{"id":13751,"date":"2025-03-06T21:10:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T02:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=13751"},"modified":"2025-03-14T03:49:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T07:49:31","slug":"far-right-surges-but-left-surprises-in-german-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2025\/03\/far-right-surges-but-left-surprises-in-german-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Far-right surges, but left surprises, in German elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he next chancellor of Germany will be the former Blackrock consultant Friedrich Merz. His election comes alongside a surge in votes for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and 93 years after a similar figure, Franz von Papen, ascended to the German chancellorship. Merz\u2019s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU), picked up 28.5 percent<\/a> of the vote, more than any other party but still one of its worst results in the history of the German Federal Republic.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s former ruling \u201ctraffic light\u201d coalition\u2014consisting of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP)\u2014collapsed in November 2024, prompting this month\u2019s elections. The former ruling parties all suffered heavy losses. The SPD received just 16.4 percent of the vote, its worst result in more than 60 years, while the FDP lost all 91 of its Bundestag seats and the Greens lost more than one-quarter of their representatives.<\/p>\n

The biggest gains were made by the AfD, a far-right ethno-nationalist party that has been radicalizing<\/a> and gaining ground in regional parliaments for more than ten years. The party dominated the eastern states of the former German Democratic Republic, earning one out of every three votes there and more than 20 percent of votes nationally. The AfD is the spearhead of fascization in Germany, pulling almost all other parties toward the right, especially on migrant and refugee politics.<\/p>\n

In a surprise turnaround, Germany\u2019s far-left party Die Linke soared past expectations to win 8.8 percent of the vote, buoyed by an influx of 30,000 new party members this year. It is now the strongest party in Berlin, the capital, and won its first-ever district west of the old Berlin Wall: Neuk\u00f6lln, the heart of the Palestine solidarity protests.<\/p>\n

Political polarisation<\/h4>\n

With the exception of Die Linke, the election campaign was dominated by a full-spectrum lurch to the right as parties tried to keep up with the AfD\u2019s racism and anti-migrant politics. Underneath the official party positions, though, political polarization has continued in German society.<\/p>\n

A pivotal moment came at the end of January when the CDU introduced a harsh anti-migrant bill, knowing it would require AfD votes to become law. Although the bill failed to pass, the attempt broke a consensus among parties never to cooperate with the far-right party. Despite an outcry in the media, Merz subsequently made it clear<\/a> that the CDU would continue to operate with the tacit support of the AfD, signalling the end of the \u201cfirewall\u201d against fascism and, thereby, also the end of a basic binding consensus in German politics since the founding of the federal republic after the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two.<\/p>\n

While all other parties were complicit, either by directly voting for the bill (FDP, BSW) or by implementing almost identical policies while in office (SPD, Greens), only Die Linke put forward an alternative. Footage of Die Linke chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek<\/a> excoriating Friedrich Merz on the floor of the Bundestag went viral, tapping into a deep wellspring of disgust with fascism and with the other parties for failing to do anything about its rise. \u201cThe firewall in this country remains us<\/em>, and all of us will go to the streets\u201d, Reichinnek declared, \u201cto the barricades!\u201d<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of young people joined Die Linke in the aftermath, forming a veritable electoral army of doorknocking activists. Despite its stunning results, Die Linke\u2019s prior record of helping to administer austerity in regional governments, its contradictory approach to foreign policy, and the many failures of its leaders to stand with the Palestine solidarity mobilisation leave questions for the future of the party.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s polarization proceeds according to the same dynamics as in the United States, Brazil, France, or any number of other countries today: the dynamics of class conflict.<\/p>\n

How we got here<\/h4>\n

Germany has an extremely wealthy elite<\/a> and high levels of inequality\u2014the two richest German families own more wealth than the bottom half of the population. As the economy slows, the ruling class increasingly sees the path back to profitability running to the right.<\/p>\n

The old \u201cexport model\u201d of German international competitiveness has faced roadblocks<\/a> for some time, but it entered a crisis under SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s watch. The German economic model was upended by the combined effects of the Covid crisis, China\u2019s mass exports of electric cars, and the energy price shock caused by the loss of cheap Russian gas. (Russia invaded Ukraine just two months after the traffic light coalition took office.) The country entered a recession that led to rapidly falling industrial output<\/a>, layoffs in auto, chemicals and other industries, and skyrocketing energy and housing costs for residents.<\/p>\n

Employers called for scrapping green energy transition plans and adopting traditional means of reviving the economy. Despite some inconsistent social reforms<\/a> instituted during his administration, Scholz\u2019s government responded to employers primarily by slashing social services and the climate fund.<\/p>\n

Further, despite rhetorical denunciations of Merz\u2019s dalliance with the AfD, Scholz\u2019s coalition was central to implementing extremely harsh European-wide anti-migrant and anti-refugee laws in the last five years through the Common European Asylum System. As the Green Foreign Minister Baerbock put it bluntly to Merz on the floor of the Bundestag: \u201cWhat can you get with the AfD that we didn\u2019t already do through the CEAS?\u201d<\/p>\n

The CDU and AfD are both fiercely committed to serving the wealthy. Their common program includes<\/a> lowering taxes on the rich, strictly adhering to the \u201cdebt brake\u201d (which limits government borrowing and therefore leads to covering costs with cuts to social welfare), slashing wages and basic income protections and reasserting heteronormative nuclear families by cutting parental support subsidies and parental leave and further dismantling childcare infrastructure.<\/p>\n