The Rise of AfD and the Failure of the German Political Mainstream

By Matthias Oppermann

Sunday, January 07, 2024

 

 ‘Liberalism is the death of nations” — a famous line from an infamous book. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the author, did not have American progressivism in mind. His critique was aimed at liberal democracy as a political regime. Moeller coined the term “Third Reich” in his 1923 book, where these words originate. He was not a National Socialist but part of the “conservative revolution,” a diverse group of writers in the Weimar Republic. Alongside the more radical Völkische Bewegung, an influential ethno-nationalist movement, the “conservative revolutionaries” shaped the social atmosphere that paved the way for National Socialism.

 

The anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and antisemitic conservatism of the Weimar Republic survived beyond 1945 in small intellectual circles and networks. However, they never gained political traction in the Federal Republic until the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) emerged. This marked the end of German exceptionalism in Europe, where Germany had been almost the sole country without a right-wing populist party. For a considerable period, Germans believed that the lessons learned from the crimes of the “Third Reich,” especially the Holocaust, would immunize them against radicalism. With mainstream political parties having failed to respond meaningfully to the crises of German national sovereignty, and with the AfD on the rise for pretending to be able to solve these problems, this assumption no longer holds true.

 

The AfD was established in 2013 when a band of fiscal-conservative economists reacted against government policies addressing the European debt crisis. Their goal was the suppression of the common currency. Thinking they had founded a liberal conservative — i.e., libertarian — party, they were oblivious to the possibility that more nationalist conservatives within their ranks could eventually gain the upper hand, an outcome that came to pass in July 2015. With the debt crisis provisionally solved, the AfD was on the brink of collapse. Nationally, the party polled at around 3 percent. Then, in August, the European migrant crisis unfolded, marking a turning point in German politics. Chancellor Angela Merkel chose to keep the borders open and declared an unconditional welcome to refugees or migrants. In 2015 alone, over 2 million people immigrated to Germany, often without proper authorization to stay.

 

For eight years now, German cities and small towns have grappled with the integration of asylum seekers. As a significant number of them are Muslims, their influx has profoundly altered German society, giving rise to concerns about cultural erosion. Germans had never been hesitant to cede sovereignty to the European Union, and even the challenges posed by the common currency didn’t overly trouble them. However, when it became evident that neither the German government nor the European Commission could effectively protect national or EU borders, many Germans lost faith in the state. This sentiment was further fueled when the German government and the European Commission failed, during the Covid-19 pandemic, to secure the vaccine supply. Those failures provided a significant opportunity for a party such as the AfD, which asserts its goal of restoring national sovereignty.

 

Despite occasional setbacks, the AfD has continued to grow since the beginning of the migration crisis. Four years after its founding, the new party won more than twelve percent of the vote in the Bundestag election of 2017. Today the AfD in all polls consistently ranks as the second-strongest party on the federal level, fluctuating between 19 and 23 percent. In all eastern German states, it is even the largest party in the polls, reaching a peak of 34 percent in the state of Thuringia.

 

The underlying reason for this remarkable development is that the migration crisis persists. Until recently, the leftist government of Social Democrats, Greens, and the small pseudo-libertarian Free Democratic Party showed little inclination to address the issue. Another reason for the AfD’s success is the transformation of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) during the 16 years Merkel was chancellor. While many of her decisions can be defended as necessary adaptations to the times, she unquestionably pushed her party toward the left of the center. While it was reasonable to suspend conscription at the time, abandoning nuclear power and forming a close partnership with Putin’s Russia for a cheap gas supply were misguided decisions. Merkel’s immigration policy, undoubtedly, was a mistake. At the end of the day, all mainstream parties tried to position themselves in the center left, providing an easy opening for the AfD to exploit this weakness.

 

That’s not to say that CDU/CSU are solely responsible for the AfD’s rise. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) abandoned its traditional base in the working and lower middle class, adopting the strategy of the Greens to target university graduates. The Greens and their media and university supporters imported the American culture wars to Germany. Originating in the counterculture of the 1960s, the Greens became the party of Woke, and the Social Democrats followed suit. Consequently, working-class and lower-middle-class voters flocked to the AfD, especially in eastern Germany.

 

It doesn’t help that eastern Germans are often depicted by left-leaning media as left-behinds, the German version of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables.” They tend to vote for the AfD not out of nationalism but as a protest. The party has gained a substantial following of true believers all over Germany.

 

But what do they believe? The party’s true believers emulate the authors of the “conservative revolution” and the Völkische Bewegung. Most influential among them is Björn Höcke, the leader in the state parliament of Thuringia. Citing the influence of “Western decadent liberalism,”  he said in 2018 that the Germans had “sunk to a mere ‘population.’” Moeller van den Bruck would have agreed. Höcke is also influenced by the Völkische Bewegung. He advocates ethno-pluralism, dreaming of nations that are not only culturally but also ethnically homogeneous, living side by side without mixing.

 

American conservatives should not think for a minute that the anti-liberalism of the AfD can be separated from anti-Americanism. The AfD leaders harbor animosity toward the West, particularly the “Anglo-Saxons,” as Carl Schmitt would have said. Following Schmitt’s ideology, they aspire to replace the American-led liberal world order with ethnically homogeneous Großräume (great spaces). They admire Putin and view Russia as a natural ally.

 

No surprise, there are ties between American “national conservatives” and the AfD. In April 2022, the Young Alternative, the AfD’s youth organization, initiated cooperation with the New York Young Republicans. The two organizations met in New York City, where AfD member Maximilian Krah delivered the opening speech. Krah sees the war in Ukraine as a proxy for an American–Russian war, admires the mullah regime in Iran, and dreams of cooperation between EU countries, Russia, and China.

 

“German nihilism,” Leo Strauss aptly called this thinking, which America fought against in World War II. It appears that German nihilism has made minor headway in the minds of some American “national conservatives” and MAGA Republicans. There is, however, a crucial difference between American national conservatives and the AfD. The former present as deeply rooted in Christianity, while the latter embraces Christianity only culturally.

 

Can anything halt the rise of the AfD? Mainstream German parties must address urgent problems, primarily irregular immigration. In this respect, Christian Democrats play a decisive role. It is their historical merit to have introduced “liberal conservatism” into German political culture after 1949. Those who advocated the term “conservatism” in the CDU distanced themselves from the older German conservative tradition. Their model was British conservatism, but they also felt close to American Republicans. Helmut Kohl, George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher in 1983 founded the International Democratic Union, under whose roof their parties should work together. The conservatism of the CDU has always stood for the integration of Germany into the West, into Europe, and, most importantly, the Atlantic alliance. Moreover, the CDU has been the party of law and order, of free trade, and of the social market economy — i.e., of ordo-liberalism.

 

To prevent the AfD from becoming not only the leading “conservative” but also the first party in Germany, the CDU must return to the center right. This process is underway since Friedrich Merz, a fiscal conservative with a tough stance on immigration and immigrant integration, became party leader in February 2022. In December 2023, the leaders of the CDU presented to the public a new program that situates it clearly on the center right. For example, the program calls for a Leitkultur (guiding culture) to be adopted by immigrants. In addition, the CDU takes a stance against identity politics for the first time. The program still has to be officially adopted by the party congress in May, but that is only a formality.

 

If, however, the CDU and other mainstream parties fail to address German problems, which also include a declining economy and a deteriorating infrastructure, the AfD might be unstoppable. Germany could then deviate from the Western path that Konrad Adenauer set for the Federal Republic in its first decade of existence. If Germany turns toward Russia, America will face challenges in upholding the liberal order in Europe, if there is still a chance for it. Moderate conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, who value the philosophy of thinkers such as John Locke, the American Founders, and Alexis de Tocqueville, should recognize the urgency of the situation. It is time to cooperate in the same way that illiberal conservatives already do.