Have the worst fears of the Berliner establishment finally come to pass? As soon as the curtain fell on Sunday’s elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the predictable reactions took centre stage. The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) strong showing in the eastern states was seen as a threat to both the nation’s democracy and economy. Vladimir Putin was the real winner. Without a hint of irony, The Economist warned that the AfD was taking Germany into “uncharted territory”.
Granted, in Thuringia at least, forming a stable governing majority in the state parliament might now be tricky and require some unusual alliances, such as between the centrist Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Left-wing Die Linke, which the CDU for decades has denounced as the irredeemable successor to the old GDR’s Stalinist ruling party and thus beyond the pale. The new left-conservative BSW party of Sahra Wagenknecht, who has ruled out collaborating with the AfD, has also signalled its openness to entering into a coalition with the CDU if certain conditions are fulfilled. In Saxony, meanwhile, the current ruling majority of CDU, Social Democrats (SPD), and the Greens will remain in power, even though the SPD and Greens barely passed the 5% threshold needed to win seats.
The outcome of Sunday’s elections, then, is that the AfD will remain an opposition party, Germany’s largest, but still one without any real power. Some privileges come with the AfD’s strong showing in Thuringia: because it now holds more than a third of seats in the state parliament, it can block a number of measures for which two-thirds of votes are needed, such as changes to the state constitution or the election of state judges. An inconvenience, perhaps, but hardly a revolution.
And this seems unlikely to change. Since the AfD was founded in 2013, Thuringia and Saxony have been its strongholds, which means that for now the party seems to have reached a preliminary ceiling. Except for the AfD’s few office holders at the municipal and district level, the Brandmauer (firewall) erected by all other major German parties against the right-populists remains rock solid. There is simply no clear path to power for the AfD short of an absolute majority of votes, which it is extremely unlikely to secure anywhere. The centre and the policies that it represents will hold — until, at least, a major war or devastating economic crisis further destabilises the crumbling European order.
The more interesting question, then, is not what the Right-wing firebrands will do with their newly won seats, but rather how Germany’s leadership class will react to their increased prominence. And if past is present, this is likely to take two forms. First, they could threaten the German Right with legal challenges and bans; and second, they could carefully adopt some of its positions to take the wind out of its sails.
Let’s start with the idea of outright AfD ban, a theoretical possibility which is being discussed openly in the German mainstream media. Such proposals normally start by acknowledging that the Federal Republic of Germany is the legal successor to the Third Reich. To distinguish itself from its predecessor state, the framers of the Federal Republic’s constitutional order wanted to make the nation a wehrhafte Demokratie, which loosely translates to “resilient democracy” or “well-fortified democracy”. As a result, the Federal Republic was given the legal tools to defend itself against challenges from within, including its domestic intelligence apparatus, the Bundesverfassungsschutz, which can monitor political activists and parties even if they haven’t committed a crime. If a party is deemed “extremist” and in opposition to the German constitutional order, it can be banned and its assets seized. The idea is to stop a new Hitler in his tracks before he can even give his first beer-hall speech. A denazification before the fact, in other words.
Since its inception in 1949, the German state has already made use of this power in numerous cases, most notably against the Communist Party in 1952. Most recently, in July, the German Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser used it to unilaterally ban the publication of the AfD-adjacent magazine Compact for its “extremist” views. While the move appeared like a major assault on the freedom of the press, the ban won widespread support from the German mainstream, with even the public news broadcaster Tagesschau denouncing the magazine’s agitation against a “vaccine dictatorship”. Since then, however, the Federal Administrative Court has suspended the ban and Compact is temporarily back in print, although the litigation continues and could still result in an eventual ban.
By contrast, the decision to outlaw an entire political party that nationally polls at just below 20%, and is the most popular in some eastern German states, could be deeply destabilising. Most obviously, it would expose the centre’s democratic pretensions as little more than a façade. This would also risk isolating AfD voters further from the political system, merely confirming them in their belief that the powers that be are out to get them.
So, if banning the AfD isn’t a viable option, can the centre adopt some of its policies? Certainly, the AfD’s most distinct policy position — hostility to immigration — has increasingly become normalised. Only last month, after a Syrian migrant carried out a mass stabbing attack in Solingen, CDU leader Friedrich Merz called for a Trump-style block on all immigration from Syria and Afghanistan, though he has since walked back on his proposal after denouncements in the mainstream press.
More likely, it seems, is the introduction of a patchwork of bureaucratic measures designed to streamline the deportations of some migrants with criminal records. Shortly before the state elections in Thuringia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted that his government had deported 28 Afghan criminals — simply to show that they are actually doing something. But the small number, as well as the fact that each of the migrants was given €1,000 as an allowance (technically mandated by law), led to widespread ridicule. To the AfD supporters, the deportation of 28 offenders is a drop in the ocean. Many AfD supporters want that figure to be in the millions, making it unlikely that the ruling parties will ever credibly co-opt the party’s anti-immigration views.
To a lesser extent, the same can be said for Wagenknecht’s BSW. She has already stated that one condition for the party’s entrance into a coalition with the CDU is an opposition to further military aid to Ukraine and the stationing of US long-range missiles in Germany, which had already been jointly announced by the Biden and Scholz administrations. It is doubtful that the hawkish CDU will submit to these demands, nor do state parliaments make foreign policy, so it will be interesting to observe who will cave first. If the BSW does and helps the CDU into power to spite the AfD, its carefully maintained maverick image will crumble barely a year since the party’s inception.
But perhaps that would be to the AfD’s benefit. In such a scenario, the party would be left once again as the most credible source of opposition in many voters’ eyes — and its thwarted revolution simply deferred.
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For more analysis of the German results, watch the below:
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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/