In Germany, a disturbing rise for the far right and an eerie sense of deja-vu

The result of last Sunday’s elections in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony — in both of which the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), in a shocking though not surprising outcome garnered about one-third of the vote — has sparked a great deal of concern about the future of German politics. This is understandable since less than a century has passed since the defeat of the very ideology now being dusted off by the AfD — an ideology, it bears repeating, responsible for the extermination of European Jewry and near extermination of a free and democratic western world.

But to have an idea of what the future might hold, we might first take a detour through the past— in fact, a detour that Napoleon Bonaparte took on Oct. 6, 1806 through the Thuringian town of Jena. Now the region’s second largest city, it was then a still medieval university town which was home to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The thirty-something professor of philosophy, about to finish his “Phenomenology of Spirit,” glimpsed from his window the thirty-something emperor, about to finish off the Holy Roman Empire, leading his soldiers on the cobbled street below.

In a letter to a friend a few days later, Hegel famously described the experience of seeing Napoleon: “ I saw the Emperor — this world-soul — riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.” (Despite the well-known lithograph that depicts a meeting of the philosopher who sought to understand the world and the emperor who sought to master the world, nothing of the sort ever occurred in this world.)

What Hegel failed to foresee, however, was not just that Napoleon’s rout of the German forces outside Jena quickly led to the flight of students from his classrooms, leaving him to seek, to no avail, a position as a professor of botany. More importantly, Hegel also failed to foresee the seismic impact of this world soul’s conquests, which unleashed the furies of nationalism across Europe, including the German-speaking countries.

Ironically, Hegel was hardly a German nationalist. Instead, he was enthralled by the events of 1789, hailed Napoleon as the world-historical figure who embodied the age’s Geist or spirit of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In fact, Hegel made a point of toasting the fall of the Bastille every July 14.

Tragically, however, the seeding of German nationalism during the Napoleonic era ineluctably morphed into the racist and anti-Jewish bilge of public figures like the journalist Wilhelm Marr, who coined the phrase “anti-Semitism,” through the rabid antisemitism of the composer Richard Wagner (whose opera Tannhaüser happens to be set in Thuringia) to the systematic and genocidal antisemitism of the Nazi state. History, as Hegel remarked, really does unfold in cunning ways.

Founded little more than a decade ago, the rapid rise of the AfD poses a Hegelian question of sorts: What is the “ Geistian ” meaning of the AfD’s stunning electoral success in Thuringia? Does it suggest that the liberal and democratic Geist of a postwar Germany, a Germany that struggled to master its past by always recalling it, is a terminal case? That this older and increasingly contested Geist is about to be knocked off and buried by a new Geist , one which is less interested in mastering this specific swathe of the past than in minimizing and eventually denying it altogether?

Thuringia is certainly no stranger to racist and ethno-nationalist movements. In 1929, the Nazi Party’s strong showing in the regional election cleared the path to a coalition government. Once ensconced in key positions, the party outmaneuvered its partners and filled the civil service with its own members. By 1933, when Hitler was named chancellor, the Thuringian Nazis were among the most seasoned and experienced members of the party.

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Little less than a century later, the AfD’s franchise in Thuringia appears poised to follow in the NSDAP’s bootprints. In 2015, the national party, which began as a small and motley collection of Euro-skeptics, swelled its ranks when it began to play the nativist card after then-chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than a million immigrants into the country. Two years later, in the federal elections of 2017, it became the country’s third largest party. Its strength seems to grow as the nation’s economy stagnates and the popularity of Merkel’s flailing successor, Olaf Scholz, evaporates.

In Thuringia, the AfD is rocking and rolling. As the journalist Alex Dziadosz recently reported in The American Prospect , the region has lately become, quite literally, the principal stage of the country’s neo-Nazi rock scene. In 2018, for example, the town of Themar hosted a rock concert which labeled itself Rock gegen Überfremdung , or in less catchy English, “Rock against Over-foreignization.” More than 6,000 fans flooded into Themar, and images of the crowd making “Sieg Heil” salutes, which are banned in Germany, in turn flooded the internet. (This was not a one-off. Dziadosz noted that Thuringia hosts more than one neo-Nazi concert per week.)

Björn Höcke, the leader of Thuringia’s AfD, also favors a heavy metal approach when it comes to political language. Examples of his penchant for rhetorical power chords are legion. He has blasted Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, designed by the architect Peter Eisenman, as a “monument of shame” and bellowed for a “ 180-degree turnaround ” in the way Germany deals with of its Nazi past. When Höcke was hauled into court after roaring the phrase “Everything for Germany” at a political rally in 2012, the former history teacher insisted that he did not know it was the calling card of the Nazi SA, or Storm Troopers.

His response to these legal cases echoes those of a former American president: “I have the feeling of being a politically persecuted person.”

Observers have noted an odd contrast between Höcke’s public appearances, which are boisterous and belligerent, and his private demeanor, which his associates describe as “reserved” and “gentle.” This has led some of his opponents within the party to dismiss him as the “Wizard of Oz,” someone full of bluster but empty of conviction.  But debates over whether there’s a there there in Höcke’s politics border on the scholastic. The all-too-obvious symbolism he employs in his speeches has found an eager audience in Thuringia.

As with the neo-Nazi concerts, the audience for the AfD is growing. From single digits a half dozen years ago, Höcke’s party lays claim to the support of 33% of the region’s voters. Moreover, in a stunning contrast to American voting patterns, more than 75% of the voting population went to the poll s on Sunday.

Of course, these figures seem less threatening when compared to the national party’s less impressive polling, approximately half that of the Thuringian branch.  Moreover, we can find some reassurance that the Thuringian AfD, which does not have the numbers to form a government, remains radioactive for other parties, none of which wishes to repeat the mistake made in 1929 and form a coalition government with the AfD in the belief it can call the shots.

And yet, while history does not repeat itself, the past is never past — a fact that German politicians on the right and left need to remember as they prepare for next year’s federal elections.