It’s NOT return of Nazis… it’s the voice of people Angela Merkel ignored
The new right-wing, nationalist party AfD address the issues no other party wants to touch like mass migration, what they call 'Islamisation' of Europe and terrorism
THEY’RE calling it the return of Nazism.
Across Europe the chattering and tweeting classes are issuing dire warnings about the rebirth of fascism in its old main stomping ground: Germany.
Reading their heated claims, you could be forgiven for thinking Hitler himself had risen from his grave — wherever that might be — to plant a cobwebbed jackboot on Central Europe.
But of course, no such thing has happened.
All that we have witnessed in Germany this week is an electoral blow to the two main parties and the rise of a cocky new one called Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD).
It is this surge in support for AfD that has rattled the political establishment and convinced some that Brown-shirts are on the horizon.
Because AfD is a right-wing, nationalist party that is critical of mass migration and what it calls the “Islamisation” of Europe, it is presumed it must be the heir to Hitlerism.
In truth, AfD has been successful not because German people are turning Nazi again, but because it is seen as addressing issues the other parties will not touch.
Its rise is down to the moral cowardice and censoriousness of mainstream politicians, especially on issues such as immigration, Islam, terrorism and what exactly Germany stands for in the 21st century.
Their silence created the space for AfD to grow.
The federal elections caused a lot of upset to some very powerful people.
Angela Merkel won, but she had her wings clipped by voters. Her coalition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), saw its share of the vote fall by 8.6 per cent to just 32.9 per cent.
This will feel devastating to Merkel, who has arrogantly positioned herself as Mother not only of Germany, but of the entire EU project.
It could dramatically change her relationship with Theresa May — in May’s favour.
There was much smirking in German and Brussels circles when May did not get the landslide she expected in this year’s General Election.
Yet Merkel has done far worse. May’s Tories might have lost 13 seats but their percentage of the vote actually rose by 5.5 per cent.
May did almost as well as Thatcher in 1979. In contrast, Merkel’s CDU/CSU has seen its worst result since 1949.
This ought to make Merkel more humble in her dealings with us. After all, May got 42.4 per cent of Brits’ votes, ten per cent more than Merkel got from Germans.
It is time for Merkel to wind her neck in and tame her Brexit-bashing instincts.
If she has any sense — and she does — she will take this humility route rather than lashing out at us Brits because she is furious with the drubbing she got at home.
The main left-wing party — the Social Democratic Party (SPD) — did even worse. It got 20.5 per cent of the vote, its worst showing since the Second World War.
Its leader, Martin Schulz, is a longstanding EU apparatchik. He was President of the European Parliament from 2012 to 2017.
Perhaps many Germans, like us Brits, have had a gut-full of EU stiffs who think they can turn politics into a bloated bureaucracy that benefits them more than us.
Then there’s AfD. It was founded in 2013 and won just 4.7 per cent in that year’s elections. This time it won 12.6 per cent, meaning it will take seats in the Bundestag — the German parliament — for the first time.
The idea that AfD’s rise represents a return of fascism does not stack up. It is a libellous insult against its voters, a majority of whom are normal people who want to see certain social issues taken seriously. Yes, some pretty horrible hard-right people, including racists and fascists, have cheered on the AfD. But
mercifully, these prejudiced politicos are a minority, mostly on the fringe.
Most of the AfD’s electoral support comes from decent people, on both the right and left of the political spectrum.
Early analysis suggests around a million of its voters are former voters for Merkel’s right-leaning CDU/CSU. Half a million seem to have come from the SPD. And 400,000 used to vote for Die Linke, the radical left party.
The vast bulk of these people are not fascists. They are just perturbed that certain things have become unsayable in German politics.
They are people who have concerns about Merkel’s welcoming of a million migrants into Germany in 2015 without consulting them.
They are people who worry that Germany’s inability to assert its values means these million new arrivals are never encouraged to integrate and can therefore become a source of tension.
The vote for AfD looks like a cry for more open debate about the nature of Germany in 2017.
AfD’s rise is built on the silencing and demonisation of ordinary people’s concerns.
Liberal cowardice is the fuel of AfD’s fortunes. People sick of being called Nazis simply for raising certain political questions flocked to AfD — and now the branding of them as Nazis by the snooty media will convince them they were right to do so.
We should not fear the German election results. This kind of political upset is largely positive.
Voters have shown they will not be taken for granted.
Schulz has been put in his place. Merkel has been taken down a peg. And this might — just might — boost Britain’s standing in the Brexit talks.
The German people have reminded us of the power of democracy. We should thank our German cousins.
- Brendan O’Neill is editor of online magazine Spiked.
