The AfD in Germany

How is the party doing that Elon Musk wants to have take over Germany?

The words on the sign in the picture mean, “Voting for AfD is so 1933.” in English

I am not a political scientist, but I am a student of life. Thirty+ years teaching in public, private and international schools give me this insight into people, as well as my study of school psychology. The Alternativ für Deutschland or AfD in Germany is the party that I call the New German Nazi Party. One will see such signs at pro democracy rallies here in Germany as well. People here understand that being anti a group of people based on cultural ideas of difference, and calling for them to be denied entry and ousted is what the Nazi’s did. So much for “never again.” What do they stand for? According to Deutsche Welle, the AfD began in 2013 as a Euroskeptic party. Like the Brexit folks, they wanted to pull Germany out of the European Union and go back to being its own nation without having to consult with others to make laws and decisions. If not pull out, they at least wanted countries removed from the EU who were not following the rules agreed upon for admittance. Germans like rules. They also did not want wealthy Germany to finance countries who are less wealthy, in specific they did not want Germany to bail out Greece. Then they became an anti-Islamist party as more members joined who were part of a right wing group called PEGIDA, which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

The AfD has grown into an anti-non-White foreigner, anti using any language other than German even at home, and anti Africans, and Muslims or what they feel is the great replacement of White Germans with non-White, non-Germans party. They stand for supporting the traditional family and against LGBTQ+ families. They also stand for sexual prudishness, and are against sexual freedoms and abortion. No one in the AfD seems to have learned anything from the problems Britain has faced with Brexit, leading to the election of a more left leaning party for leadership as a backlash. Instead the AfD members want to go back to using Russian fuel, and perhaps some of them in the East want to be a Russian client state again like they were under the DDR. No Euro, and no modern trade collaboration and exchange with other EU countries. They believe that things will be better again by going back to the good old days, which mirrors what Trump has been telling the MAGA crowd too. Is this realistic? Can one ever go back?Apparently in the world of the AfD one can go back if you just put the right people in power.

Ironically, the woman who is put forth as the chancellor candidate for the AfD is a lesbian who is in a civil union with a women originally from Sri-Lanka who is a producer of films and television and who lives in Switzerland. In fact, Alice Weidel, age 45, lives back and forth between Berlin, Germany and her home in Switzerland and she and her partner have 2 sons through adoption. Alice Weidel studied economics and spent six years in China so she speaks fluent Chinese. She has also been an academic. She has worked in finance in her career. Weidel co-leads the AfD with Timo Churupalla age 49. Chrupalla owns a construction company after training to be a house painter and varnisher. Weidel is one of 9 women out of 76 people representing the AfD in the Bundestag (German Parliament).

Recently a Substack subscriber said that the AfD has 33% of the German vote, as Hitler did. In fact I see some wanting to equate the rise of the AfD in Germany with the reelection of Trump in the USA. The AfD does not have 33% of the vote in Germany. In the Federal election they are not going to have 33%. Recent polls have them at 20% nationally. That makes the AfD the second place party in the national polls after the Center Right CDU/CSU parties. Unlike the US where there are only 2 viable parties, and winner takes all, any party in Germany with less than 50% of the vote has to form a coalition government with other parties, usually then the party with the highest percentage of the votes has the chancellor position, and the other parties in the coalition take other key leadership positions. So, having learned from mistakes made in the time of Hitler, all of the other major German parties have said they would not form a coalition with the AfD. In fact, in the European Union, because the AfD has been hanging out with Nazis, the right wing EU party does not want to be with the AfD. No one wants Germany to have a right wing party at the helm, something that the AfD does not seem to be aware of. Young members of the AfD went and hung out with Trump in Mar-a-lago on US election night. They certainly would like to have his support and that of Musks, as well as Putins. That is an unpopular position in most of Germany. So, it seems unlikely that in the upcoming election in February 2025, the AfD will be winning a place as head of the federal government in Germany.

Where the AfD has more power is in regional elections, by state. This is what has happened recently in Local elections. The AfD did well in the German states that were formerly in the DDR. These 5 states make up around 15% of the German population, which even if the AfD had gotten 1/3 of the vote, it would still be only 1/3 of 15% of the population.

In Brandenburg they had 29.2% (3% of the German population lives there).

In Thüringen they had 32.8% (2.6 percent of the German population lives there).

In Saxon they had 30.6% (5% of the German population lives there).

In Saxon Anhalt they had 20.8% (2.8 percent of the German population lives there).

These are the 4 German states with the highest % of the population voting for AfD. Many are right wing, some are just influenced by the cost of fuel, and some are anti climate initiatives, and some are anti-vaccines, and some are worried about costs of living in general. The Left shares a lot of these same values. So, the AfD is drawing people from the Left, mainly because they are newer, and they are controversial, so voting for them is like saying fuck you to the standing government. The Left has not been effective in changing the problems, and they are not anti-immigrants, so standing for the same things as the AfD, except without the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment the Left is less appealing.

Since there is a shortage of housing in Germany that is something you might blame on immigrants, or could blame on housing policy. Most people voting for the AfD would choose the former. There is also the blatant racism against people with a different skin color that those who are Black and Brown skinned Germans have long had to endure, since the times when Germany colonized Africa.

Here are the statistics of how all of the states votes in Germany.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1478198/afd-results-state-elections-germany/

The above 4 states, which were formerly in the DDR have historically had only 15 years of democracy that did not work very well during the Weimar Republic, right after WWI and then 2 fascist governments in a row from 1933-1990. So, now even 34 years after they gained "democracy" again, so not 2 full generations after, they have a lot of population that does not understand or appreciate democracy, just as we do in the US. It is hard to erase almost 60 years of living under fascists. Research shows it takes 3 generations to adjust to new ideas like this. That will still take a while.

The remaining former DDR state is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the AfD had 16.7% of the vote (that state has about 2% of the German population).

There was one west German state with a higher percentage of votes for the AfD than Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and that was Hessen.

In Hessen the AfD had 18.4% of the vote. (Hessen has 7.5% of the German population) so this is a sizable vote for AfD, and includes Frankfurt, considered the most American of German cities. Underground Nazi groups that have been infiltrated in Hessen such as the Nationale Sammlung (NS) in the 1980s in Hessen show that Hessen has long had a Nazi revival, or a group that held onto Nazi ideology. The NS wanted to rebuild the Nazi Party, and were led by Michael Kühnen, who spread his party to the former Eastern States once Germany was reunited in 1991. He was ousted later as he confessed to being gay and then was confronted by other leadership in the party. He died of AIDS at the age of 35.

The AfD also had 14.6% in the western state of Bavaria (the state has about 16% of the German population). In fact they came in third after other center right parties in Bavaria. Generally staunchly Catholic Bavaria is considered the most conservative of the former Western states. Right now this shift from more progressive coalitions is considered to show the Germany-wide discontent with the current government, a poorly put together coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democratic Party, the latter being the most conservative. The current government has had to grapple with Covid, Russia’s war on Ukraine with the ensuing switch in energy sources, and absorbing more refugees, so that the fewer resources caused by these events are more strained as they need to serve more people. This coalition has also had to grapple with getting and keeping Germany on track to meet climate goals, which supporters of the AfD do not seem to connect to the climate catastrophe’s they are experiencing such a wild fires, floods, drought, and too warm temperatures. Perhaps they have not personally experienced any of them to the degree where their property has been harmed. Or, is it less real because the changes seem gradual and then people adjust to them?

We also have learned that the youth seems to be particularly enamored with the AfD, just as youth in the US are enamored with Trump’s macho man stance. Lowering the voting age to 16 seems to have helped the AfD gain voters. I am not a big proponent of having 16 year olds vote. Russian propaganda accounts, and the AfD using TikTok influences their voting and they do not have the fully developed critical thinking that they will hopefully have later on. This is an age group who spends the most time online. So, they can also be swayed by their online consumption. Many youth are also climate activists, so there is a tension between the two pulls, but voting for AfD says FU to the establishment in a different way that climate activism might. The AfD is also claiming to be the party of peace, apparently a strong pull for youth. Claiming to be against supporting the Ukraine war is not a peaceful stance, because it by de facto supports Russia, the country who started the war and is refusing to stop the war without accomplishing its stated goals of annexing parts of Ukraine. Youth are by nature contrarians, so choosing a party that says the ugly things that one is not supposed to say, might feel liberating to some. However, is the AfD insightful in how government works? Is their strategy to solve Germany’s perceived problems or the problems AfD voters have in their personal lives? It is highly unlikely that these simple solutions of stopping immigration and getting rid of immigrants will end up being either simple or effective. Just deporting a million people is going to cause new problems in both logistics and replacement.

This article shows statistics on what percentage of different age groups voted for AfD.

https://www.dw.com/en/afd-how-germanys-far-right-won-over-young-voters/a-69324954

It appears easy to support democracy when things are going well, but the test of ones belief in democracy is how it holds up when times are tough. Do people no longer feel that they can hold to their ideals when they have to tighten their belts, or may not have enough? Is democracy only for the well off?

While I don’t see evidence that the AfD is going to take over Germany, if the AfD were to come to power in Germany, they would want to go back to getting oil from Putin, which he sold cheaply in order to reel Germany in. It may not be so cheap any more. Also, they will want to remove Germany from the EU, that will lessen the market for German goods, and it is unlikely that the US will provide an alternative with the America First policies of Donald Trump. So, Germany’s economy will stagnate even further. It seems unlikely that the AfD will be able to massively deport both residents and citizens who are not white from Germany to some unnamed countries in Africa as the noxious members of the AfD that attended a meeting to discuss this plan. Where will the money for that massive deportation program come from? So, how will the AfD, improve the standard of living for Germans as they promised, and if they don’t will not just some other party promising some other easy fix be the party that people turn to?

Alice Weidel has said that it will take until 2029 for the AfD to be a lead player in parliament, but by then, it might no longer be so popular. If states, with AfD leadership do not fulfill the promises they have made, will they be able to blame it on the more centrist or left leaning parties, or will they have to absorb the blame too? We shall have to see. Right now there are many democracies who seem much closer to authoritarian leadership than does Germany.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-far-right-afd-leader-is-chinese-speaking-lesbian-economist-2024-12-07/

https://www.politico.eu/article/alternative-for-germany-far-right-party-afd-taps-alice-weidel-chancellor-candidate/

https://www.dw.com/en/afd-how-germanys-far-right-won-over-young-voters/a-69324954

https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-surge-upends-german-state-elections/

https://www.politico.eu/article/mapped-europe-far-right-government-power-politics-eu-italy-finalnd-hungary-parties-elections-polling/

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241207-alice-weidel-german-far-right-s-unlikely-hope-for-chancellor

https://www.dw.com/en/what-does-the-afd-stand-for/a-19100127

https://www.dw.com/en/german-coalition-government-collapse-far-right-afd-capitalize-on-snap-election/a-70733324

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_K%C3%BChnen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tino_Chrupalla

https://www.dw.com/en/german-issues-in-a-nutshell-pegida/a-39124630

https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/plenary/distributionofseats