Germany’s Far Right Causes a Political Earthquake
For the first time, the populists on Germany’s far right have helped to elect a state premier. But that may only mobilize mainstream Germans in resistance.
Hoecke of the AfD (right) congratulates the new state premier.
Photographer: JENS SCHLUETER/AFPGermany made post-war history on Feb. 5. In a total shock, one of the country’s 16 state parliaments elected a premier with votes that included members of a hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Worse, one of the AfD leaders in that state, Thuringia, is Bjoern Hoecke, considered to be on the party’s extreme — indeed proto-Fascist — wing. Is Germany following the example Austria set decades ago and, 75 years after Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, normalizing the far right?
Not so fast. The Thuringian surprise is a political quake that will reverberate across Germany, and potentially Europe. But it doesn’t necessarily represent an accelerating shift to the right, and certainly not the beginning of a descent toward populist nationalism of the sort that’s become de rigueur in Hungary and Poland. What took place in Thuringia’s parliament this week is worrying. But it was constitutionally above board and may yet turn out harmless.