Let us be honest. 33 years after reunification, there are still two Germanys. And the eastern Germanic region, the “other” one, the one previously denigrated, the one of the “lazy and ungrateful”, has sent a strong message: things cannot go on like this. The way politics are done in Berlin does not work, especially in the so-called “new federal states”. The citizens of Saxony and Thuringia have voted for the far right not as a sign of protest – because 74% of them feel like “second-class” Germans – but because they are convinced that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has answers and listens to them. The AfD’s election programmes are still poor in content; its leaders and middle managers often lack serious political or professional training, they shun the critical press and avoid debates with other parties. They feel more comfortable at rallies than in parliamentary sessions. But the populists have one merit: they are above all pursuing a policy on the ground, much closer to the common man and his fears: the recession, the discontent over a hesitant immigration and asylum policy (although there is not so much immigration in the East), the apparent increase in crime.
There are two Germanys, and this is what sociologists like Steffen Mau consider in his book Unevenness seems (Juntos y desiguales), published this year, or historians such as Frank Trentmann, who states in his book Out of the Darkness. The Germans 1942-2022 (Out of the Darkness. The Germans 1942-2022) They are “united but divided.” The official talk of near-complete reunification sounds like self-deception. The authorities should accept this reality and this new challenge if they do not want the East-West schism to become more entrenched or to live on forever in parallel societies. On September 22, elections will be held in another eastern state, Brandenburg, and the next blow could come from there, because Alternative for Germany is ahead of the Social Democrats, who have governed in Potsdam since 1990.
It is no coincidence that turnout in Sunday’s elections was historic: 73.6% in Thuringia, 74% in Saxony. Citizens wanted to express their displeasure with the federal government (82% think it cares more about its internal problems than about the problems of the people). But they also wanted to shout to the world that demonising the Alternative for Germany is no longer working. The process of “normalisation” of the extreme right is an undeniable fact, and in Europe as well. The media treats its leaders as if they were as democratic as everyone else, and they enjoy public money and the perks of office to continue attacking the system. This does not mean that the East Germans reject democracy, but that the current one does not seem to serve them, which poses a challenge.
“Rational politics has lost,” says sociologist Matthias Quent. The emotional, catastrophic message that stirs up fears has taken hold, as has the conviction that many in the Countries Easterners no longer necessarily share the Atlanticist, pro-US and pro-Israel vision of the establishmentThose who claim, in a more or less humorous tone, that it is actually Putin who has won these elections are right, to a certain extent.
This is not a uniquely German phenomenon. The traditional parties are constantly disappointing, becoming increasingly distant from the concerns of ordinary people and offering fewer and fewer new and effective proposals. They are forced to react only when populism triumphs, and they do so by moving closer to these extreme positions or making concessions. Chancellor Olaf Scholz is a political shadow, more dedicated to achieving truces in the internal war that persists within the government coalition with the Greens and Liberals. The discredit of the federal government means that the victory of Alternative for Germany is, in essence, not a surprise. The polls and the results of the extreme right in the European elections already predicted good results in Saxony and Thuringia. What is surprising is that, for example, between 30% and 36% of young people under 26 voted for the extreme right and that the Greens, previously popular among young people, have achieved an unprecedented failure in this area and in this age group. Ecology does not sell if it means expensive innovations and job losses.
There are several sociological facts that explain this phenomenon: Alternative for Germany is a men’s party, even though one of its current leaders is a woman, Alice Weidel. Alternative has suffered several internal crises in its 11 years of existence, and in the last ones Björn Höcke has emerged, a history professor who flirts too much with Nazism and its symbols, triumphant in Thuringia as “the strong man” that the party and the nation need. And in this very macho Aryan formation, the messages are concentrated on those men, especially young ones, who feel like losers in a society where women emigrate to the western half, where there is more work and more opportunities. Female flight has clear demographic consequences: declining birth rates, without a doubt; fewer possibilities of finding a partner, more frustration on the part of men and more possibilities of feeling attracted to parties that bet on violence, the search for scapegoats, white supremacy, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
Alternative for Germany is particularly successful in rural areas, where there are hardly any foreigners, but not only there. Even though billions of euros have been invested in the former East Germany and cities such as Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar or Rostock have flourished, there are still differences between the East and the West in terms of living standards and chances of finding a good job. The social clash also has an economic aspect. Few people emigrate voluntarily to the East from West Germany. Entrepreneurs have problems managing and doing business there. Modern capitalism is not consolidating in regions still marked by the socialist creed and where there are more pensioners, workers and farmers than independent professionals. On the other hand, Alternative’s successes will have a bitter aftertaste in this economic field. German and international companies with foreign employees or potential investments in the East fear not only for the country’s external image, but also for the climate of violence, intolerance and xenophobia that could further contaminate coexistence. Coincidentally or not, the day after the elections, the multinational Volkswagen announced, for the first time in its 87-year history, significant staff cuts and the closure of factories on German soil, including in Saxony, where three of them are located: Dresden, Zwickau and Chemnitz.
Objectively, the big news of this date with the ballot box has been the success of Sahra Wagenknecht. A 55-year-old ex-communist, born in Jena (Thuringia) to an Iranian father and a German mother, faithful to her origins, married to an old and important figure of German social democracy, Oskar Lafontaine, founder of the party The Left, which she led. A figure almost marginal until now, she launched her movement, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), nine months ago. A dissident of The Left, only present in television debates for her good rhetorical ability, she has become, to her own surprise, the fundamental element in the formation of the governments in Saxony and Thuringia.
And this brings us to another unprecedented phenomenon in German political life: the Christian Democrats, the CDU led by Merkel and now by her intimate enemy, Friedrich Merz, are forced to break another of their cordons sanitaires (in addition to the one already in place against the AfD): they have begun to negotiate with Wagenknecht and his Russophile ex-communists to try to close a government in Saxony and Thuringia and thus form a common front against the Alte
rnative for Germany. Konrad Adenauer and other party leaders will be turning in their graves, because it is another taboo about to be broken, a very forced marriage. But it is a matter of avoiding a total political blockage in Saxony and Thuringia, from which only the right-wing extremists would emerge victorious.
Everyone assumes that negotiations with Wagenknecht will be very complicated because they will focus on two very sensitive points: the necessary change in immigration and asylum policy (forced by the recent attacks) and political and military support for Ukraine, which Wagenknecht rejects.
Sixty-eight percent of voters in Saxony and Thuringia believe that the government in Berlin cares more about the welfare of migrants and asylum seekers than about the Germans themselves. This does not mean that all citizens in the country think the same, but the Federal Republic is not immune to the conservative turn that is taking place throughout Europe. In fact, Scholz wants a state agreement with the main opposition party, the CDU, to try to draw up a common position on the issue. At the moment, what is on the table is speeding up the deportations of asylum seekers who are not accepted, improving the processing of immigration files and expelling those who travel on holiday to their countries of origin, banning the use of knives and daggers to prevent attacks such as the one in Solingen and keeping a closer eye on Islamist elements infiltrating Muslim communities and the most violent ones. The CDU wants many more deportations and even expelling anyone who has arrived in Germany via a neighbouring country at the border.
Against this backdrop, the question is how the current coalition government can survive another year and in such a state of disrepair until the general elections in September 2025. Everything depends on the results in Brandenburg and whether the SPD will be severely punished there or even overtaken by the AfD. The liberals (FDP), a bourgeois party that only made sense in the former West Germany and is on the road not only to irrelevance but to disappearance, are toying with the idea of leaving the government after these elections, even though they hold the key post of the finance ministry. It would be a harakiri in all rules.
In the Christian Democrats, things are not entirely clear either, because Merz is constantly challenged by the current Bavarian president, Markus Söder, who is much more populist and popular than he is. Given the economic crisis and recession in Germany, the deteriorating prestige of the political class, the disillusionment – if not anger – of citizens towards the powerful and the lack of brilliance and international presence of the Berlin elites, perhaps early elections followed by another CDU-SPD Grand Coalition or a CDU-Green government could be a way out. But for East German citizens this would do little to change their feeling of being forgotten or endlessly tutored.
Russia also plays its part in this chaos. Not only because its spies and hackers They act in the shadows, spreading disinformation and doubts, but because they can place ideologically similar people in two Eastern governments with approaches that fuel the Ostalgienostalgia for the days of the GDR when everything worked relatively well and there was no crime or immigration. And, as history has its paradoxes, the Kremlin and the neo-Nazis share the same interests and principles: in the Protestant, conservative, petty-bourgeois East, which denied any responsibility for Nazi crimes and the Holocaust after 1945, right-wing populism is on the rise, denialist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic, officially considered a “danger to democracy”. Young people born after the fall of the Wall are fascinated by strong figures and lack historical memory. Representatives of these right-wing extremists, who are in the crosshairs of the secret services, are financed, as is the case with Marine Le Pen’s party, not only with German taxpayers’ money, but also through Russian shell companies and banks. Putin, like the Frenchman François Mauriac, loves Germany so much that he is glad that there are still two.
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