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The recent elections in Germany have seen the rise of the far-right party AfD. This is worrying because Germany was once indecisive like Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Now it is moving towards radical right-wing ideology. In this article we will analyze the political situation in Germany, the reasons for the rise of AfD and its possible consequences. We will also look at what this situation of Germany means for the rest of the world.
In the 19th century, Germany was considered to be indecisive like Hamlet. The poet Ferdinand Freiligrath said in 1844, ‘Germany is Hamlet.’ He was saddened by Germany’s hesitation to fight against political repression. Four years later in 1848, revolutions broke out in Europe. People demanded personal freedom, political rights, freedom of expression and economic rights. Although these revolutions failed, they laid the foundation for social democracy that shaped modern Europe.
Today, the call for revolution is being heard again, but this time it is coming not from progressive forces, but from the radical right. In Germany’s February 23 elections, the ruling SPD won just 16.4% of the vote, a historic low. The Christian Democrats won 28.6% of the vote. But the real winner was the AfD, which doubled its seats in parliament in less than four years and became the second-largest party with 20.8% of the vote.
The question is why is right-wing populism on the rise in an economically strong country like Germany? Is it because, as satirist Jan Boheman suggested in the New York Times, right-wing extremism is inherent in Germany and one of its most successful export products?
There is certainly a core base of radical right voters in German society, like most others. But they cannot be responsible for the huge rise in right-wing support. The election results tell a different story. They reflect a deeply divided society. For example, there is a clear divide between eastern Germany and the rest of the country. In the three eastern Bundesländer the AfD took around 37% of the vote – 47% in some constituencies – to become the strongest political party. Another division was between generations. Young people abandoned the established parties and moved to the fringes, supporting either the AfD or a small left-wing socialist party, Die Linke.
The polarisation of German society is nothing new. Sociologist Stefan Mau’s celebrated study ‘Unequally united: why the East remains separate’ (Ungleich vereint: Warum der Osten anders bleibt) draws attention to the legacy of reunification, which saw job losses and a brain drain to the West. He argues that the crisis in eastern Germany is a crisis of civil society. Mau argues that a sense of identity defined against the elites of West Germany, coupled with a slight inferiority complex, has emerged as the only remaining source of social cohesion.
But status anxiety is not limited to the East. Political commentators of all kinds point to a sense of insecurity that pervades German society. Particularly vulnerable to the siren call of the far-right are members of the lower middle class, who fear social degradation more than falling incomes in a rapidly changing world. This is exactly the scenario that the political philosopher Michael Sandel warns against in his Tyranny of Merit (2020). In a world where success is measured solely in economic terms, the fear of being left behind gives rise to resentment and despair. The bonds of citizenship are then broken. To this extent, the changes taking place in Germany reflect situations in other parts of the world.
The AfD has a single solution to all of society’s problems: blame immigrants. Adept at compensating for a lack of ideas with a torrent of disinformation on social media, it successfully hijacked public debate during the election campaign. Practical reasoning has largely been stifled amid high-stakes humanitarian emotions and anti-immigrant sentiment. What is rarely mentioned is that an aging German society facing chronic labor shortages needs immigrants as much as immigrants need Germany.
The sense of economic despair exacerbates a widespread loss of faith in democratic institutions. The country is mired in a recession, for which the end of cheap Russian gas is not entirely to blame. Equally devastating is crumbling infrastructure, a failure to invest in innovation and digitalization, and the same bureaucracy that glorifies India’s license raj. There is a logjam of work that has accumulated over decades. The dramatic increase in vote share for the far right is a demonstration of distrust in German democracy. It is a wake-up call for the liberal establishment to end its procrastination and finally take decisive action.
