tech sector, Berlin has not been immune to Germany’s economic woes. This downturn, the longest in decades, has been fuelled by high energy costs, a sluggish post-pandemic recovery, and competition from global markets like China. Many Berliners, especially from working-class districts, have faced rising costs, especially high rents.
The SPD struggled to address the housing crisis, opting instead to impose rent controls, which only made things worse. Other parties on the left went further, with the hard-left Die Linke calling for the city to seize property from one of Berlin’s biggest real estate owners. In contrast, the AfD took a more free market approach in places like Pankow, calling for more building.
It’s no secret that the AfD differs vastly from the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens when it comes to migration and security. Days before the election a Syrian refugee stabbed a tourist near the Berlin Holocaust memorial, ‘wanting to kill all the Jews’. Parks in Berlin such as Görlitzer have become notoriously unsafe and used by drug addicts and dealers, many of them illegal immigrants. Instead of tackling this, the SPD has focused on housing large numbers of asylum seekers in disused buildings all over the city. Many Berliners feel the increased pressure on social services and infrastructure. They also worry about their safety, despite reassurances that private security will be in place to protect citizens and refugees alike.
Many Berliners felt neglected by the mainstream parties. When Dr Gottfried Curio of the AfD won a seat from the CDU, he said, ‘With me…people can sense that I tackle the big issues like migration and security with credibility’. Like many in the AfD, he uses X and Facebook to connect directly with voters. While the production values are not always high-end, these posts and videos are shared widely.
But that is not the only reason the AfD established itself in Berlin. For over ten years in districts like Pankow they have been building up grassroots support. As political insurgents, they initially relied on people who had little experience in politics, with the other parties complaining that they were disruptive. For some of their supporters though, the AfD’s lack of political experience was seen as a positive. Over time, the party has professionalised.
The AfD gains in a difficult field like Berlin illustrate a broader shift to the right in Germany, which is no longer contained to the East nor to more rural areas. As immigration soared and politicians failed to tackle the asylum crisis, Berliners have faced a housing crisis, the growth of immigrant organised crime groups, and a shifting culture. That was summed up last year when a Berlin police chief warned Jews or openly gay people to be careful in some areas of the city.
The AfD is not the only party from the shift away from the mainstream, of course. While the Berlin SPD received 15.1 per cent this weekend, their worst result since 1990, Die Linke achieved their best, with 19.1 per cent, making them the strongest party in the capital. The party’s viral social media campaign, led by figures like co-chair Heidi Reichinnek, resonated with Berlin’s progressive electorate. Reichinnek’s impassioned defense of the ‘firewall’ against the AfD, which garnered millions of views online, helped Die Linke secure 25 per cent of the 18-24 vote nationwide, a trend even more pronounced in cosmopolitan Berlin.
Both the left and right are moving towards political radicals, as well as rejecting the mainstream parties who have failed to deliver for Germany. Maybe the SPD should not have ignored the warnings by Thilo Sarrazin that mass immigration would lead to widespread changes that cannot be solved with money and integration courses alone. The SPD has to decide whether they want to govern as left-wing radicals like Die Linke or to win back working-class voters by taking a more moderate position on immigration and crime. It will be interesting to see how Berlin will be governed in future.
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