OPINION: Is there a Nazi revival in Germany? That was the question people were agonising over after the country’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won elections for the first time recently.
Late last month, the AfD won the post of district administrator in Sonneberg, population about 22,000 and, until now, best known as the home of the German Toy Museum. The second AfD victory in early July had the party installing a new mayor in the even smaller town of Raguhn-Jessnitz, population about 8000.
It’s not just the fact that the new Sonneberg district administrator now answers to the AfD’s Björn Höcke that perturbs Germans. Höcke is so close to being an actual Nazi that a local reporter once asked whether he’d come up with certain statements in his book himself or whether he was quoting Adolf Hitler.
No, the locals are also wringing their hands because these minor, rural victories indicate that recent national polls are correct. In weekly surveys, the AfD – whose representatives don’t like immigrants and don’t think climate change is caused by humans – regularly polls around 19%. This is higher than Germany’s governing parties, the Social Democrats and Greens.
“When we were younger we used to say we just had to wait until the old Nazis died off and then nicer people would come along,” one German baby boomer lamented. “But now it’s happening again. People haven’t learnt anything.”
Actually, it’s even more upsetting than that. Because this isn’t just a thing in Germany.
It started a few years ago with Austria’s far-right Freedom Party. In Europe, conservative politicians usually pledge never to get into a coalition with a far-right party. But the Austrian extremists were the first to break what’s often called the “firewall” between the mainstream and the far right when they managed to become part of a governing coalition in 2000.
Over the past two to three years, that firewall has been crumbling faster than Twitter’s user interface since the platform was bought by billionaire and “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk.
Italy’s prime minister is a member of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, some of whose members are fond of practising the so-called “Roman salute”, which looks suspiciously like the illegal-in-Germany “Heil Hitler” greeting. Spain’s centrist conservatives have been busy doing regional deals with the country’s far-right Vox party; the latter is opposed to queer rights, feminism, immigration and environmental protection, among other non-fascist things.
French far-right parties managed record results in the recent presidential ballot and in Greece’s general elections last month three extreme right-wing parties made it into parliament for the first time. The Swedish and Finnish governments also host their own nationalist neo-fascists.
Why is this? Is history repeating? Does right-wing fascism come in waves? Have Germans forgotten what happened last time they pulled this scheisse?
According to analysts, the answer to all of the above is complex and multifaceted. It has to do with things like dissatisfaction with democracy and ongoing insecurities caused by Covid and the war in Ukraine, as well as the omnipresent dread that environmental disaster begets. I
t’s also about the way far-right topics have snuck into everyday discourse, they say, thanks in part to people like Donald Trump, and how increasingly fragmented coalition governments are formed in Europe.
None of which really makes anybody feel much better.
Because, after all, if the Germans could be so stupid as to elect Nazis again – even just as district administrators – what hope is there for the rest of us?
