By Henry Krenzer
Foreign Affairs
European Studies Review
In 2013, the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) was founded on the basis of a four-page program. Little more than ten years later, the party is represented in every state and federal parliament in Germany, and in some states already leads the polls. Established parties such as the Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Party, CDU) and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social-Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) have been struggling for years to curtail the success of the AfD and have resorted to rather restrictive policies, such as the firewall policy coined by CDU’s Friedrich Merz. In 2021, he promised that “there will be a firewall against the AfD,” and that whoever cooperated or brought forward initiatives with the party would be excluded from the CDU. Yet, despite such measures, the AfD party under Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla is soaring in opinion polls, especially in the eastern parts of Germany. This is of special concern because the three eastern states Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg will hold state elections in the fall. This begs the question of whether the firewall has fallen short of its intended purpose.
AfD’s Uniqueness in European Right-Wing Politics
The AfD in Germany is in a different situation from radical right parties in other European countries for an array of reasons, but historical contingencies play the most prominent role. For instance, the French Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) was founded in 1972, and since then followed an agenda on the right wing of the spectrum. Similarly, the Alleanza Nazionale, the predecessor of the Fratelli d‘Italia in Italy (Brothers of Italy), was continuously involved in federal governments from 1994 onwards. Interestingly, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria, FPÖ) in Austria was founded shortly after the Second World War and was part of regional coalitions frequently, even twice on a federal level. Most countries in Europe therefore have a longer history with radical right parties that were also involved in governments to a significant extent. In contrast, the AfD is a young party, barely older than 10 years, without government experience.
This lack of governing opportunities is certainly not due to a lack of success at the ballots. In other European countries, such as the Netherlands where the Partij voor de Virjheid (Party for Freedom, PVV) joined its first coalition once it obtained 15%, or Austria where the FPÖ was consistently involved in coalitions once it crossed the 12% threshold, parties got involved in coalitions relatively early. The AfD can boast such results in almost every state already, yet the party has not been involved in any state-level government so far. Rather, a collaboration is prevented by what this article calls historical contingencies: as opposed to Austria, Germany never tolerated parties that test the limits of constitutional values, consistently reminding the public of the Nazi’s rise to power in 1933. Whether the comparison to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP) holds true or not does not alter the fact that German parties are significantly more averse to collaborating with far-right parties. The deep-running resentments against right-wing parties led German politicians of all parties to categorically rule out a collaboration with the AfD. This comes at a price.
Why the Firewall-Policy is Unsustainable
Leaving argumentative battlegrounds to one party alone allows this party to claim and exploit the topic for its own purposes. When the AfD was founded on the grounds of Euro-skepticism, few parties interacted with this skepticism. This enabled the AfD to monopolize this topic. Even more, the party obtained a significant degree of freedom to frame the debate. Across the party programs from 2013 to 2015, we can see a rapid radicalization of demands. Similarly, during the migration crisis of 2015, the AfD discovered immigration as another topic for their portfolio. Again, other parties failed to interact with the criticism, giving the AfD ample freedom to occupy the topic and set the agenda of the public discourse. Finally, when a poll asked for the main concerns during the federal elections in 2017, migration topped the poll. And a majority of people who shared this concern had voted for the AfD. Therefore, we can observe a pattern of how the AfD has been monopolizing topics and instrumentalizing them for its purposes.
Even more, when CDU’s Merz erected a firewall against the AfD, he did so under the faulty assumption that this wall was immovable. The term implies a clear-cut margin between topics covered by parties such as the CDU and the SPD and topics which they are not willing to touch on. More importantly, the term suggests that this firewall cannot be moved or crossed. But over the recent years, the AfD has been observed to claim ever more topical grounds, which have been treated as scorched earth by other parties thereafter. For instance, in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP) lobbied for the Renewable Energy Directive (RED 1), which saw significant opposition from socialist and liberal parties. However, in 2020, Alice Weidel described the law as an exemplification of the much-hated EU bureaucracy and rallied against it. Surprisingly soon, critics of the RED 1 from the other side of the red line fell silent. Much like in previous episodes, the systematic exclusion from discussions allowed the AfD to hijack topics for themselves without opposition. This grants the AfD freedom unlike any other party to choose topics to cover, while at the same time rendering them untouchable to other parties. In this way, Merz’s firewall is merely an obstacle for other parties that the AfD can push as it sees fit.
An Alternative to the Firewall-Policy
In the face of the most recent polls, CDU leader in Thuringia Mario Voigt chose to confront AfD’s Björn Höcke directly in a TV interview. In being one of the first CDU politicians to directly debate an AfD candidate before a state-level election, he sets a unique precedent and challenges Merz‘s firewall policy. The discussion was broadcast for 90 minutes and revolved around immigration, economics, and Europe, the bread-and-butter topics of the AfD. The AfD celebrated the fall of the firewall policy, but also the agenda-setting seemed to play directly in the cards of Höcke. Yet, the debate defied all expectations and was celebrated as a successful debate against the right. Thus, what the controversy around the interview really shows is a feasible alternative to Merz’s firewall.
Thuringia is the most prominent example of the recent success of the AfD where it is leading with a solid 30% in the polls, ahead of the conservative CDU with 20%. The governing left party under Bodo Ramelow is only polling 17%, making a stable coalition seem unlikely. Therefore, as of now, there are two possible coalition outcomes: either a coalition that collaborates with the AfD in any form, which all parties have categorically declined so far, or a four-party partnership around the CDU which would be uneasy, all tensions considered.
Fig. 1: The first poll after the interview in March shows a slight decline of the AfD in blue
Few parties or politicians have dared to debate with politicians – or even citizens – across the firewall erected against the AfD. Now, Voigt’s discussion has made a convincing case for more engagement with topics covered by the AfD. The suspected surge in polls for the AfD did not come true. On the contrary: support went slightly down (Fig. 1), showing that a direct engagement in debate might be less futile than heralded. This holds especially true after the European elections. Capturing topics such as RED 1 and the burdensome European bureaucracy plays a crucial role in the success of the AfD. Their ability to exclusively claim certain topics allowed them to secure broad support and will continue to do so in the future, lest the approach of traditional parties changes.
The author thanks Prof. Nicholas Startin for his dedicated and insightful feedback.
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Photo: Cullan Smith/Unsplash
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