The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) have massively upended mainstream politics in two German regional elections on September 1. The AfD’s victory in the stronghold state of Thuringia marks the first time in the country’s post-war history that a radical right-wing party has come within touching distance of forming a government in a region. Similarly, in the regional polls in neighbouring Saxony, the AfD, sections of which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated as extremist, stood a close second behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Also Read: Hollow middle: On the regional election results in Germany
The recent surge follows a watershed moment last year, when it registered a significant presence in western Germany in the legislative elections in Bavaria and Hesse, as the three parties in the German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition suffered a drubbing. Additionally, the BSW, launched in January, overtook all the constituents in the federal coalition in both regions. The AfD and BSW’s inroads has come just a year before Germany’s autumn 2025 elections.
Towards either extreme
Polling over 30% of the votes both in Thuringia and Saxony, the AfD has capitalised the most on the internecine squabbling within chancellor Scholz’s coalition, extreme xenophobia and disapproval of German arms supplies to Ukraine. The scars from the upheavals of transition following German reunification in the 1990s also appear to weigh heavily on voters in the eastern regions.
The political tide turned particularly hostile when the federal government last year sought to ban gas and oil-fired boilers from 2024 to replace them with heat pumps powered by renewable energy. The potential burden on households from the measure sparked intense outrage, forcing the government to water down the legislation. The controversy, moreover, exposed deep divisions in the ruling coalition between the Greens, who spearheaded the environment-friendly shift, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
Right-wing resurgence and response
Bjorn Hocke is the AfD’s polarising ethno-nationalist leader from Thuringia who almost single-handedly moulded the AfD to an irretrievably ultra-nationalist hard-right movement. The former school teacher earned notoriety for his infamous denunciation in 2017 of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to the Jews as a “monument of shame,” calling for a “180 degree turnaround” in the country’s attitude to its Nazi past. Undeterred by fines imposed by two courts, Mr. Hocke continues to spout banned Nazi era slogans in his speeches. He has drawn fresh ammunition from the refugee influx from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was well in excess of the one million inflows from the Syrian conflict in 2015. Mr. Hocke is one of the architects of the party’s aggressive push for the repatriation of migrants, a euphemism for the mass deportation of German nationals with immigrant roots.
Even though Mr. Scholz has warned mainstream parties against forging alliances with the AfD, his own governing coalition is fighting speculation that it might break up and trigger snap parliamentary elections. While the main opposition CDU aims to exploit the slump in the popularity of the ruling coalition in the 2025 general elections, its leader Friedrich Merz has so far proved ineffective in realising his pledge to halve the poll ratings of the AfD. The failure may have something to do with the CDU’s controversial approach, in its new programme adopted in May, to return the party to its old conservative principles. The new programme requires immigrants to sign on to the country’s dominant culture and knowledge of German history, besides recognising Israel’s right to exist. Most controversial of them all is a plan to discourage refugees from seeking asylum in Germany, by transferring applicants to “safe” third countries.
Mr. Merz has been explicit that Germany could emulate the U.K.’s controversial policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The way forward
The victory in Thuringia could prove the biggest test yet to the mainstream parties’ notional firewall to preclude any collaboration with the AfD.
Sahra Wagenknecht, the BSW leader, has emerged kingmaker following the CDU’s invitation to explore a coalition in Thuringia. While such a deal seems the only realistic option to isolate the AfD in the state, there are clear indications that talks are headed for a hard bargain. For a start, there are rumblings within both the CDU and BSW against working with an arch ideological opponent.
Some of the terms Ms. Wagenknecht has placed for discussion fall outside the purview of the regions. She has for instance insisted that her party’s support for a government would be conditional upon the cancellation of plans Chancellor Schulz and U.S. President Joe Biden have finalised with respect to stationing medium-range missiles in Germany. Her other condition, to the discomfort of many in the CDU who regard her as an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is to explore a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.
The writer is Director, Strategic Initiatives, AgnoShin Technologies.
Published - September 11, 2024 10:20 pm IST
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