There’s a half-hour English-language telecast from Deutsche Welle News on the PBS World Channel in the U.S.; and almost the whole program today was about the landslide win for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Many people seem to be freaking out in ways that make the AfD sound as extreme as the MAGAts on my side of the Pond.
I’d appreciate comments, particularly from some of our European bloggers and commenters, to help me better understand what’s going on.
i’ve only heard of them because i follow some antifa social media and they hate these fuckos. i’m awfully tired of nazis winning, wake me when it’s all over.
I don’t currently live in Germany, but I did for a few years, so I kind of follow what’s going on there.
Sachsen-Anhalt is part of the former DDR (East Germany), and on the whole, the former DDR has remained economically pretty poor compared with the rest of Germany. I remember taking a train to Berlin back before the wall came down (so it obviously didn’t stop anywhere between Berlin and the west) and seeing horse-drawn wagons carrying coal; in general, it looked a lot like I imagine things did in the 1930’s. After the reunification, there was a lot of resentment towards the folks from the former West Germany, who were regarded as know-it-alls (“Besserwessies”) who looked down on the “backward” folks from the East and were mostly looking to make a fast buck off the country and the people.
That’s the sort of thing that makes people look to right-wing and fascist politics. (Cf. Germany during the 30’s.) I suspect that the fact that having been part of the DDR people were used to authoritarian government; there’s no history of Western-style democracy.
BTW, the English-language Wikipedia article Alternative for Germany goes into more detail about this, as does th German-language article Alternative für Deutschland
Since the Wall fell in 1989, I expect roughly half of the population of Sachsen-Anhalt have no experience of authoritarian government.
Given the rise of Putinism on both sides of the Iron Curtain, I’m skeptical of familiarity with authoritarian government as an contributory cause.
I met East Germans, my extended family, in 1984. I was horrified what Nazi excrement still lived in their heads… In 1989 and 1990 I was among a minority skeptical about unification. I was interested in European unification. I had been to much of Western Europe and found we had more in common with the people I met there than with East Germans. I felt more at home in Brussels than in Berlin.
Since then I have met people from all parts of Germany, worked with many. Most of those I have met are the types that have got on with it. But with most of them I never talked much politics. It is not done, unless you know them well. But with more than just a few I felt an element of mistrust against the western economic system, against anyone being a lackey of the unnamed “them” exploiting every decent worker. At least, that’s how it read to me..
Allison @2:
I’m reminded of a meeting that I attended at the DIN offices in Berlin a bit over 20 years ago. The Wall had been down for about 17 years, but the Hauptbahnhof (central railway station) still hadn’t been built.
The evening receptionist at the little three-star hotel where I was staying lived in the former East Berlin and had some complaints like what you mentioned.
There’s much talk on this site and in Germany about the AfD’s strength in the former GDR states, but while they are strongest in the east, they still have substantial support in west Germany too, reaching nearly 20% in some of the recent state elections. It might be more in the future.
The AfD is bad news. We have no idea yet how they would be if they had power, but from their rhetoric and their members behaviour I’d say they are at least as bad as Trump’s MAGAts. Other European right wingers like Le Pen’s RN have distanced themselves from them. They talk about “remigration”, wanting to force out even German citizens with immigration background by using “moderate cruelty”. As outright support for obvious Nazi ideology is mostly illegal here in Germany, right wing parties have to be careful what they say. The AfD officially tries to stay on the legal side of things but many of their members and high ranking party officials have been in court because of their rhetoric. Connections to forbidden, violent Nazi groups are common.
Our media plays a sad role. Most big news media do not officially support them yet, but we do have a big right wing press (Springer) who stoke racism and fear and even the more moderate outlets seem to give them a platform and offer to little push back to their lies.
The traditional conservative CDU seems to be trying to win back voters by aping the racist right wing rhetoric. As biggest party in the federal government coalition they have implemented inhuman and in part illegal laws to get rid of asylum seekers. Of course all this seems only to have resulted in more votes for the original racists.
Our current conservative Chancellor (a former Blackrock manager) is supremely incompetent, as charismatic as a half rotten slug, keeps insulting large groups of the populace and goes on a holiday during times of crisis. His government is seriously damaging the welfare state following their neoliberal agenda. The Socialdemocrats are the other part of the government coalition, they have been losing voters for years but now poll below the Greens in many places…
All this doesn’t help the situation.
AfD don’t have an absolute majority. So either they find a coalition partner, try to form a minority government, or they let other parties form a government.
I fully expect AfD to fuck up by the numbers. Extreme right-wing parties everywhere tend to personality cults, incompetence and corruption.