Neo-Fascism Triumphs – German Party System Changes
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
After Germany’s neo-fascist AfD’s stunning electoral success in three eastern Germany states, many are wondering how to deal with a political party that is set to destroy democracy and that won 1/3 of the popular votes in Saxony (population: 4.1M), Thuringia (2.1M), and Brandenburg (2.6M).
Some even believe that a clear line in the sand against the far right is now futile when more than 10% of Germany’s total population are living in states with very strong support for a neo-fascist party. Perhaps this is a case of democracy working against itself.
It is quite undeniable that many people voted for the right-wing extremist AfD in the state elections in three east German states. Meanwhile, public polling also showed that many would also vote for this party in other German states. Still, there is a clear east-west divide.
When it comes to the AfD, in Germany’s western part, roughly 15% of all voters support the AfD. When it comes to der Osten or the east, the figure is: 30%.
Many believe that there is no neat, ‘one-size fits all’ playbook for dealing with the AfD. Still, inside all three parliaments, the exclusion of AfD is carried through. This establishes three state governments for the remaining “70%” democratic parties.
Yet, some fear that by excluding the AfD, far right voters will only feel confirmed in their prejudices against people and political parties who “do not” dream of the, in economic terms, a rather suicidal, great remigration. Against those who “do not” sing far right and Neo-Nazi songs, and “do not” strive for a 180-degree turn in the Holocaust making the SS the good and the Jewish people, the killers.
Yet, many are sill wondering why these voters chose a party that has declared war on democracy, minorities, and dissenters.
As for Germany’s east, perhaps after 12 years of Hitler’s fascism and 50 years of state socialism, spiced up with 34 years of capitalism that promised “blooming industrial landscapes” and delivered neoliberalism, many people in eastern Germany are rather dissatisfied with “democracy”. Rather quickly, democracy is blamed.
The widespread, and often media- and online platform induced, conviction that “democracy is bad” shifts attention away from the false promises of the CDU’s Helmut Kohl, capitalism, and neoliberalism.
Best of all, the real culprits vanish into thin air. It is neither Germany’s conservatives nor the CDU, and neither Helmut Kohl nor Angela Merkel. It simply is the fault of democracy. Right-wing media and AfD filter bubbles show that propaganda still works.
Perhaps it works ever since “Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith” or “Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.” Rather conveniently for the CDU, the fact that the CDU’s then chancellor Helmut Kohl once promised “blooming industrial landscapes”, has been made to be forgotten by Germany’s ever helpful media,
What many in Germany’s east continue to experience and what they feel is the exact opposite of the CDU’s blooming landscapes.
In large geographical areas in Germany’s eastern parts, locals experience a marked decline in infrastructures.
They also experience a significant rise in the costs of living while local inflation multiplies due to reduced shopping opportunities with the last shops closing down, and buying food is reduced from the back of a van. Worse, hospitals had shut down along with reduced services in medical facilities.
Meanwhile, the westward move of the young to find jobs and opportunities in the western parts of Germany seems to make things worse. As so often, focusing on racism, xenophobia, Islamism, refugees, and migrants overlays the three real reasons for the Decline of the East: capitalism, austerity, and neoliberalism.
As local newspapers close down, many people in the east are not only disconnected from civil society but also from mainstream media. They are very likely to fall into the filter bubble trap of Neo-Nazi, far right and the AfD’s digital storm troopers on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter (X), etc.
This is turbo-charged by the AfD’s sophisticated media strategy that seems to work out rather beautifully – for the neo-fascist AfD.
In such racist filter bubbles, prospective AfD voters are to be attracted to the AfD. In some cases, it might just be one conversation, or one online post that can attract a potential voter to the AfD.
Beyond that, there are many other AfD activities and opportunities to meet naive and emotionally neglected voters and to entice and manipulate them towards voting for the AfD.
Particularly in Germany’s eastern state, there is a thriving far right milieu that shows or pretends to show empathy and thus, persuade voters to turn towards the far-right. AfD sub-divisions – from PEGIDA to Neo-Nazis – live by issuing such “temptations”. Many voters succumb to those out of desperation alone.
For example, one might take a simple invitation for a bike ride. On the journey, people conquer challenging sections of the route together.
This welds together and creates trust. In that way, the potential AfD voter can pour his heart out at a lunch stop or at a campsite in the evening.
Yet, the AfD remains a political party that wants to get rid of their neighbour or their daughter’s school friend, because their names are not “German” enough.
The AfD advocates this on an east-German election poster called “The East can do it” that simply states, “summer, sun, and remigration”:
In other cases, potential AfD voters are invited to a cooking class or a dinner. After all, they also must eat. Especially among young, naïve, pro-democracy and even anti-AfD people as well as in anti-racists, the AfD believes that AfD voters are foremost just people!
For the manipulators of the AfD, cooking together requires cooperation, coordination, and compromise. This alone contributes to a falling of so-called the firewall between democratic political parties and the neo-fascist AfD.
At times, the AfD and its far-right entourage practices the luring in of innocent voters on a very small scale. Depending on the AfD’s layout, these activities promote mutual understanding among the AfD’s target group: white people. For the AfD, every step counts.
Playing football with AfD voters, or handball, or basketball, or water polo works as well. Common sport – among bio-Germans – creates a community where there is isolation and division.
Beyond all that, some AfD voters also act out destructive impulses without having to push a foreigner through the village – and without being openly hostile towards non-Germans.
Worse, much of this is skilfully spiced up with a hefty dose of alluding to East-Germanness.
It is found in something called “Ostalgia” – a mixture of nostalgia as a longing for the good old days and the focusing on the positives of an East-German life. Even when, in reality, this idyllic life under state-socialism never really existed.
As every year on the 3rd of October 2024, German Unity Day is celebrated. Yet, many East Germans still feel that they are merely second class citizens. The East is still considered to be a laboratory – even 35 years after the fall of the wall. The East remains politically different. It votes horribly and thus, endangers democracy.
The recent results of the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg showed just as much: 1/3 voted for the Neo-Nazis.
Yet, many, and not only in Germany’s western parts are wondering about what is wrong with the people between the Baltic Sea and the Thuringian Forest.
This is a question that even the smartest political observers in Germany only can answer yet with great difficulties. It is therefore, not surprising to see that Germany’s Commissioner for the East or Ostbeauftragte, Carsten Schneider likes to present shiny reports on unification, but like the plague, he and his reports avoid any critical analysis.
What one can read between the lines is that East-German voters, with their strong support for the AfD, gave vent of their displeasure that East-Germans are underrepresented among Germany’s elites in business, universities and administration, and that incomes in East and West still differs.
Worse, the much trumped-up free market did not unify Germans – it divided them instead. As a consequence, about half of East-Germans feel that they are second class citizens.
When asking East-Germans about “democracy”, quite a few answered with, “which democracy?” – implying that real democracy has never reached them.
Yet, the feeling of being left behind alone does not justify an “Ostalgic” retrospective. A reality check shows this even for the young – those born “after” the year 1989 when the Berlin wall fell. Meanwhile, most people in the East are better off today in material terms than in the state socialist DDR.
Even the poor no longer have to go to an “outside” toilet at night. And everyone can utter their opinion freely.
Perhaps all too many East Germans seem to have forgotten that they once distrusted their neighbours and work colleagues. Stasi spies were sitting everywhere.
Worse, they all too often didn’t get milk in their local “Konsum” supermarket – particularly in the evening. They also had to wait 10 years for their Trabant.
Yet, even among the East-German teenagers who never had a Trabant, the AfD is ahead as the results of the three state elections showed. The party gets a lot of votes in the age group of 18-to-25-year-olds.
The AfD has a very strong presence on online platforms like TikTok. Worse, the AfD has established its dominance years ago and this worries many.
Hence, there are calls for a better media education at schools – particularly after seeing the results of the recent three state elections.
In short, online platforms act as a catalyst for the AfD – especially at the beginning of a right-wing radicalisation. If there are no school programmes using digital devices in an educated way, civil society should not be surprised that the AfD triumphs among the East-Germany’s youth.
Yet, some schools are prepared to sensitize young people against right-wing radicalisation, Neo-Nazi filter bubbles, and fake news.
Others argue against naive ideas about how much influence the school can have on online platforms. Meanwhile, right-wing networks in East-Germany are well organised.
Worse, the AfD strongly focuses on online platforms – more than Germany’s democratic parties. And with AfD maintaining a strong dominance on online platforms, starts to endanger democracy.
At least in parts of East-Germany, Germany’s liberal democracy might be in a life-threatening crisis – particularly after the three state elections. Shortly after the election, Thuringia’s AfD squadron demonstrated – rather impressively – what will happen when the AfD gets their hands on democracy.
The AfD follows its anti-democratic playbook. As it appears, this playbook could have been written for the AfD by none other than Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels when he made clear,
“Das wird immer einer der besten Witze der Demokratie bleiben, dass sie ihren Todfeinden die Mittel selber stellte, durch die sie vernichtet wurde. Die verfolgten Führer der NSDAP traten als Abgeordnete in den Genuss der Immunität, der Diäten und der Freifahrkarte. Dadurch waren sie vor dem polizeilichen Zugriff gesichert, durften sich mehr zu sagen erlauben als gewöhnliche Staatsbürger und ließen sich außerdem die Kosten ihrer Tätigkeit vom Feinde bezahlen. Aus der demokratischen Dummheit ließ sich vortrefflich Kapital schlagen”.
“It will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy that it provided its mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed. The persecuted leaders of the NSDAP, as deputies, enjoyed immunity, diets and a free ticket. As a result, they were protected from police access, were allowed to say more to themselves than ordinary citizens and, in addition, had the costs of their activities paid by the enemy. It was possible to make excellent capital out of democratic stupidity”.
In other words, with the rise of the AfD or “Alternative” for Germany, liberal democracy is no longer regarded as having no alternative. With the AfD, it has an alternative – the alternative of fascism.
Until the AfD’s very own Machtergreifung, democratic Germany has to deal with actors like the AfD who thrives on politicising immigration and deficits in Germany’s integration policy as the party’s overarching issue.
Historically, two key issues are relevant. Firstly, and unlike in 1933, the year of Hitler’s rise to power, this time around, German capitalism is “not” on the side of the AfD.
Secondly, German conservatives might have learnt from the support they gave Adolf Hitler in 1933 by making him chancellor in a conservative/Nazi coalition government.
Perhaps because of the latter, German conservatives talk a lot about a so-called firewall against the AfD. At least at East-Germany’s municipal level, it still seems to work better than expected. Yet, the firewall is already badly damaged. At the local level, parliamentarians and elected officials know each other.
Yet, they only work with the AfD on so-called “factual issues” like traffic lights and sidewalks. In other words, fascism starts with small steps.
However, out of the 2,400 applications, party initiatives and proposals made by the neo-fascist AfD in East-German districts between 2019 and 2024, 80% were rejected, i.e. 20% got the support of Germany’s fascists. Interestingly, the support of democratic parties for the AfD has actually “decreased”.
In general, Germany’s democratic parties “do not” want to make deals with the anti-democratic and highly destructive AfD – a party that does not work with democracy but wants to obliterate it.
One might even view this as an acute awareness of the danger of working with the AfD. Perhaps, Germany’s democrats, themselves might have developed a slight dislike towards ending up in SA-style torture dungeons – again!
As AfD apparatchik and Neo-Nazi Frohmaier (internally known as: Frontmaier as in military “front”) once made clear in the East-German city of Erfurt, „Ich sage diesen linken Gesinnungsterroristen, diesem Parteienfilz ganz klar: Wenn wir kommen, dann wird aufgeräumt, dann wird ausgemistet, dann wird wieder Politik für das Volk und nur für das Volk gemacht – denn wir sind das Volk, liebe Freunde!“.
“I say quite clearly to those left–wing terrorists … when we are come, then things will be cleaned up, then they will be cleansed, then politics will be made again for the people and only for the people – because we are the people, dear friends!“
Since the recent election for example, the AfD has a blocking minority in the state parliaments of Thuringia and Brandenburg. With that, the neo-fascists can block decisions that require a two-thirds majority, such as the appointment of judges to the constitutional court.
Even without these powers, the AfD has become what is euphemistically called a “recognised player”. Presumably, some democratic parliamentarians even believe that some sort of “barter-style transactions” or horse trading can no longer be avoided.
In the East-German state of Brandenburg, its social-democratic state premier Dietmar Woidke followed his very on “I or the AfD” strategy.
Yet, there are two interpretations on that. Firstly, it was partially successful. Woidke had pushed the AfD into second position.
The AfD failed to become the strongest party in the East-German state of Brandenburg. Yet, and this is the second point, for the plurality of the parliament and the formation of a governing coalition, things are problematic.
Worse, the issue of ecology and environmental politics is no longer represented in parliament. The environmentalist Green Party has been eliminated.
That means that the social-democratic SPD and the conservative CDU are forced to “work together” with the much disliked BSW. Yet, an alliance with the BSW is not what they want.
Worse, an SPD-CDU-BSW coalitions against the AfD could play favourably into the hands of the AfD in the long term. However, the BSW is indeed an anti-Western, pro-Russia and anti-European party. But that is rather unimportant at the state level.
On social policy, the BSW stands somewhere between the social-democratic SPD and the conservative CDU. Meanwhile, the BSW has been highly successful in getting into Germany’s parliaments.
In addition, one of Germany’s most liked politician – Wagenknecht – has established a programmatic binding force between her voters and the BSW with her strong pro-Russian position on the Ukrainian War. Problematic for Wagenknecht is that the war will not last forever.
Overall, the BSW is putting pressure on Germany’s “centre” – CDU, SPD, Greens, and the neoliberal FDP. It also fuels populist competition. Perhaps, the BSW is on a mission to destroy social democracy in Germany.
The paradoxical “mishmash” between being socially conservative and supportive of the welfare state can be attractive to an older audience which usually supports the social democratic SPD.
Focusing on a supposedly political super-star – Sarah Wagenknecht – at the top doesn’t seem sustainable for any political party. But Germany is currently experiencing a “second” upheaval of its party system. Traditionally, German parties used to have been closely tied to social milieus such as workers (SPD) or the church (CDU).
Those ties are diminishing. Worse, there is also a slow decline in membership and in voter-support for both the CDU and SPD. This began during the 1980s and continues until today. Germany also became a more heterogeneous society.
All in all, Germany is experiencing a kind of “Netherlandisation” of the German party system. There are 15 parties represented in parliament in the Netherlands and with only one – Geert Wilders’ neo-fascist PVV – of which has received over 20% of voter support.
There is no dominant party that can unite a large part of the electorate. Everything in the Netherlands depends on forming a smart coalition with many other parties.
The same can be observed in neighbouring Austria where the recent election on the 29th of September 2024 also showed an ever increasing fragmentation of the party system.
In Austria too, the neo-fascist FPÖ received about 30% while the conservatives (ÖVP) received 26%, and the social-democratic SPÖ 21%, the environmental Greens got 8.3%, and the neoliberal Neos 9.2%.
Given all this, Austria’s and Germany’s old “social-democratic versus conservative” model is out-dated. While Germany’s conservative CDU still boasts about being the last remaining true mass party, in reality, the Netherlandisation is progressing rapidly in Austria and in Germany.
At the same time, something much worse is on the way. Just as the book “Media Capitalism – Hegemony in the Age of Mass Deception” has outlined, media capitalism is eliminating progressives. During the 1980s and 1990s, it eliminated virtually all communist parties in Europe.
Today, voters’ choice is no longer between “progressives” versus “conservative/reactionaries”.
Today’s choice is increasingly between “neoliberals” and “neo-fascists” with the progressives being eradicated. In Austria, for example, the KPÖ received a measly 2.3%; Germany’s Linke sits at between 2% to 4%. Others are substantially weakened: Austria’s Greens: 8.3%; Germany’s Greens: 10-12%.
With the progressives obliterated and damaged, Germany’s CDU, for example, is rather abstinent when it comes to policy. The lack of policy and ideological orientation is camouflaged as being “pragmatic”.
In reality, the CDU often acts rather “situationally”. Its policies depend on a prevailing situation or mood. The CDU does this based on a few basic, grand, and often rather nebulous beliefs.
Worse, the more sharply the CDU positions itself in terms of policies, the more contradictions and conflicts are produced inside the CDU. Meanwhile, quivering party boss Merz still manages to strengthen the CDU’s conservative-reactionary wing.
CDU front-runner Merz often gets it wrong when he takes sharp positional turns that put him at odds with the values of his own party.
Yet, the ability to be able to change political positions remains important in party politics. Merz’s main competitor, Markus Söder, is doing it right. For example, Söder embraced the Greens yesterday and is fighting them bitterly today. Söder is a good example of this new right-wing populist type.
Meanwhile, the social-democratic SPD’s and Germany’s current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, staunchly and resolutely refuses to follow such mood swings. Scholz is not a populist.
This might well be one of the reasons why Scholz continues to be unpopular. Sadly, virtually anyone who does not play the game in the political “market of mood-swings and emotions” is at a disadvantage.
Overall, Germany’s party system is getting more chaotic as Germany’s parties are becoming more and more agile. Parties such as the SPD and the Greens are asking themselves how they can balance emotionality, speed and consistency in such a way that they can act confidently. If both parties do not manage the media game, they are at risk.
Worse, the whole system of political parties in Germany might be in danger. For the Greens, the balancing between long-distance goals like fighting global warming and current day-to-day politics is one of the hardest.
The environmental Greens demand the most from its supporters. From the urgency of global warming, they correctly demand that immediate action must be taken.
Yet, German society is getting older and the elderly are having a harder time with those necessary changes. This is a central dilemma for the Greens.
For example, those who have built a house at the age of 35 are still open to new energy-saving technologies. While those over the age of 60 are more inclined to consider, for example, the updating of their heating system to be a task of their children.
It is precisely those parties who want change that need to change their political communication. Failing this, the grand narrative of Germany’s progressive government coalition is collapsing. This will be a disaster as the void might be covered by the consequently anti-democratic AfD.
Photo: “Stupidity for Germany – Nazi are Shit – AfD as well”, Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/pki090/alternatives_wahlplakat_f%C3%BCr_die_afd_in_hamburg/?rdt=63581
Born on the foothills of Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer is the author of over 1,000 publications including a book on Alternative für Deutschland: The AfD – published by Liverpool University Press.
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