Björn Höcke, party and parliamentary group leader of the AfD in Thuringia and top candidate, leaves the AfD election party in Erfurt, Germany, on Sept. 2.Daniel Vogl/The Associated Press
How, you might ask, can Germany have been all but driven out of its important role in world affairs, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz devoting himself almost full-time to a domestic crisis and retreating from policy commitments in Ukraine and elsewhere over a mere state election? And one that took place in Thuringia, one of the least populated and most economically insignificant of Germany’s 16 states?
If you simply followed the headlines, you might wonder what was the big deal on Sunday when the largest share of Thuringia’s votes, just shy of 33 per cent, went to what is often described as an “anti-immigration party,” the Alternative for Germany (AfD), that has little chance of forming a government because all other parties have pledged not to work with them.
Germany is the only Western country with immigration levels that challenge the capacity of its institutions and economy – including irregular border-crossing numbers that dwarf those experienced by Canada or the United States. It has seen close to two million refugee applicants enter the country over the past two years, about 1.3 million of them Ukrainians fleeing the war, on top of the million who entered in 2015-16 and the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who come each year.
So it shouldn’t be surprising a single-issue immigration party would prosper.
But that framing misses the darker significance of the rising vote for the AfD. It represents a more fundamental and challenging schism along the lines of national loyalty and commitment to the values of the democratic world.
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One telling detail is that Sunday’s historic vote – the first time an extreme-right party has led an election since the Third Reich – took place in Thuringia, where you are less likely to encounter an immigrant, a darker-skinned person, a Jew or a Muslim than in any other state. Its two million people are among the least ethnically or religiously diverse in Germany.
Immigration is not what the AfD is really campaigning against. Like most parties of the intolerant far right, it performs best in the places with the least immigration and diversity.
The Thuringia party is led by Björn Höcke, founder of “The Wing” faction of the AfD, which since 2017 has pushed the national party into territory classified by federal investigators as verging on neo-Nazi. Earlier this year, Mr. Höcke’s allies held a meeting in Potsdam in which they endorsed the broad idea of deporting all citizens and residents “of immigration descent” – a quarter of the German population.
Mr. Höcke was convicted twice this year for using outlawed Hitler slogans in his political rallies. He has repeatedly called for an end to modern Germany’s tradition of atoning for the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews, and denounced the Berlin Holocaust memorial as the “monument of shame” of “a totally defeated people” who have “cut off our roots with the re-education that began in 1945.”
Charlotte Knobloch, the 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who is Germany’s most renowned Jewish leader, called the vote “a catastrophe for our country” in an interview with the newspaper Die Zeit. “Hope has now left us. We have to live with a party that doesn’t value democracy.”
There is one category of foreigners that can be seen in Thuringia: Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, about 35,000 of whom are sheltered there, making them the state’s largest immigrant group. And they are key to the party’s new support.
The AfD has campaigned angrily against their presence, and against any German role in supporting Ukraine in its fight against Vladimir Putin’s invasion. In fact, they are explicit admirers of Mr. Putin and his policies, and they have called for a renewed alliance with Moscow; Mr. Höcke proudly shows his loyalty by driving a Lada car. Those views are shared by Germany’s two far-left parties – dominated by former officials from East Germany’s Soviet-backed communist government – which together won almost 29 per cent of the Thuringia vote this past weekend.
Data suggest that Ukraine, and the larger question of loyalty to Mr. Putin or to the EU, has become a bigger issue for many AfD voters than immigration. For example, a poll this year showed that 84 per cent of AfD supporters are opposed to providing tanks and other military hardware to Ukraine.
The AfD likely won’t be part of any government. But they have succeeded in changing Germany’s political temperature. Germany is the largest European aid and arms contributor to Ukraine, but Mr. Scholz recently backed off on these commitments, shifting spending to domestic matters. He’s announced a rise in deportations. And he’s devoting himself to the Sept. 22 election in nearby Brandenburg, where pro-Putin parties, including the AfD, are expected to dominate.
Many of us would prefer a more steadfast and less accommodating response. But we should realize that, in some parts of Europe, Mr. Putin’s invasion has breached the walls of domestic politics.