This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Germans push back against extremist AfD’
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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about Germany and its far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland. The AfD have been rising relentlessly in the opinion polls for the past year, but the revelation that party activists held a meeting to discuss the mass deportation of immigrants, including German citizens, has sparked a backlash. My guest this week is Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and a regular commentator on German affairs for the Financial Times. So just how dangerous is the AfD?
Audio clip
(Protesters singing in German)
Gideon Rachman
The anti-AfD demonstrations that took place across Germany in the middle of this month were huge, the biggest demos in Germany for decades. They testify to the fact that almost 80 years after the fall of Nazism, Germans remain acutely sensitive to anything that smacks of racism or fascism.
And yet, it’s also true that more than one in five Germans now regularly tell pollsters that they would vote for the AfD, and the party itself claims, in classic populist fashion, to represent ordinary people against a corrupt elite. Growing alarm about the rise of the AfD came to a head after the revelation of the lakeside meeting in Berlin to discuss radical solutions to mass migration.
I began my conversation with Constanze Stelzenmüller by asking her what happened at the meeting, and why it proved so controversial.
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Gideon, the meeting was significant for a variety of reasons. One was the topic. Here were a number of representatives of the hard right discussing openly the deportation in mass numbers of immigrants in Germany, including German passport holders with an immigration background. Footnote to that: 25 per cent of Germans have an immigration background of one kind or another, including me. My great-great-great grandparents were thrown out of Austria for being Protestants.
Then some of the people who were there were quite well known. The best-known probably was the head of the Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, an Austrian. There was a backbencher from the Christian Democratic party in Germany and a number of well-off citizens who have apparently been quietly funding this kind of thing.
And the other reason why the meeting was significant. Not that really what they were saying was all that new. If you were following, like me and numerous other Germans, what the German hard right have been up to for the past decade, you could have seen the radicalisation and quite open radicalisation of the party and its assorted movements. But this particular reporting has unleashed the largest, broadest, most diverse political demonstrations in German postwar history. The only time we’ve ever seen anything like it was in 1989, 1988 on the other side of the wall.
Gideon Rachman
So it feels like a sort of breakthrough moment or a watershed moment in the way that a lot of German society views the AfD, as kind of confirmation that this is not just an anti-immigration party, but that this is a truly sinister party with a really quite extreme agenda. Is that basically how the non-AfD Germans are seeing it?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
I think so. You know, there was some suggestion that these demonstrations, which two weekends ago were estimated at being at least 900,000 all across Germany. And this weekend, again, there were hundreds of thousands demonstrating across Germany as well.
It’s been estimated or suggested by some critics that really, these were somehow captured by the hard left. I don’t think that’s true at all. The hard left, I’m sure, was trying to do that, but the hard left is utterly incapable of getting Germans out in those numbers.
And as I was saying, Gideon, people went on the streets in bitter cold, in the dark, in huge numbers, numbers so large in Hamburg and Berlin that police had to break up the demonstrations. But what was especially impressive was that people were going out across eastern Germany as well and even in small towns where people know each other and this can actually be quite dangerous.
Gideon Rachman
Because, of course, the AfD does command extraordinarily high levels of support, historically. I mean, opinion polls have been showing them what, at sort of 25 per cent and much higher than that in East Germany. So taking a couple of steps back, why has there been this surge in AfD support? Because, you know, you haven’t had a big surge of migration, as you did say in 2015 with the Syrian influx. Why has the AfD been doing so well lately?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Perhaps some background on the AfD. AfD started 10 years ago as a project of Eurosceptic economics professors who were worried about the introduction of the European currency, the euro. It’s radicalisation and surge really only occurred after the migration crisis of 2015, when then-chancellor Merkel opened Germany’s borders to an unprecedented wave of mostly Middle Eastern and Afghan refugees. Footnote to that: they have been mostly integrated into German society and the labour market.
But the truth is that for the past half-decade, if you listened closely to what the AfD was saying, if you read its party programmes, you could be perfectly aware — and certainly media were reporting about this — that this radicalisation was becoming more and more overt, less and less apologetic. And indeed, today, you could say of all the hard-right parties in Europe, the AfD is really the only one that’s not trying to pretend it is anything but what it is, which is racist, white, ethno-nationalist, Islamophobic and bent on changing the German constitutional order. Frankly, I find it surprising that Germans are going on the streets only now. But I am really very impressed and frankly, very moved by the degree of outrage. Maybe this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Gideon Rachman
And yet the AfD does continue to have high levels of support. I mean, they’ve been up at what levels in the polls?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
It does. It is polling nationally at between 20 and 22 per cent. And in three of the eastern states of the five eastern states, it’s between 30 and 37 per cent, which is somewhat concerning for the “traffic light” coalition government, since those three states will be holding state elections in September. And there will be, in fact, municipal elections all across the five eastern states and polls now suggest that the AfD would power through all of them.
But just to demonstrate just how extraordinary this party is compared to others in Europe, a few days ago, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French hard right, said that she disapproved of these “remigration” plans, as the AfD calls them, the deportation plans, and that under no circumstances could her movement work together with the AfD. Now, I personally think that’s a lie, and I think that is a deflection. But still, it was a fairly remarkable thing for her to say.
Gideon Rachman
So how do you account for the fact that they have got to these very high levels of support? And do you think this controversy, too early to say, perhaps, but is it likely to puncture that support?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Well, a lot of ink has been spilled, as you can imagine on that question. I tend to speak about this in sort of categories of real and imaginary grievances and legitimate and illegitimate grievances. And if you look closely at polls and sociological studies, there’s a bit of everything in there. There really is a multiplicity of motives, but people tend to make a sort of rough distinction between cultural issues, economic issues and the problems of governance. And I tend to think personally that the questions of culture and identity, although they gain a great deal of traction on social media, are overrated. And economic issues are certainly there in eastern Germany but they wouldn’t account for the support for the AfD among quite wealthy people in some regions of western Germany.
I think what we are really seeing is a crisis of representative democracy, and we are seeing that the politicians and policymakers in sophisticated, post-industrial, representative democracies across the west are struggling everywhere, really, to govern effectively and are thereby undermining the legitimacy of representative democracy. And that, of course, is exploited by adversaries of the west, both external and internal. And the hard right, of course, are the key internal adversary, although there are leftwing enemies of representative democracy as well.
Gideon Rachman
But when you see these poll ratings, does part of you fear that actually, what you say is a almost uniquely radical far-right agenda in Europe commands high levels of support in Germany. Or do you think that people are failing to understand or have so far failed to understand what the AfD is all about?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Well, I tend to think that I have been following it somewhat obsessively. I am a constitutional lawyer by training, and I sort of can’t bring myself to not follow it, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen such a challenge to what essentially has been a very stable constitutional order in Germany, the best democracy we’ve ever had. And I’m personally outraged, given our history, that we have such a movement and that it should be so successful.
But even if I discuss this with old friends, I see that a lot of them think that what’s happening here is a legitimate protest vote against what they see as the failings of successive governments. Many of them have been either in denial or just haven’t followed closely what AfD leaders have said and done. I find that extraordinary. But don’t forget, Gideon, you and I are journalists. We are political junkies.
And finally, I do think that there is such a thing as a silent majority that on most days just can’t be bothered, and tends to think that as long as it makes the right decision in the polling box every four years, it can safely leave politics to its representatives. And I think what we’re seeing now with these demonstrations is people realising that they should better pay attention and that they should express their views. I’m really rather impressed.
Gideon Rachman
So tell me about this debate, though, about actually banning the AfD, which I’m sure you have views on since, as you say, you’re a constitutional lawyer and also, you know, a political junkie. In some ways it sounds to me like a bad idea, because defending democracy by banning a party from standing sounds like a contradiction and also perhaps also a massive tactical error, because it allows the AfD to say this is a fake democracy. So what’s your view of that debate?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Well, the German basic law, the constitution, does actually provide for the possibility of a party ban in Article 21, and the constitutional court has said this is a tool of what is called defensive democracy, in other words, a democracy that can defend itself against its enemies. It’s also said this is the sharpest and also the most double-edged weapon of a rule-of-law-based democracy. And why is that? Because parties, of course, in constitutional theory, are an expression of the sovereign demos of the people.
On the other hand, the constitutional court as a protector of democracy. That said, we’ve been very, very reluctant, and the constitutional court has been very reluctant, to respond to requests to use this tool. We’ve banned parties twice in the 1950s, once the SAP, which was a successor party to the Nazi party, and the KPD, the Communist party. There were attempts to ban the NPD, which is an actual neo-Nazi party, in 2017, and the constitutional court actually opined on that and said this party is clearly anti-constitutional, but it’s politically irrelevant, so we’re not gonna do this.
The conundrum here, of course, is that the AfD has now been declared by German domestic intelligence to be overtly anti-constitutional in at least three of the 16 states, but it is so large that it is both relevant for the possibility of an overturn of constitutional order and it is also, as you were suggesting earlier, an expression of the (inaudible) at least and an important part of the demos. That’s the conundrum here. People aren’t discussing options like cutting off government party funding, which, yes, is something that exists in Germany, or to ban the party youth. I think I come down against a ban. I would like there to be much more public debate. I would like the domestic intelligence service to say what they’ve got. But I think that in general, party bans are a very dangerous tool in this kind of situation.
Gideon Rachman
And when you say the AfD, there’s strong evidence that they’re an anti-constitutional party, what are you referring to? Are you referring to the suggestion that they want to actually deport people who are now German citizens, or is there evidence that they, in the end, would use democracy to end democracy, that their end state is an authoritarian regime?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
I think that is what you have to assume. I could go into chapter and verse now, but a cursory look at their party platforms, which, by the way, are also translated into Russian on their website, I think would help confirm that. The essence of representative democracy is limited government; in other words, checks and balances, not just for the executive, the courts and legislature, but also for the will of the sovereign.
Whereas the AfD pretends it is the only legitimate representative of the sovereign, and that it is in fact entitled to call for majority rule. The model of this thinking is, of course, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, which has been turned into a one-party state. Essentially, the kind of constitutional order the AfD is thinking about is a white ethno-nationalist majority rule with as little checks and balances on the majority as possible, or preferably none.
Gideon Rachman
Right. One more thing on that before we get to the problems of the mainstream. One senior German politician once put it to me, rather interesting that he said the difficulty is that, you know, we can tell the police to keep an eye on them. But in eastern Germany, given that 35 per cent, a large per cent of the police will actually be AfD. So it’s rather difficult.
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Well, that’s another very concerning phenomenon of this period. It became clear several years ago that the AfD had worked quite hard at tunnelling into the security services, into the police, into domestic intelligence on the state and local level and into the army. And in fact, several government ministers and several defence ministers have been working quite hard at pushing back at these efforts and in fact, at throwing out rightwing radicals in the services. But as I said, they’ve been working hard.
They have also been working quite hard at building bridges to the conservative party, the CDU. So far, not successfully. The one splinter group, the Werteunion, Values Union in translation, has now splintered off from the Christian Democrats and is planning to form its own party.
But still, I don’t think that they have captured the police. Otherwise, the police wouldn’t have guarded these demonstrations, including in eastern Germany. There have been reports this weekend of the hard right actually coming out in force and trying to intimidate protesters, and the police stood firm. So I think the reports of state capture, as it were, in eastern Germany may be slightly exaggerated.
Gideon Rachman
OK. Turning to the mainstream, I mean, obviously, to some extent, the rise of an extremist party like this is a indictment of the mainstream. And it has got much worse under this government of Chancellor Scholz. And Scholz’s own ratings are very low. Why are people so dissatisfied with this government? Why has it failed, really, to establish itself?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Well, when the Scholz government took over in 2021, there was a feeling not just among the members of his coalition — the liberals, the Greens and his own party, the Social Democrats — but I think in the German public at large that really important societal, economic, political transformations had been left untackled in the previous 16 years under Merkel. And they were willing to undertake this, which I thought at the time was worthy of applause, despite the fact that these three coalition partners were really quite disparate. So they came with a quite ambitious programme, not just for economic and social policy and climate policy, but also for the Europeanisation of German policy.
What they hadn’t reckoned with was any challenges in the domain of security policy, much less an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And so what I think they were faced with was an enormous reality check in the form not just of the pandemic, but the war and the surge of the hard right.
And what we’ve been seeing in the past two years of this government is a coalition that has had internal fallings out over very different priorities. The liberals want fiscal prudence, the Greens want climate transformation and the Social Democrats, I think, would really quite like to preserve the status quo in many things. And they, I think, at this point appear exhausted and depleted. They’ve made some quite serious mistakes on fundamental projects of their tenure, one being the famous heat pump law that was supposed to help Germans save energy. That was bungled with some help from the AfD, who tried to show up the government for its lack of planning.
And then finally, in the fall, the budget for this year was upended with a decision of the constitutional court which prohibited the government from using emergency funds from the pandemic for some of its current projects. And that, I think, has unnerved a lot of German citizens who are left with a feeling that their government is making some fairly elementary mistakes on some of its most important projects.
Gideon Rachman
So, Constanze, you’ve described the situation in Germany. How much should the rest of Europe be worried about it, because obviously Germany is the most powerful economy in the EU and has traditionally played a leadership role. Is Germany not going to be capable of doing that, given all its internal problems?
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Look, I do want to warn you against the impression that Germany is somehow collapsing. I don’t think that’s the case. And again, I think these demonstrations are actually a genuinely encouraging sign of a very vital, and if necessary, assertive civil society. I think that’s a really great thing. And I could think of a couple of other countries where I would quite like to see demonstrations like that.
I think that this government is having a very hard time, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near collapse. In fact, that is quite difficult. Under German constitutional rules, we don’t change horses in midstream. That’s much easier in other countries. So I think they’re going to struggle on.
I also think that while it helps to have German leadership in Europe, there are other countries in Europe whose role is also important: France, Poland, and even though it’s no longer in the European Union, the UK is playing a very important role in European security policy. So I tend to think that we’re all going to muddle through.
I do think that all of us, and not just the Germans but certainly people here in America but also elsewhere in Europe, perhaps also in Great Britain, if you don’t mind my saying so, have been consumers of prosperity, stability and security and sort of quite unquestioningly handed off the business of politics to our representatives. And I think we’re now living in a time when it’s become very clear that we can no longer just be consumers, that we also have a role and, dare I say, a responsibility as citizens to preserve representative democracy. And I think that’s a good thing.
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Gideon Rachman
That was Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institution ending this edition of the Rachman Review. And that’s it for this week. Please join me again next week for another edition of the Rachman Review.
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