‘A test case for German democracy’: populists ride high before state elections

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has plastered the city centre of Erfurt with eye-catching posters of a jet soaring through a clear blue sky, conjuring up many Germans’ dream of a tropical holiday. Only the tagline reveals a darker message: “Summer, Sun, Remigration.”

As it campaigns for votes in its east German heartland, the AfD has long since embraced the slogan that last winter sent hundreds of thousands of Germans on to the streets in protest against revelations of a rightwing “master plan” to deport unwanted foreigners and citizens alike.

Three state elections in the region in September will impose a stress test on the country’s democracy, with the AfD and a new populist leftist-conservative force expected to perform exceedingly well in the aftermath of a deadly stabbing attack, allegedly by a Syrian asylum seeker.

The anti-migration, anti-Islam AfD could take the most votes in all three regions one year before Germany is scheduled to hold its next general election, and claim up to a third of the vote in the states holding elections this Sunday: Saxony and Thuringia.

In both regions, the AfD chapter has been deemed “ confirmed rightwing extremist ” by domestic security authorities, and the remaining parties have vowed to keep it out of power with a democratic “firewall” by refusing cooperation.

The campaign has included the remarkable rise of an eight-month-old party built around a veteran far-left firebrand, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance).

Its blend of scepticism about migration, opposition to Nato, backing for high taxes on the rich and resistance to military aid for Ukraine has struck a chord with the electorate.

Given the complex maths of coalition-building in a fractured political landscape, polls indicate the BSW could find itself in the role of kingmaker in any of the three states. Brandenburg, the rural region surrounding Berlin, votes on 22 September.

None of the mainstream parties have ruled out working with the BSW, while Wagenknecht has revelled in the lip service many of the candidates are now paying to many of her once taboo views, such as calls for Ukraine to hold immediate peace talks with Russia.

The expected strong showing for the two populist parties is likely to sharpen the febrile political mood in Europe’s top economy, and underline the enduring disaffection in the ex-communist east more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“But it would be a mistake to relegate the state votes to ‘elections in east Germany’,” said Alexander Moritz, a public radio correspondent in Saxony.

“They are a test case for the whole of German democracy. Inflation, fear of war and restrictions on freedom during the pandemic have left many people chronically distressed. For the first time since 1932, rightwing extremists could become the strongest party in a German legislature in a free election.”

The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his centre-left-led coalition were already on the ropes with their dismal popularity ratings nationwide, bitter public infighting and catastrophic polling in the eastern states.

Last Friday’s knife attack in the city of Solingen, near Düsseldorf, which killed three and for which Islamic State claimed responsibility, amplified the sense that the government was failing on two issues high on actual and potential AfD voters’ lists of concerns : immigration and crime.

The AfD seized on the tragedy even before the main suspect, Issa al-Hasan, a 26-year-old Syrian who had been slated for deportation last year, surrendered to police.

By Sunday Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the party, which is polling at about 17% nationally, was calling for a “five-year stop to the entrance, registration and naturalisation of migrants”.

Pushing back against a perception that the conservative opposition and the far right had taken control of the debate, Scholz pledged stricter laws on carrying knives in public, swifter deportations of rejected asylum seekers and tighter controls on “irregular” migration, but only in accordance with international law.

Yet nine years after his predecessor, Angela Merkel, issued her rallying cry of “We can do it” in response to a historic refugee influx, hardliners appeared to have the upper hand.

“Germany is a bit of a latecomer when it comes to the rise of the far-right parties,” said Kai Arzheimer, a political scientist at the University of Mainz. He pointed to the national success of figures such as Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Geert Wilders and Robert Fico in their respective countries while Germany’s “firewall” held.

“What’s unusual about the AfD is that, unlike Le Pen in France or Wilders in the Netherlands trying to present themselves as if they have nothing to do with rightwing extremism, the AfD has people in its ranks convicted of using Nazi slogans,” Arzheimer said.

“It appears not to hurt them that they present themselves as so extreme right and particularly in eastern Germany, it appears to be well received.”

The face of this trend is Björn Höcke , the co-leader of the Thuringia AfD chapter. A former history teacher, Höcke has repeatedly used banned Nazi rhetoric at his rallies while insisting he was unaware of its origins.

In a speech to an enthusiastic crowd in the state capital, Erfurt, last week, Höcke, who has often disparaged Germany’s culture of atonement for the Holocaust as a form of “shame” and “self-hatred”, said he wanted to free his compatriots to express pride.

“I believe in a new, honest, vital patriotism – a nationalism that is normal in any other country” but Germany, he said.

Petra Neumann, 68, of the pressure group Grandmothers Against the Right, helped lead a boisterous counter-demonstration against Höcke, along with young activists.

She said she remembered her grandfather waking up in the night screaming when she was a child.

“When I was 12, he took me to Buchenwald,” the former Nazi concentration camp 12 miles from Erfurt, “and explained how people there were tortured and murdered. He said he had been held at Dachau and that was where the nightmares came from,” she said.

“I have a daughter and a granddaughter now and we’re here to ensure they never have to experience fascism.”

Although the Solingen killings exposed failings on deportations at EU, federal and state levels, analysts raised doubts about whether they would do much to shift the race given the already strong positioning of the parties.

The Thuringia chapter of the AfD, however, was leaving little to chance. Last weekend it began using a simple slogan: “Höcke or Solingen.”