September 25, 2017

AfD wins big, Germany loses out

located:	Germany
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

If you sat an exam and got 13.3%, you would fail. You would not celebrate. Nevertheless, much of Germany, Europe, Russia and America are celebrating today; the Nazis are back in town.

Yesterday, the German far-right AfD party achieved an outsized 13.3% of the vote in the national election, meaning roughly 90 of its politicians, professional racists and xenophobes will now sit in the Bundestag, the first time an overtly nationalist party has managed this feat since the war.

It is a deplorable result for a nation that has, for much of the last 70 years, led the world in thinking about the past, atrocity, and the dignity of humanity. Now, sitting in the German national governing body are people who believe the Holocaust should be put to rest and that Germans should no longer be made to 'feel guilty' about it, that Germans should be proud of their second world war performance; they are people against refugee politics and asylum, against solidarity with Europe; they support Vladimir Putin.

And yet, all evidence about their voter base suggests that there isn't a broad consensus for AfD policies. Indeed, they dislike refugee politics and are proud nationalists – but that's about it. As The Guardian writes:

"AfD got more votes from past non-voters (1.2 million) than from the CDU/CSU (1 million) or SPD (500,000). In many ways this is an anti-Merkel vote, reflecting opposition to her controversial Willkommenspolitik towards refugees, which not only pushed some voters of mainstream parties to switch but also mobilised previous non-voters. The same poll also shows, for example, that 89% of AfD voters thought that Merkel’s immigration policies ignored the “concerns of the people” (ie German citizens); 85% want stronger national borders; and 82% think that 12 years of Merkel is enough. In other words, AfD has clearly profited from the fact that immigration was the number one issue in these elections."

Immigration and asylum have consolidated this party, but it might not cement the AfD's position for long, if the major political parties are once again able to wrest control of the narrative and reveal the AfD's incompetence in the process, the logic follows that at the next elections, the party will lose out. And the chaos of the party has already been demonstrated, with Frauke Petry, co-chairperson declaring after the result she will not sit with the AfD in the Bundestag, but will take a more moderate line to her overtly racist peers.

That being said, the party has the momentum, in the East and among male voters. In fact, in Saxony, the party is the strongest. Although 87% of the country did not vote for these irredeemable racists, the nation, Europe and the world will feel the impact of their obstructive politics over the next few years.

Image: Merkel's victory speech, visibly diminished