German chancellor Friedrich Merz is under pressure to work with the fascist AfD after its victory in another state election (Picture: Steffen Prößdorf under CC BY-SA 4.0)
State elections in Germany on Sunday sounded another warning of the rise of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) .
The AfD won 38.2 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state in the north east of the country.
That’s a massive rise on the 16.7 percent the racist party grabbed in the 2021 elections.
The AfD has won a growing number of seats in state parliaments since 2014, but has so far been kept out of their governments by the “Brandmauer”. This “firewall” commits mainstream parties not to enter coalitions with the far right (see below).
But that unwritten agreement is coming under massive pressure from those who want to reunite Germany’s right wing. There is already pressure within the Tory-like CDU party to reconsider its approach to the AfD.
The Labour-like SPD, which ran the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state government, came second with 35.5 percent.
State president and SPD leader Manuela Schwesig fought a largely single-issue campaign, saying only her party could stop the AfD.
That strategy saw her party’s vote hold up reasonably well, despite the SPD nationally haemorrhaging support. Recent polls show the national party at just 12 percent.
Her campaign also successfully marginalised the left party Die Linke. Its vote was 9.9 percent in 2021, but it sank to around 6.5 percent this time.
But the biggest losers were the CDU. With 4.9 percent, it failed to clear the threshold for representation in the state parliament.
It was the CDU’s worst result in a state election since 1949.
The disastrous result for the traditional right is a sign of the huge unpopularity of the national coalition government of the CDU and SPD. And it shows the way that right wing voters are radicalising.
Chancellor (prime minister) Friedrich Merz of the CDU was already in trouble after the recent drubbing in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections two weeks ago. His party suffered a major defeat and the AfD came close to an outright majority.
Now Germany’s leader is under pressure from MPs in his party, with internal criticism of his leadership growing. Merz has said he intends to continue in office, but how long he’ll last is anyone’s guess.
News from the Berlin state elections adds to Merz’s woes—but was much better for the radical left.
Exit polls there put Die Linke on between 24.5 and 26 percent, up from 12.2 percent in the 2023 election.
The party fought its campaign on housing. It demanded that the state parliament enact the result of a non-binding referendum in which voters backed the expropriation of large landlords.
It also made the cost of living crisis and public transport central issues.
Here, the CDU is projected to win around 20 percent of the vote, significantly down from its 2023 result of 28.2 percent.
The AfD vote has risen to between 13.5 and 16 percent, although it remains a much smaller force in Berlin than in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Die Linke will now face negotiations over the formation of a new state government. The SPD and Greens are possible coalition partners, but are bitterly hostile to the left, so there may be weeks of negotiations.
Those two parties will undoubtedly try to force Die Linke into a series of climbdowns over its promise to stand up for renters. This, they hope, will show the left as incapable of delivering.
There’s a lot at stake—and not just for Berlin. Seeking to mobilise all those who want to stand up to the fascists—and the neoliberal centre that fuels them—remains key.
There is growing pressure on the right to abandon the firewall that keeps the fascist AfD out of office.
Many right wing commentators point to Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister and leader of the fascist Brothers of Italy. They say she shows the far right can be tamed, if parties of the mainstream right work with it.
Meloni leads a vicious, racist government that fuels division both as a means of staying in office and diverting anger away from the bosses. The government not only attacks migrants, but also those who offer them humanitarian assistance.
But the right wing commentators are not interested in this.
What matters to them is that Meloni supports Nato and the Ukraine war, and that her government backs the European Union. They admire Meloni because she has created a stable business-friendly government that has outlasted others.
So, an editorial in the bosses’ Economist magazine last week set out the case for a new cooperation on the right.
“If the CDU signalled that it would not dogmatically exclude future co-operation with a party that shed its most radical ideas and politicians [the AfD], it could eventually help boost the relative moderates within the AfD, some of whom are uneasy about their extreme comrades,” it wrote, hopefully.
“The AfD’s strength and confidence makes this harder, but an AfD that looks more like Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy would be preferable to the one that sits on the outer fringe of Europe’s right wing populists.”
That’s a rotten idea with an awful pedigree.
In 1933, conservative politician Franz von Papen helped persuade President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor.
Papen and other conservative politicians believed they could use Hitler, while keeping real power in their own hands.
He thought the traditional conservative elite could use Hitler’s mass following to control the streets, and smash the threat posed by the trade unions and left. Papen’s friends would keep control of the state for themselves.
Hitler’s first cabinet appeared to reinforce this illusion. The Nazis held only three positions, including the chancellorship, while conservative politicians and non-Nazi professionals held the other posts.
Papen famously said that they had “hemmed in” Hitler. He also reportedly boasted that “in two months, we will have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he will squeal”.
But what happened next is well known.
Hitler dissolved parliament on 1 February 1933, using the Reichstag fire as the pretext to suspend civil liberties and crush political opposition.
Just a month later, the Nazis had laid the legal foundation of their dictatorship and their plan to dismantle all forms of democracy got underway.
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