Germany’s far-right politics narrowly nipped…for now

On Sunday, January 28, the German state of Thuringia held a regional run-off election, where Christian Herrgott of the conservative Christian Democratic Union narrowly defeated Uwe Thrum of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a global context with less concern about rising extremism, this little election would not have been the focus of international news.

But Thuringia’s run-off was recently spun a litmus test for Germany’s European Parliament elections, to be held in June: in part, because of a mid-January report that revealed a far-right agenda of mass deportations in meetings attended by the AfD. In equal part, because German citizens then mobilized decisively against the AfD and its values: over a million across the nation.

This meant that the little run-off election, in which 69% of 66,000 registered voters participated, wasn’t simply a test of local willingness to entertain and elevate nationalist extremes. It was also a test of how effective broader mobilization against extremism would be. And in that test, there were deeply mixed outcomes.

Yes, Thrum lost. But not by losing voters: he went from 45.7% of the vote two weeks ago to 47.6% on Sunday. The only thing that spared the region from his party’s dominance was the surge of supporters for Herrgott: from 33.3% to 52.4% after the report’s release, and subsequent protest movement. In this case, nationalist fervor wasn’t lessened by public outcry: only met by a stronger countervailing force.

And that outcome, along with its backstory and implications, holds lessons for us all.

The recent German context

Germany is a little over half the size of Texas, with a population of 84.6 million (Texas has 30.3). In 2022, Germany’s population grew by 1.3%, especially while managing an influx of Ukrainian refugees, while deaths continued to outnumber births in aging local demographics. It’s the second-most populous country in Europe (after Turkey), and nineteenth-most populous in the world. Germany is the fourth largest economy (after the US, China, and Japan), and the third largest exporter, even though 70% of its GDP draws from the service industry. As with most European countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s been hit hard by the rising cost of imports.

Thuringia is in the center of Germany, and the Nazi Party first gained real government power there during local 1929 elections. Although a tidy narrative of World War II suggests the eradication of Nazis, positive views of Hitler persisted years after the Third Reich, and neo-Nazi parties emerged almost immediately, even if they were significantly sidelined in local politics. From the German Right Party (1946-1950) and the Socialist Reich Party (1949-1952), to the German Reich Party (1950-1965), to the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD, 1964), which merged with the German People’s Union (1987-2011) and in 2023 renamed itself “The Homeland”, ethno-nationalist politics never fully went away.

Amid these toxic fringe politics, though, a more pragmatic form of conservatism also allowed for postwar democratic renewal, despite the ongoing hardships caused by the Cold War and Berlin Wall. Against great odds, a respect for tradition was used by many in Germany to support one of the world’s most robust social welfare states. This history began with Otto von Bismarck in the late 19th century, and was bolstered for decades by a less adversarial relationship between government and unions in industry policy discourse. Germany’s form of parliament also allows small-party voices to bypass the 5% threshold test in some circumstances. In practice, this means that a wide range of left-leaning, right-leaning, and independent voices have a chance to gain prominence: for better, and for worse.

Then there are the fringe contingents that opt out of the state project entirely. In December, The Guardian reported on the Kingdom of Germany (KRD): a few thousand Germans who reject the modern state, and boast their own constitution, passports, and currency on rural properties they’ve been buying around the country. Their founder declared himself sovereign, taking the name Peter I, but he has some local competition, in another extremist group with a self-declared sovereign. Members of the armed group Reichsbürger, under Heinrich XIII, Prince Reuss, received terrorist charges in December pursuant to an alleged plot to storm parliament.

Both groups perpetuate a body of conspiracy theories about the “deep state” that would not be unfamiliar to North Americans exposed to QAnon, blood libel, and sovereign-citizen movements closer to home. Between 21,000 and 25,000 individuals have been identified by German intelligence as people who do not recognize the legitimacy of the post-war German state. They may be a very small drop in Germany’s 84.6 million bucket, but that’s part of the problem: this tiny minority still presents a growing threat to the democratic state.

It’s not the only one.

The Alternative for Germany Party

The AfD has gained significant traction in recent years, especially in state and European Parliament elections: the latter, despite its strong criticism of European economic integration. Formed in 2013, it achieved representation in 14 of 16 German states by 2017, when it also became the third-largest national party with 94 seats in the federal election. Although the party dropped in standing in 2021, and suffered a public setback when Jörg Meuthen went from a leading candidate to a politician who cut ties with the organization over its hard turn to far-right and anti-democratic values, the AfD surged in 2023, when state elections put it second or third in Hesse and Bavaria, collectively home to a quarter of Germany’s voters.

A few factors have contributed to the rise of this far-right movement, which now polls at around 30% approval in Thuringia, and is passing 20% in national rankings. One is the strength of its radical youth wing, Junge Alternative, and its East German offices. These have been put on specific notice by German domestic intelligence, which was granted the right to run surveillance on the AfD in 2022. This was the first time in postwar history that an opposition party was put under such scrutiny.

In April, the Junge Alternative was then listed as a threat to democracy. By December, the AfD’s Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia state branches had all been flagged as well: for politics including historical revisionist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and racist sentiment, but also for strong associations with known neo-Nazis and perceived threats to democratic order.

Another factor is contextual: hateful rhetoric, neo-Nazi associations, and extreme nationalism are deepening in general in Europe, which has seen the rise of far-right politics most everywhere. Certainly, political scientists regard AfD as operating at an extreme not even seen in other European right-wing parties: more extreme than groups in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Reformist faction of the European Parliament. But the struggle to combat their rise remains similar. Although some countries have long histories of cutting funding and de-platforming perceived dangers to democratic order, it’s unclear how effective many bans are in practice.

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AfD positions span everything from exiting NATO and the EU, to opposing adoption for queer couples, disabled children’s inclusion in schools, and abortion. AfD’s racial purity fixation also places it to the right of Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO), according to Austrian historian Ulf Brunnbauer of University of Regensburg; in a Foreign Affairs analysis, he suggested that the FPO still offers a wider range of “moderate” positions, whereas AfD’s ranks have moved to more unified extremes.

But if so, they have not done so in a vacuum. In 2021, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party replaced Angela Merkel as German Chancellor, where he serves as the head of a three-party liberal-left coalition involving the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). This alliance has had a rough time amid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: or more specifically, with managing Germany’s kitchen-table politics around energy costs, inflation, and an overall economic stall.

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Worse still, there’s a huge budget hole created by the concessions these three parties agreed to in order to share amicably in federal leadership. Although Scholz had previously found a way to repurpose unused credit authorizations from the pandemic, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled against this measure in late 2023: creating a shortfall and a lack of confidence in leadership. FDP members are now increasingly inclined to leverage this situation and drive the country to the polls, in the hope of securing a new coalition with better FDP standing.

Whether that inner politicking won’t just create more room not only for moderate conservatives to gain more seats, but also the far right, remains to be seen.

The recent incendiary report

On January 10, Correctiv published a report drawn from secret recordings, infiltration, and witness testimony, which revealed an extreme “remigration” “master plan” being discussed in clandestine hotel meetings in November. These meetings were attended by AfD members, wealthy financiers, and known neo-Nazis and other nationalists. There, Martin Sellner proposed identifying people viewed to be a burden on German society and either “encouraging” them to leave or deporting them. Even naturalized German citizens were under scrutiny in this proposal.

The location of these hotel meetings was also deeply troubling for German citizens aware of their history. In 1942, the Wannsee Conference was held not far from Potsdam. There, Nazis met to organize plans for the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jewish population: the Final Solution.

And although some AfD members tried to distance themselves from the event and mass deportation plan, Hans-Christoph Berndt, speaking for the AfD in Brandenburg state parliament on January 17, was quite blunt in his endorsement of its language: “Remigration is not a secret plan, but a promise. That’s what’s Parliament member René Springer [of the AfD] said, and there’s no better way to put it.”

But much of Germany was outraged by this report, after months of concern that already had the federal government weighing whether or not to fully ban the organization for perceived threats to democratic order. Day after day, German citizens took to the streets in growing numbers to protest the AfD and other far right groups, calling for a ban on the party while recriminations took center-stage in parliamentary debate. Cities like Liepzig and Dresden, which are considered more susceptible to AfD rhetoric, joined Munich, Berlin, Cologne, and Frankfurt to produce a strong showing of citizens against a normalization of far-right politics.

A week ago, the government took a key, preliminary step toward tackling the AfD, by finally pulling state funding and tax breaks for The Homeland (NPD): essentially rendering the party defunct. Recent analysis by Der Spiegel noted similar incendiary rhetoric in both parties’ writings, which is a promising sign for further state action. When Germany strengthens its response to such rhetoric from one group, it fortifies its legal standing to address the rest.

But then came the run-off election in Thuringia, which some are viewing as a “win” simply because Thurm lost. The resilience of his vote share, though, highlights that Germany’s challenges have not yet ended. Quite the opposite: in a fraught year around the world for rising nationalism, Germany has a tense lead-up to its European Parliament elections in June, and a lot of work to do on the federal level, to keep its political coalitions robust enough to stave off further extremist threats.

If the initial results of German protests and broader state efforts to cap funding for far-right parties are any indication, though, this country is not alone in the challenge. If general outrage at the existence of such movements is not enough to deter most members, and if bans and protests might only further radicalize some, the rest of us will need to keep showing up in larger numbers, and find other strategies to avoid being held captive by relatively small political demographics—no matter how loud their commitment to nationalist extremes.