The AfD has broken ranks. Why not give dialogue a go?

Berlin. Angela Merkel is remembered, amongst other things, for her gentle and conciliatory manner. Yet, in February 2020, whilst visiting distant South Africa, a trap set by the AfD sent her into a rage. In the eastern state of Thuringia, the liberal Thomas Kemmerich managed to get himself elected as governor with the votes of the CDU and the abstention of the sovereignist party, which was already suspected of extremism. The Chancellor reacted by sacking three people. 

Kemmerich’s, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s – then chair of the CDU – and, whilst we’re at it, that of the Federal Minister for the Eastern Länder, Christian Hirte. The Chancellor’s long-standing rival, Friedrich Merz, also sought to capitalise on the CDU’s misstep, convinced that simply repositioning the party further to the right would be enough to stem the flow of votes towards the AfD. At that time, the nationalist and xenophobic party had ‘only’ 23.4 per cent in Thuringia: today it stands at 44 per cent in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt and 28 per cent in national polls. Neither Merkel nor Olaf Scholz (Chancellor from 2021 to 2025) nor Merz have managed to contain it. The ‘Brandmauer’ (firewall) – that is, the strategy of isolation – has proved futile, if not downright counterproductive. For whilst it is true that too many AfD leaders were born under a communist regime and grew up longing for Nazism, it is equally true that millions of German citizens have now embraced the sovereignist cause.

A popular vote alone is not enough to certify the commitment to the democratic cause of those who receive it – even Hitler won a large number of votes in 1930 and 1932 – but to pillory a third of the electorate nationally, or nearly 50 per cent in the eastern Länder, would be both undemocratic and untenable. On Monday, Merz acknowledged this: “We are shocked but we must accept it; these are the rules of our democracy.” Fortunately for the Germans, the Federal Republic is not the Weimar Republic. Although economically struggling, Germany is still the richest country in Europe, whilst the Basic Law of 1949 offers clear safeguards against the return of a dictatorship or, worse still, a totalitarian system. Article 79 prohibits any amendment to the Constitution that runs counter to the protection of human dignity. Article 20 prevents changes to the democratic, federal and social order, whilst Article 21 provides for the possibility of banning subversive political organisations: this was done in 1952 with the neo-Nazis of the SRP (who held 11 per cent of the vote in Lower Saxony in the West) and in 1956 with the communists of the KPD (at 5.7 per cent nationally). The procedure was therefore only carried out in the immediate post-war period with small parties. More recently, in 2017, the neo-Nazi NPD was merely denied public funding. It is unthinkable to outlaw the AfD in the wake of a democratic election.

Politics takes precedence even over constitutional safeguards. Yesterday, Merz acknowledged that following Sunday’s upheaval, ‘we cannot simply return to business as usual’. Hence the need to listen more closely to citizens and their concerns, and to understand the underlying reasons for such a political landslide, without, however, giving carte blanche to a populist, anti-Western and revisionist party.

A proposal has come from the former Finance Minister, the Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück, who, speaking to Bild, plays down the ‘Brandmauer’ by suggesting that it might perhaps “bring about a certain shift within the AfD towards a right-wing conservative position”. The democratic parties should define red lines to be put before the sovereigntists: “Until you make a credible commitment on these points, no cooperation or tolerance will be possible.” An exercise in “conditional willingness to engage in dialogue”, according to the plan put forward by the historian Andreas Rödder, former chair of the CDU’s Committee on Fundamental Values. Rödder also criticised the decision by the other parties to deny the AfD posts to which it would otherwise be entitled, such as a vice-presidency of the Bundestag or the chairmanship of supervisory bodies. Engaging with them is not to legitimise them but to test them and, above all, to prevent the sovereigntists from accusing the other parties of bullying. Steinbrück and Rödder’s invitation to the AfD leadership to discuss issues and values – not party programmes – whilst urging them to “clearly distance themselves from far-right positions and figures” seems more constructive than stepping out of the lift in the Bundestag offices when a sovereigntist representative enters. This ‘block-of-flats’ outrage has only symbolic value, but in the end, the only ones to rise remain the dubious figures of the far right.