Der Noisy Fringe
A once anemic little party has embraced nativism and grown in power. Is Germany in trouble?
In the spring of 2017, Democracy in Danger host Siva Vaidhyanathan came across a shocking site in the heart of Berlin, beneath the Brandenburg Gate: a small group of neo-nazi men were chanting slogans of hate and wiving red and black flags. Within a few years, immigrant, nativist ideas lurking on the country’s noisy fringe and successfully mainstream them. Pictured here at Brandenburg on Aug. 29, 2020, AFD supporters protest against government-mandated COVID protocols. Their sign reads, “show your face instead of wearing a mask!”
D. Busquets / Shutterstock
In Germany, like much of Europe, the antidemocratic forces of the far right have been gaining ground, even as chancellor Angela Merkel has kept extremism at bay in her own coalition, with often shrewd and at times brave politics. As she prepares to retire, can she cement a legacy of benevolent pragmatism and keep her country’s noisy fringe from coopting the opposition? This time on the show, two experts on German politics help us explore Merkel’s legacy and what it means for the rest of the European Union — and the United States.
In the conventional narrative of the post–Cold War era in Europe, liberal democracy prevailed across the former Soviet sphere. But Georgetown historian Thomas Zimmer says this triumphant view of history may be misguided, failing to capture the continuities of nationalism and authoritarianism lurking in many countries. And not only in central and eastern Europe: as France also has seen its own far-right, xenophobic political elements expanding. Even then, Zimmer argues, such extreme views seem unable to gain traction — in Germany at least — beyond a sliver of the electorate. So as long as mainstream conservatives themselves “hold the line,” he says, he’s not too worried.
Merkel, meanwhile, has liberalized her own right-leaning Christian Democratic Party, pushing it to the center, in the process expanding Germany’s political and economic influence in European affairs. But some of her decisions — such as moving her country away from nuclear energy and accepting Syrian refugees — have emboldened right-wing populists, who have found a home in the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party.
As foreign policy expert Constanze Stelzenmüller suggests on this episode, the AfD’s growing presence in the German Bundestag, while numerically limited, is making it harder to build governing coalitions, and the concentration of support for the party in eastern Germany has deepened old divides. At the same time, though it lacks legislative clout, the party has taken advantage of the court system, bureaucratic maneuvering and pandemic denialism to further its anti-democratic, anti-E.U. ideals at a crucial moment for the union.
