Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) performed strongest among blue-collar workers and in the former East Germany. Behind this lie historical and economic reasons.
On Sunday 23 February Germany held its parliamentary elections, and the centre-right emerged victorious, with the win going to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). The latter will need to form a governing coalition that will very likely include the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), as well as the Bavarian wing of the CDU itself, the CSU.
Those who will remain outside the government, along probably with the Greens, are Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the German far-right party. The latter achieved a historic result at the elections, finishing second with a share of support exceeding 20 per cent. Support that came above all from the territory of the former East Germany. According to analysts, AfD's grip on that territory has historical roots, connected to the way citizens grew accustomed to engaging with politics during the era of Soviet influence, as well as to the economic disparities with the western part of the country.
Not since 1990, the year of reunification, had so many Germans turned out to vote as they did at the parliamentary elections of 23 February. Turnout reached 82.5 per cent — which, to put it in perspective, is more than 20 percentage points higher than at the last Italian parliamentary elections.
The party that obtained the most votes, 28.5 per cent, was the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), a centre-right party once led by former Chancellor Angela Merkel. The CDU, together with its Bavarian wing the CSU, won 202 parliamentary seats out of 630 and was tasked with forming a government. It will likely do so with the party of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a centre-left party that obtained 16.4 per cent of the vote and 120 seats, 86 fewer than at the last election. Those expected to remain outside the executive are the Greens, who after their strong showing at the last election have now taken 11 per cent of the vote and 85 seats, losing 33. And the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), on which the CDU has already placed a veto on any alliance.
AfD was founded in 2013 by a number of defectors from the CDU and established itself as an extremist and reactionary party, built on nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric, opposition to multiculturalism and a fight against civil rights such as abortion, while occasionally winking at the country's Nazi history. After winning last September's regional elections in Thuringia, in eastern Germany, the party has now established itself as the country's second political force at the national parliamentary elections, obtaining more than 20 per cent of the vote and 152 seats, 69 more than at the last electoral round.
According to vote analyses, women voted more to the left than men, while among young people under 24 the top party is Linke, a left-wing party that at national level obtained 8.7 per cent of the vote. Looking at the votes obtained by AfD, two criteria stand out: one professional and one geographical. The far-right party was the most voted-for among blue-collar workers, with 38 per cent — a lead of 16 percentage points over the CDU. And it was by far the most voted-for party in the former East Germany as well, confirming last year's victory in the Thuringia regional elections.
The reasons behind the far right's sweeping success in the former East Germany — a territory that until 35 years ago corresponded to the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) — are numerous. And they are cultural, political and economic in nature.
Eastern Germany is the poorest part of the country. When reunification took place in 1990, the western part had a flourishing economy, industries running at full capacity and high employment, while the eastern part, coming out of decades of planned economy and the financial crisis brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union, was not faring particularly well. From the West, where parties such as the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) held sway, the promise had always been one of alignment and a sharing of economic prosperity — which, however, never fully materialised in practice. Today the economic performance of the eastern part of Germany stands at 75–80 per cent of that of the western part, the savings of the average eastern resident are one third of those of their western counterparts and private assets owned are half as much, while the unemployment rate exceeds 7 per cent, compared to 5 per cent in the western territory.
These economic difficulties, which have persisted for decades, have meant that in the eastern part of the country the major centre-right and centre-left parties, dominant in the West, have always struggled to gain significant support. This alone helps explain the surge of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the area. At the same time, economic hardship has become the justification for finding enemies to point the finger at, in that race to the bottom that so often ignites in these situations. Migrants, who arrived in large numbers in Germany in recent years after Chancellor Angela Merkel decided in 2015 to welcome one million Syrians, have become the scapegoat for Germany's economic and social problems among the poorest sections of the population, and those like AfD who have positioned themselves as the voice of xenophobic and nationalist demands have garnered enormous support within these electoral pockets, as shown by the very high number of votes collected among blue-collar workers. As far back as 1992 in Rostock, a group of far-right extremists attacked, to the applause of bystanders, a group of refugees from Vietnam and Mozambique, accused of stealing their jobs and the scarce opportunities available.
The grip of xenophobic and nationalist rhetoric in the former East Germany is also due to the fact that the region is more rural in character compared to the urbanised western part. And where, historically, the dynamics of multiculturalism, so typical of large cities, have been less present, a greater "fear of the other" has taken hold. There is also a historical and cultural dimension behind the rise of the far right. For long decades, Germany has reckoned with its Nazi past, through ad hoc legislation and acts of remembrance designed to create an environment inhospitable to anything remotely resembling that experience. But it is almost as though the former East Germany, with its history of belonging to the Soviet bloc, has always felt detached from that story. "The East German regime always treated the fascist past shared by the country as something externalised and separate from the socialist state they had built," notes Alan McDougall, professor of German history at the University of Guelph. This has made affiliation with and voting for parties like AfD less of a taboo — parties that in some cases have even made direct references to the Hitler era.
Finally, precisely because of this different historical background, there is a distinct way of conceiving politics between the western and eastern parts of Germany. As the magazine New Lines writes in a lengthy analysis on the subject, "inexperience with democratic governance and civil society infrastructure, combined with a political culture that did not tolerate dissent, has left the eastern region vulnerable to populists whose programmes are built on identifying and persecuting a public enemy, real or imagined." The British newspaper The Guardian, citing historian Christina Morina, also highlights that East Germany's historical experience of pseudo-democracy is one of the explanations for why AfD has managed, through its populist rhetoric, to mobilise so many voters in the region.
