John Jefferson
The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) demonstrated again in Sunday’s German state elections that it is more than a protest party. The AfD came in first in Thuringia and placed second in Saxony, right on the heels of the Christian Democrats (CDU). Germany’s media and ruling class predictably catastrophized the voting results. “Trump, Le Pen, AfD: our democracy is threatened,” proclaimed the leftwing Der Spiegel.
It is not democracy that is threatened, of course, but the international left’s agenda on issues such as open borders, climate change and wokeism. From Europe to the United States, national conservatives are mobilizing, and more and more winning elections, as they fight to recover their societies from the onslaught of these fundamentally radical policies.
Historians, who see these larger trends better than political commentators, will rightly categorize the AfD as part of this same growing national conservative movement. It is a common-sense response to the failures and ineptness of traditional conservative parties. Be it the CDU in Germany, the Tories in Britain or Bush-McCain Republicans in America, these establishment conservatives either were ineffective or coopted by the globalist agenda.
The level of fury unleashed to discredit the AfD is even more apocalyptic than that directed at Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and likely surpasses Trump Derangement Syndrome in the United States. In Germany, as the response to Sunday’s voting again makes clear, the media and ruling-class propaganda is unrelenting.
The AfD is “undemocratic,” “anti-immigrant,” and “pro-Putin.” The official hullabaloo is designed to avoid a discussion with the AfD on tough issues like why the Berlin governing coalition fails to deport illegal immigrants or seek negotiations to end the Russia–Ukraine war.
A key weapon for German officialdom is deploying the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV), which has investigated the AfD and officially declared the party “an extremist organization.” The BfV ruling helps all the major parties, including the CDU, justify their decision to continue to insist on a “firewall” against the AfD.
Thus, given the coalition-building nature of German politics, the AfD will likely still be kept in opposition in both state legislatures in Thuringia and Saxony, even though the party garnered more than a third of the votes.
Because this drama is playing out in Germany, the dreaded Nazi past can be effectively instrumentalized against the AfD, both by the CDU for tactical political advantage, and by the establishment left in an attempt to discredit all conservative positions.
Far from being “neo-Nazi,” the AfD political program would comfortably fit in with -street conservatives everywhere from Australia to Canada, from Nigel Farage to J. D. Vance. In fact, a reading of the AfD platform reveals fairly vanilla stuff and brings on a few yawns.
When the media falsely claimed the AfD had a plan of “remigration” to deport legal residents and naturalized citizens, the party responded: “The AfD does not differentiate between German citizens with and without a migration background. All Germans are part of our nation, regardless of their origin, ancestry, worldview or religious affiliation.”
On nationalism, the party proclaims: “We are open to the world, but we want to be and re German. We want to permanently preserve human dignity, the family with children, our Western Christian culture, our language and tradition in a peaceful, democratic and sovereign nation state of the German people.”
On social policies: “Our country is facing major social challenges. Stabilizing the social systems requires special efforts in the face of a shrinking and ageing population. Our limited resources are therefore not available for an irresponsible immigration policy that no other European country dares to pursue.”
On the United Nations, this “far-right” party is outright squishy: “The AfD is committed to the values of the United Nations Charter and international law. We are committed to a foreign policy that is geared to German interests.”
Don’t be fooled, the opponents respond; it is what AfD members actually say on the campaign trail and do behind closed doors that matters. But here, too, the alarmists have very little to offer.
They ly scorn Bjorn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, who was Sunday’s big winner. Höcke has indeed made statements that minimize or buck Germany’s political correctness standard about dealing with the Nazi past. For reasons that are perhaps understandable, but not legally defensible, such talk is verboten in modern Germany’s political discourse.
The authorities prosecuted and fined Höcke for using the banned Nazi slogan, “everything for Germany” (alles für Deutschland), calculated to resonate with his voters who believe that such a sentence should not be considered out of bounds. One AfD supporter, a female school teacher in Thuringia, explained to a New York Times reporter: “That was a very normal sentence. We should be allowed to be proud of our country today without immediately being accused of being extremists.”
Although he wants the attention, Höcke would be much smarter to stay away from such calculated rhetoric because it helps open the door to federal investigators from the before-mentioned Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. The BfV exists to investigate threats against the German state, and number one on that list has long been neo-Nazi and rightwing groups.
In response, the AfD counters that statistics indicate the BfV spends far more time and resources monitoring rightwing instead of leftwing threats. Just as MAGA conservatives complain that the FBI and DOJ have been instrumentalized against them for political ends, AfD members say the same about BfV.
They have a point. For example, Sahra Wagenknecht, the other big winner in the German elections on Sunday, generally escapes such intense scrutiny. German officialdom has deemed Wagenknecht, unlike Höcke, to be salonfähig: she gets invited through the front door and never misses a German TV talk show.
A very popular politician in East Germany, Wagenknecht has impressively built a new leftist populist political party, largely based on her own political persona, called “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance” (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht). In its first elections on Sunday, the BSW performed better than many established parties.
Wagenknecht is a product of the old communist GDR political system; she transitioned into modern Germany’s leftwing politics and has a strong following in the eastern states. Although Wagenknecht has mostly put her radical Marxist youth behind her, key activists in her movement and new party were Stasi members. They do not get anything close to the scrutiny of Höcke and his people.
Clearly, a national-interest approach on big issues like Germany’s shrinking economy, open borders, and concern about the Russia–Ukraine war is what motivated the vast majority of AfD voters in Thuringia and Saxony, not vague notions about being “völkisch.” German officialdom’s response to Sunday’s elections and the AfD voters is shameful. It is more undemocratic than anything the party has ever done.
Years ago, I served as a U.S. diplomat in the American consulate in Leipzig and met with political leaders of all stripes in cities and hamlets across Thuringia and Saxony. Germans in the region are no more “extremist” than people anywhere else in Europe. Staying in touch, I returned this summer and spoke with an immigrant, now a legal resident, who has lived there for years. His comments perfectly captured the moment: “The AfD represents common-sense ideas on energy, borders, and war. If there are a few cranks in the party, then throw them out, but keep the party’s good ideas.”
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