WDemocracy still stays west for a decade? This is definitely a question that weighs the mind of the road -Die Linke supporters who have been a former movie studio overlooking Berlin’s Templehof Airport last week. They were gathered to listen to the results of the German election – and their reactions were mixed. The far right alternative Für Deutschland (AFD) has only doubled its support for federal elections, which got a fifth vote, but Die Linke became top in the capital, even with 21% of the vote. They made fun of, hug, kiss and cry.
We are in Neukölln, a diverse neighborhood of Southeast Berlin, and the successful candidate is Ferat Koçak, a charismatic Kurdish-German leftist. His indigenous campaign knocked on every district door – not uncommon in the UK and the US, but a new German. “For many years, the left has been in a kind of shocked paralysis about what to do with the rising right,” explained 30-year-old activist Isabelle: campaigning grassroots, he believes, has released the left to its bubble.
A few months ago, Die Linke, former co-leader Sahra Wagenknecht, seemed to be submerged in dividing to cope with a new alliance with the left economy with social conservatism. But the alliance failed to win seats. “Adolescents are more appealing to connecting the left economy with antiracism and femininity, and not putting them against each other,” said fellow activist Johanna.
Die Linke’s support once focused on a generation that grew up in former East Germany, killed by Deindustrialization and Nostalgia – Ostalgie – For the security of Stalinism. But while that generation drifts to far right, the West German Youth move to the left. The party also thrives on women, with more than a third vote for them. A quarter of men decided for the far right.
Although Koçak has fallen into success in Neukölln with 30%, his mood is Sombre. “Dark hours are on us,” he told me in a cramped room far from the crowd, pointing out how “everyone talks about deporting and moving”. When I ask why the AFD suddenly progresses, his answer is clear: “They gain strength in a social environment where people will no longer live.” When he knocked on the doors, a woman pointed to her single shopping bag. It costs € 50, he said: sometimes filled with two bags.
Germany is a former European Powerhouse, which benefits from an euro to make its exports to eurozone countries that are cheaper than the former Deutschmark. In the last three years, inflation as a result of the shock of energy produced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine struck the people’s pockets. More than half of Germans say they are concerned about rising prices which means they cannot pay fees, rising to 75% of AFD supporters.
There are also long -term issues. “In the last 20 years, neither the state nor the private sector has made enough investment,” said Carolina Ortega Guttack, an economist in Thinktank Fiscalfuture. A “Debt brake” – introduced in 2009 by after Chancellor Angela Merkel, who promised to limit the borrowing – helped to prevent investment. In real terms, the German economy was smaller than five years ago. German brim with disappointment: 83% of Germans said the economic situation was bad – compared to 39% in 2022 – rising to 96% among AFD voters.
If there are no migrants filling the vacancies left by an aged population, its economy may be worse, but, recruited by AFD, politicians with different flavors will voluntarily make them scapego. Under Merkel, the center of the right CDU brought more than 1 million refugees: but since it has been signed correctly in the move. A few weeks ago, the CDU – today set to lead the government – passed a parliamentary motion that collapsed to asylum seekers with AFD support, which violated the “firewall” against the distant right that continued since World War II.
Helena Marschall, a young activist who helped organize protests against firewall desecration, said all the parties played by the fire. “My evacuation plans are better than your evacuation plans” is how he consists of campaigns of major parties. Throughout Europe, these parties attempted to break remote surges by attacking their rhetoric and policies, only succeeding in legitimizing them.
Here is the fear. AFD co-leader Alice Weidel sees far right Viktor Orbán as a “great role model”. Orbán gradually dismantled democracy by raising a game against political and media opponents. This is a playbook comparable to Vladimir Putin’s approach to Russia, a repression of autocracy that still gives the opposition parties for the sake of the benefit.
Throughout the west, the unpleasant economic combined with anti-migrant scapegoating pushed a remote uprising. In power, everyone is likely to adopt this approach: see how Donald Trump and Elon Musk wear democracy by linking. Germany’s past, you think, could help vaccinate the country from this threat: but that nightmare stigma has been reduced to time.
“I think our collective memory is very short,” Jamil, a 31-year-old Syrian-German citizen, warned the Bashar al-Assad regime and came to Germany in 2015 as a refugee. Then, he and his fellow arrival were accepted to the railway stations of volunteers who provide food and donations. The will is from dark, and with a new grand coalition of center-right and center-left that is set to think of the office, the AFD is spinning like vultures, waiting for the frustration to be frustrated to come.
