After the German elections in late February, it would appear that the ‘neo-Nazis’ have not seized power. The Fourth Reich has not risen anew from the ashes. Phew! That’s a relief. To listen to the media, one would have thought that we had been on the cusp of that nightmarish scenario before the elections, with the hard-right/far-right/extreme-right/neo-Nazi (delete as appropriate) Alternative für Deutschland party being about to seize the reins of power and impose a new Nazi order on Europe.
Fear and excessive hype are well-established tactics of the media, preying on our fears and demanding that we pay attention so that we can prepare our defences for some dreadful onslaught to come. What was the existential threat posed by the AfD, and are they really, you know, the Gen Z Nazis for the 21st century?
Many of their policies are, for the most part, what you might expect from a centre-right party of the 1980s: pro-nation state; anti-mass immigration; neoliberalist in economics. Other policies raise more concern among the liberal-left: an espousal of traditional families; allowing gay civil unions but not marriage; hostility to the growing influence of Islam; and denial of man-made climate change. On foreign policy, it has a realpolitik rather than moral attitude to Russia; and it is, collectively, a critical supporter of Israel, the EU and NATO. It’s not very Nazi, is it? Its largely pro-Israel stance and the fact that its leader is a lesbian are, ahem, surely strongly indicative of a less-than Hitlerian approach to political and social issues.
There are, undoubtedly, very unpleasant attitudes adhering to the AfD around the periphery, ranging from those wishing to shed Germany’s Nazi guilt to those who promote Holocaust revisionism and even, sotto voce, denialism (the latter being a crime in Germany). These are largely on the fringe; there are no votes in genuine extremism such as this. But even here in dear Old Blighty, such bastions of liberal progressivism and left-wingery as the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party have (rightly) had to kick out councillors for racist and anti-Semitic attitudes and dodgy tweets. Every political party has its unsavoury characters scuttling around in the basement. The AfD is no different in this regard. That it is on the firm or hard right inevitably means that some further along that political spectrum will be attracted to it as the nearest port of call available to them, even if it is some distance away, in the hope of pulling it in their direction.
But the minority should not be taken as representing the majority; much of the media insists on doing this. Most AfD supporters are, just like other voters across the western world, simply fed up and frustrated with unresponsive illiberal liberal governments who ignore ordinary people’s voices and who instead continue to plough their own furrows of virtue-signalling idealism. The more extreme these illiberal governments become, especially in the suppression of free speech, the more they will engender a reactionary counter-balance. Extremism on one side may eventually lead to extremism on the opposite side. (That the AfD is far stronger in old East Germany, subjected to decades of Communist authoritarian rule, is perhaps telling.) Cause and effect are blithely disregarded by the liberal progressives in power: it is simply too inconvenient for their mode of rule.
Besides, the AfD won only 20% of the vote in the February elections. That leaves a whopping 80% who voted for others, including the same number who voted for the Greens and the Left. That hardly seems an alarming prospect for those animatedly opposed to the AfD. But that prosaic reality does not make for good, fabricated fear-mongering among the media. Besides, as happens repeatedly in France when the National front or now the National Rally does well in the popular vote, the other political parties will forge any variation of establishment and rag-tag radical coalition with unsavouries to prevent any chance of a right-wing populist party from achieving power.
Oh – and Hitler was never elected into power as many still think. He was appointed Chancellor by Germany’s president. Genuine democracy remains the greatest safeguard against authoritarians. So – what is the fuss really about, then? The shocking temerity of hoi-polloi voting against the interests of their betters.
