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Tuesday, September 08, 2026
A German commenting on German politics
Germany is a federal republic, consisting of 16 “lands”. You can think of them a bit like the US states, but relatively speaking they have fewer powers and less independence than the US states have. In one of these lands, Sachsen-Anhalt, there was an election this Sunday, and the right wing party AfD got 44% of the votes. Thus you might have seen global headlines about how the Nazis are back in power in Germany. Which is utter nonsense. I have repeatedly said on this blog that if you call everybody slightly to the right of yourself a nazi or fascist, you end up losing all linguistic tools to differentiate between parties on the right.
The AfD occupies a curious position on that right wing spectrum. On the one side they are extreme enough that the German intelligence service in charge of keeping an eye on extremists classifies them as “validated right extremists”, a classification that means that the intelligence service will continue watching them. On the other side they aren’t extreme enough to be declared illegal as a party, as several previous right wing parties in Germany have been. And while of course there are national peculiarities and things aren’t easy to classify, the AfD resembles US MAGA Republicans under Trump a lot more than they resemble German National-Socialists under Hitler.
A few other truths to know to understand the situation is that the AfD did not get an absolute majority in the election, and could only form a local government with the help of others. And even if they managed that, a tenous hold on a single land gives them very little actual power over Germany. If you think that Germany is fascist, you’d still have to admit that it is comparatively less fascist than the USA, which should put things into perspective.
Of course, if you are politically left of center, or center-left as I am, any MAGA-like party taking control anywhere is bad news. But there are 7 European countries were such far right parties are part of the national goverment, and far right parties play a large political role in basically all European countries to some degree. Germany is further away from the far right in national power than for example France is. History and false leaps of imagination might provide sensationalist headlines, but in the end that is just click bait.
The more realistic trajectory has already been observed in the past few years in countries like Hungary or Poland. The growth of right wing populist parties is a consequence of growing inequality, with the “left behind” demographics voting for the populists after feeling left behind by all the other parties. That model then breaks down as soon as the right wing populists come to power, and their voters realize that things aren’t getting any better for them. Viktor Orban lost power this year. In the US the current discussion is not whether the Republicans can win the mid term elections, but only how badly they are going to lose.
If you think that German Nazis will soon invade Russia, you might be in for a strange surprise: The AfD is Russia-friendly to the point of being suspected to be in Putin’s pocket. It is the democratic center-right and center-left parties that changed the German constitution to enable more military spending and increased armament against Russia.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:22 AM Permanent Link
