Germany’s Establishment Parties Get Burned by Their Anti-AfD Firewall

For the past decade, spurred on by discontent over economic uncertainty and mass migration, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been on the rise in Germany — the most populous country in the European Union. However, even though it became the second strongest of the seven parties in Germany’s parliament following last year’s national election, and despite being the most popular party in the five states that made up the former East Germany, the AfD has yet to govern — either on its own or as part of a coalition government that is very common in the EU’s largest economy.

The reason is the “firewall.”

Haunted by Germany’s Nazi past, all parties — from the far-left “Die Linke” to the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which currently leads a national coalition government — reached an unwritten pact to keep the AfD from power at all costs.

This strategy includes not moving any legislation that would require the votes of AfD delegates to pass and shying away from championing policies that could be found in its platform.

However, as the election in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday showed, the price the establishment parties are paying for maintaining the firewall is extremely (and perhaps unsustainably) high.

In a result that stunned the country and, in particular, its establishment parties, the AfD came perilously close to winning an election in the East German state outright and securing a majority of representatives in its parliament. As is, it cannot govern alone and would have to rely on the support of a new populist party to do so.

That being said, remaining in the opposition may suit the AfD just fine. If it were actually tasked with running a state, it would have to deliver results instead of just complaining.

Like other right-wing parties, such as Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the AfD is primarily fueled by its own grievances and the unhappiness of its members.

This is especially true in East Germany where people still feel left behind following the country’s reunification in 1990. What they seem to have forgotten is that, compared to West Germany, the five new states were impoverished after decades of socialist mismanagement, and rebuilding an entire country’s infrastructure has proven to be quite a challenge.

As for the AfD, nothing allows it to play the victim more than all other parties banding together to ensure that it does not get to govern. Or, for that matter, having been placed under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence service because of its right-wing extremism and views inconsistent with the country’s constitution.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the firewall was a mistake.

It should be noted that the results in Saxony-Anhalt will likely be the AfD’s high-water mark for some time. Berlin and the East German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will head to the polls in two weeks, and it seems highly unlikely that the party will replicate its result of getting 44 percent of the vote there.

Then, for the next two years, all state elections are in western states where the AfD is much weaker (in last year’s national election, its support in the West was roughly half of that in the East).

Perhaps the other German parties assumed that, in light of the country’s history, people would eventually stop supporting a Nazi-adjacent party. However, since that does not seem to be the case, maybe it is time to recalibrate the firewall strategy and give the AfD a crack at running one of the poorest German states and realizing that complaining is a whole lot easier than governing.