Berlin, Germany – For Susanne, a nursery teacher in Berlin, there is no contest.
She has decided to cast her vote for the hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), or Alternative for Germany, on February 23 in the country’s snap federal elections.
The election follows the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government in November. The ruling coalition, known as the traffic light alliance, consisted of Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP).
Susanne, in her 50s who requested Al Jazeera withhold her surname, claimed the AfD is the “only party doing something different on the issues that determine our everyday lives” and that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has since lost favor due to its pro-vaccine position since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eva Mueller, a 50-year-old mother of two who works as a careers coach in the German capital, also plans to back the AfD.
I have no issues living in a city like Berlin where about 80% of the population is a migration source, she said.
“But the migration policy is ineffective, and it is simply not the case that the AfD is presented as completely despising foreigners and wanting to expel them all.” They are concerned that if there is an excess, integration won’t be possible, which is the case.
Since its inception in 2013, intelligence officials have officially labeled several AfD party chapters as “right-wing extremists.”
But last week in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, a taboo was broken.
The five-point plan, a motion introduced by CDU leader Friedrich Merz and rumored to be the new chancellor of Germany, was approved by the AfD.
Merz’s decision to join forces with the AfD broke a longstanding firewall established by the nation’s main political parties, which hampered cooperation with the far right, even though the draft law was ultimately rejected by the Bundestag on January 31.
Taus of protesters gathered at the CDU headquarters in Berlin to protest the move, which received widespread public and political condemnation. Angela Merkel, the former head of state, and Scholz, the accused Merz of making an “unforgivable error.”
In addition, Germany is still reeling from two deadly attacks that occurred within weeks of one another, most recently on January 22 in Bavaria when seven people were killed by foreign nationals seeking asylum there.
Analysts claim that the rising cost of living and the popular political parties’ support for the war in Ukraine are also significant.
The party could ‘attract more voters’, he claims.
With 21 percent of the vote, the AfD is likely to win the election, which is 10 points behind the CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
The AfD, according to analysts, will experience the biggest electoral gains in its 12-year history. It was once viewed as a political outlier.
According to Oliviero Angeli, a political scientist at the Technical University in Dresden, the extreme right will likely gain more visibility and legitimacy as a result of the recent political unrest.
The firewall constructed over the years against the AfD is now beginning to crumble, which is remarkable at the moment. Angeli said that while it was already deteriorating on a communal and regional level, it is now deteriorating nationwide.
Voting for the AfD “could have been viewed as a wasted vote until recently because you could reasonably expect other parties to cooperate with them.” But now, people’s views may change and the party could attract more voters”.
Elon Musk, a tech billionaire, was recently appointed by US President Donald Trump to lead his country’s Department of Government Efficiency, adding to the AfD’s perceived strength with a number of interventions.
On the X platform he owns, he filmed an live interview with Alice Wiedel, the AfD chief. Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, he told the delegates to move past Nazi-era guilt at a party meeting on January 25 via videolink.
“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything”, he told a cheering crowd.
However, Jakub Guhl, a senior manager at the London Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s Digital Research Unit, claimed he is unconvinced of Musk’s influence.
He did point out that a “completely unprecedented dynamic” is “clearly throwing its weight behind one political party, and one that’s particularly controversial,” given that a leading social media platform with authority to influence public discourse is “clearly throwing its weight behind one political party, and one that’s politically sensitive.”
‘Remigration’
Earlier in its election campaign, the AfD touted a “remigration” policy – a nationalist term used to describe sending people to their home nations.
Other key parts of its manifesto, announced last month to a crowd of more than 600 delegates in the AfD stronghold state of Saxony, included the reintroduction of the Deutsche Mark as Germany’s national currency, a rejection of green transition policies, and education reforms linked to gender studies programmes.
Analysts predicted that the party’s position on contentious issues like migration, which may cause political turbulence across the continent, will be politically stifling.
“They have an increasing influence on public opinion, and as we have seen last week, on politics, with other political parties moving more to the right”, says Angeli.
“You won’t necessarily be considered an outlier any more, certainly in parts of the east, if you are between 18 to 24 years old and vote AfD”, added Guhl. It also performs well among voters from the working class who are concerned about the economy, those who believe we are spending too much money on foreigners, and those who back a war in Ukraine that they are most likely to have opposed in the beginning, etc.
Back in Berlin, AfD supporter Susanne shared her nostalgic view of Germany’s past attempts at multiculturalism.
Source: Aljazeera
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