On October 6, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt elected Tobias Rausch, a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, as President of the Landtag (the German equivalent of a state senate), with forty-eight out of eighty-three votes. This marks the first elected official belonging to a far-right party to preside over a German state parliament since the Nazis.
The German election process is similar to that of the British parliament: citizens vote for parties, which then get a number of seats in the house proportional to the amount voted for them. Then the parliamentary representatives vote on things like policy decisions and who to elect as Chancellor.
Almost all German parties have adopted a policy called the Brandmauer, or Firewall: they will not vote with the AfD on policies, elect their candidates, or form coalitions with them, among other things.
“They are basically the Nazis of today,” said Anton Rösch, a German exchange student visiting IHS from the state of Baden-Württemburg. He stressed the inherent hypocrisy of the party: “They are anti-lesbian, yet their leader is lesbian. They claim to be patriots, yet their leader lives in Switzerland.” He also noted that “they are everywhere on social media. I see blue hearts [a symbol of support for the AfD] all the time on the internet.”
Their popularity also bleeds into the political world. Let’s look back at those forty-eight votes: the AfD has thirty-nine seats, and even with five votes from the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, a minor left-wing party who agreed to vote for Rausch, that leaves four representatives that voted for Rausch from parties who support the Brandmauer.
This support for far-right groups isn’t just occurring in Germany: Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, belongs to the Brothers of Italy party, which has similar policies to the AfD. The anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigration, and pro-Russia policies of MAGA also bear similarity.
The question becomes, why are extremist parties becoming more mainstream, and more centrist parties declining?
Jan Voelkel, an Assistant Professor in the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University who studies political polarization and political change, noted three reasons.
The first is the economy. “Economic shocks can create an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment mood,” he said, adding that “an analysis of more than eight hundred elections […] between 1870 and 2014 found that, after a financial crisis, far-right parties increased their vote share by about thirty percent on average.”
The second reason he cited is immigration. “The AfD’s national breakthrough came after the 2015-16 refugee arrivals, when it entered the Bundestag [the German federal parliament] in 2017,” Voelkel recalled. These two ideas go hand in hand. During times of economic crisis, the far-right groups who are blaming the crisis on immigrants get more popular.
Finally, he notes the importance of the unity of more centrist parties. “Crises often push mainstream parties toward a joint response. In Germany, most parties backed the core COVID-19 measures. […] Such unity can be crucial for collective action, such as getting a large share of the population vaccinated, but it also leaves the role of clear opposition to parties outside the mainstream,” Voelkel noted. “Even voters who do not share an extreme party’s platform may vote for it to signal ‘enough is enough’ to those in power.”
However, amidst the doom and gloom, some are finding signs of hope. “The important thing to remember is that our information is affected by the news sources we read,” noted IHS German teacher David Isley. “I’m reminded of the words of a German at the World Cup: ‘if you want to hate America, go on social media. If you want to love it, come here.’” This explains Rösch’s observations of the AfD’s social media presence: social media provides a portrait of the political landscape that is weighted to the extremes, because extreme statements get more engagement and are therefore incentivized. In reality, people are more centrist than they appear to be online.
Isley also notes the power of the Brandmauer: “Even if the AfD controls a large section of the German government, it can’t get much done without a coalition.” Because of the Brandmauer, the only way for the AfD to control the Bundestag would be for it to have over fifty percent of the seats. Right now, the AfD holds only twenty-three percent of the seats in the Bundestag, as opposed to the forty-seven percent it holds in Saxony-Anhalt’s Landtag.
While a couple people disobeying the Brandmauer in Saxony-Anhalt could elect Rausch, it would take a significantly larger number of representatives in the Bundestag to execute AFD policies.
It’s also important to acknowledge populations as well. Saxony-Anhalt has a smaller population than the city-state of Berlin, and the largest states have six to nine times as many people as Saxony-Anhalt. In those larger states, like North Rhine-Westphalia, the AfD has far fewer seats in the Landtag (12 out of 195). And in Bavaria, where the Nazis originated, the AfD holds as many seats as Die Grüne, an environmentally-focused party (each has 32 out of 203 total seats).
And the success of far-right groups in Europe is not permanent: the recent defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary shows hope in the fight against political extremism. In America, President Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low, and the Democrats have chances in primaries where they normally wouldn’t, like Kansas.
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