Germany’s political divide sharpens

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 25th of February.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up, a political groundswell in Germany.

Over the weekend, Germany’s most conservative party took second place in national elections. The Alternative for Germany party is known by the German initialism A-F-D: the “D” for Deutschland.

A German nationalist party has not achieved this much popular success since the 1930’s.

EICHER: The success of the AfD set off political shockwaves. Many worry Germany may be sliding back towards fascism. But others believe the AfD is their best chance to overturn an unsatisfactory status quo. One in five voters backed the AfD as Germany grapples with mass immigration, and a string of terror attacks.

REICHARD: What does all this mean? And how could it alter global politics? WORLD’s Grace Snell has the story.

GRACE SNELL: On Saturday, pro-AfD Germans gathered in Erfurt, Germany’s main square.

SOUND: Five years ago, we had mostly older people. But now mostly young people.

Voters like this AfD event coordinator come from all over the political spectrum…from German nationalists to immigration skeptics. All agree the German system isn’t working.

HӦCKE: Friends, the mantle of history is just passing us by, like in 1989.

That’s AfD regional leader Björn Höcke proclaiming a new era of freedom in Germany.

HӦCKE: We are well-advised as Germans to take action and not allow the future of our country to be lost—until the future of our beloved German fatherland is secured!

German courts have twice convicted Höcke for using the Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany” at his rallies.

Across the square, protestors outnumber and outshout AfD supporters…waving rainbow flags and homemade cardboard signs.

AUDIO: Nazis raus! Nazis raus! Nazis raus!

They’re chanting: “Nazis out! Nazis out!”

They’re all here for a single reason, too:

LAURA: Because we don’t want the AfD in our country…

Laura is a 16-year-old who supports Germany’s left-wing party—die Linke. She and her friend Kim came to protest the AfD policy of mass deportation, or “remigration.”

KIM: We want a Germany for everyone and not for just a few people.

For them, a vote for the AfD is a vote for Nazis.

Rows of police cars and a metal barricade keep the protestors far away from the AfD campaign rally. Like Germany’s national public square: the country’s left and right extremes face off across a rapidly-eroding political center.

The AfD hasn’t always been this controversial. Here’s Georgetown University professor Eric Langenbacher.

LANGENBACHER: When it was founded, it was a very different party. It was founded by economics professors…

Economics professors who resented Germany footing the bill for the European Union bail-outs of debt-ridden members like Greece. They formed the Alternative for Germany as a eurosceptic and free market party in 2013.

But, Langenbacher says the AfD soon morphed into something quite different.

LANGENBACHER: Very quickly they kind of evolved into a populist right radical party that in particular is very much against migration, and especially migration from Muslim majority countries.

In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed over a million asylum seekers into the country. Most were fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. That created a massive cultural collision…and an added financial burden to the country’s welfare system.

The AfD’s party platform talks about protecting Germany’s borders, tightening asylum law, and ending cash benefits for asylum seekers…though, leaders have used stronger language to describe the migration crisis facing Germany.

Support for the party ticked up as the country grappled with an economic downturn and a string of terrorist attacks carried out by migrants.

One of the most controversial things AfD leaders have done is to say Germany focuses too much on Hitler and the Holocaust…and should remember more of the nation’s previous millennia of history. Here’s Langenbacher.

LANGENBACHER: The state leader in the eastern state of Thuringia,

He’s referring to That’s Björn Höcke…

LANGENBACHER: …said that, you know, the Germans are the only people that would build a monument to shame in their nation’s capital, referring to the memorial to the murder Jews of Europe, which was opened back in 2005.

Langenbacher says many AfD voters aren’t as extreme as party leaders like Höcke. But they feel frustrated and fed-up with their current political options.

On Sunday, one in five Germans voted for the AfD—a high tally in a Parliamentary system with lots of parties vying for power. But it’s still a minority overall.

In the German parliament, parties must form governing coalitions to secure the majority needed to pass legislation. And all of Germany’s other political parties refuse to work with the AfD…calling the move a firewall against the AfD’s extremism.

That means Germany’s victorious center-right party—the Christian Democratic Union—only has left-leaning or left-wing coalition partners to choose from. As a result…

LANGENBACHER: Germans keep voting center-right, and they keep getting governed center-left.

Langenbacher says there’s a lot of overlap between the AfD’s platform and the MAGA movement in the United States. Both groups support tax cuts, express climate change skepticism, and oppose gender ideology. And the Trump administration seems to be taking note.

MUSK: I think you want more self-determination for Germany and for the countries in Europe and less from Brussels.

In December, Elon Musk endorsed the AfD as — in his words— the “last spark of hope” for Germany’s future. And Tino Chruppalla—the AfD’s other co-chair—attended Trump’s inauguration. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz was not invited.

JD VANCE: President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent.

More recently, at the February 14th Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance urged German politicians to abandon their firewall and invite the AfD to the table.

STELZENMÜLLER: No American senior politician has ever done something like that before.

Constanze Stelzenmüller is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She says Vance’s speech stunned mainstream German politicians. Especially since Germany’s domestic intelligence service has named the AfD a suspected anti-constitutional threat.

STELZENMÜLLER: The AfD is overtly pro-Russian and overtly pro-Chinese, and it’s befuddling to many of us why an American administration should think that that was a good thing to have governing Germany.

Stelzenmüller says the U.S. government’s decision to court Germany’s political pariah threatens to drive a serious wedge between the long-time allies. She says many German politicians admit the country should do more to take ownership of their own security.

STELZENMÜLLER: But, espousing the view that the Alternative for Germany is, as it were, the salvation of democracy in Germany is, I think, a step too far for more than 80% of Germany’s voters.

In the meantime, Germany seems to be headed for another “grand coalition” —an alliance between its center-right and center-left political parties. It’s the same political configuration that dominated German politics for several terms under long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Once again, the CDU leader has vowed to shun the AfD as a coalition partner. And Georgetown University’s Langenbacher says that means Germany’s next election will be one for the history books.

LANGENBACHER: If the next government can’t start to address the multiple, serious sGtructural problems that Germany has right now, I think the AfD will be even stronger four years from now.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell...in Erfurt, Germany.

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