An Alternative Germany

The ascent of the AfD belongs to a pattern in Europe of growing power for right-wing populists, who’ve won national elections in Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia—and appear likely to win in Austria and Belgium this year, and in the European Parliament in June.

But the AfD is different—as Germany is different. Some of AfD’s leaders have openly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. And the possibility of the AfD coming to power in the country where Hitler and the Nazis launched World War II and orchestrated the Holocaust has driven hundreds of thousands into Germany’s streets to protest in recent months. So what’s giving the party such growing strength—and what does it mean for the country?

Liana Fix is a fellow for Europe at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy. As Fix sees it, there are a number of factors driving support for the AfD: East Germany’s economic lagging behind West Germany, discontent with rising numbers of migrants coming into Germany—as well as with the political elite’s failure to handle the issue—and the party’s increasing appeal to the middle class.

Some of these factors have also been driving support for the populist right across Europe. But, Fix says, the AfD is moving in the opposite direction from the continent’s right-wing populist parties in general. While others are toning down their rhetoric to win mainstream voters and establishment acceptance, the AfD is declaring its extremism more and more openly. To some extent, this is because party leaders believe that German voters hold those positions along with them—but it’s also because neo-Nazi elements have taken greater control of the party in recent years.

And yet German voters aren’t recoiling. On the contrary, polls show support for AfD remaining strong, with the party projected to win elections in several large East German states this fall.

But it’s moved more and more to the right. During the migration crisis of 2015—when a wave of Syrians arrived in Europe to escape the civil war in their country—AfD became increasingly anti-migration, and its Euro-skeptic platform receded.

Since, the party has increasingly radicalized. The German government has officially labeled a couple of AfD organizations at the state level as extremist groups. And the German domestic intelligence service has been monitoring them, along with the party’s youth organization.

The AfD leadership in parts of East Germany includes some clear neo-Nazis, such as Björn Höcke in Thuringia. Höcke is the leader of a faction in the party that the domestic intelligence service declared a right-wing extremist group. This is someone who once said young African men had “no future and no home in Germany and in Europe.”

These radical, neo-Nazi elements have become increasingly powerful within the AfD—after a few years of infighting between them and members who consider themselves just a more conservative version of the established Christian Democrats. The radical wing is winning.

But the party’s voters represent a more nuanced story. Yes, opinion polls show AfD as the country’s second most popular party, but it usually gets fewer votes in elections than its polling suggests it should. That’s because many people who support the AfD in polls are protest voters. They just don’t like the established parties, and they often wind up not voting.

In a recent poll among AfD supporters, 44 percent said they’d consider voting for another party. The rest are the party’s true base—ultra-conservatives, right-wing extremists, and neo-Nazis. But this 44 percent seems to back the AfD more out of protest than conviction.

Still, regardless of why these people prefer the AfD, they don’t seem to mind the extent to which it’s radicalized. It’s concerning—that so many in Germany appear undeterred by the growing extremism of the party.

“The profile of AfD voters skews toward older males. Younger voters who back the party tend to live in East Germany, where unemployment is higher. But more and more, the German middle class has been expressing positive opinions about the AfD. This support seems concentrated among those who fear losing their social position on account of economic difficulties. The party’s traction with the middle class is, in all events, vital to why its support has gone to 20 percent in the country as a whole.”

“One important difference between the AfD and other right-wing populist parties in Europe is that these others have adopted a strategy in recent years of becoming—or seeming to become—more mainstream in a bid to win more voters. … But the AfD is doing the exact opposite. They aren’t moderating their rhetoric. One AfD candidate for the European Parliament elections in June said the the party couldn’t see any reason to become more mainstream, or even pretend to, as voters support them because they’re so radical.”

“[Anti-AfD] demonstrations … obscure the fact that Germany’s major parties still haven’t figured out how to win back the roughly half of all AfD voters who’d consider voting for someone else. It’s a tough problem, but these parties will have to try solving it before the national elections in September 2025—and, more importantly, the East German state elections this year. If the AfD were to become the strongest party in a number of East German states, the longstanding principle of the political firewall—a refusal to work with the AfD at the local, regional, or national level, which all major parties have held to—would really be put to the test.”

One Country, One System

In July 2021, Minxin Pei examined the extent of mainland China’s control over Hong Kong, after a wave of arrests of pro-democracy activists and journalists. As Pei sees it, the Chinese Communist Party, though formally still respecting Hong Kong’s distinct “system,” was already then implementing its plan to absorb the enclave fully into the People’s Republic—making it essentially no different than any other big Chinese city.

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