Letter From … Hamburg

Does the Federal Republic finally have its own rightwing populist party? While most other European countries have been facing successful challengers from the right – such as the Front National in France or the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria – Germany remained something of an Isle of the Blessed. In the 2013 federal election, a new party, Alternative für Deutschland, which had been founded just a year and a half earlier, gained 4.7 per cent of the vote. As the German voting system includes a five per cent threshold, the AfD did not make it into the Bundestag. But since the federal constitutional court abolished the three per cent threshold for the European election in Germany, it is more than likely that the AfD will win its first members of parliament after 25 May.

The AfD has been stirring the emotions of those Germans who follow politics since its founding. While conservatives who are disappointed by Angela Merkel’s pro-euro policy are pleased, others suggest that the AfD is at least a populist, if not a rightwing, party in disguise. In fact, according to its policy positions, the AfD is clearly sceptical towards the European Union, European integration and especially the euro. Its focus is on the re-establishment of national currencies or small currency unions and a return to national decision-making processes in the EU. The party holds very conservative positions on values issues, such as its strong support for the traditional family model.

So far, at the level of policy, the AfD is a clearly Eurosceptic, socially conservative and economically liberal party that fills out the space that was left by the Christian Democrats – as they embraced more moderate positions – and the Free Democrats – who disappointed liberal voters during their time in government. However, to understand the AfD, one must take its organisation and appearance into account. In its campaigns, the party appeals to the ‘will of the people’ as it agitates against the ‘bureaucrats’ in Brussels and the political establishment in Berlin. Just like rightwing populists elsewhere in Europe, the AfD presents itself as the ‘advocate of the people’ against arrogant elites. It links criticisms of the political class with the demand for referendums which it expects to express the true wishes of ‘the people’.

The AfD is, however, not a monolithic bloc. As much as it attracted voters from all other parts of the political spectrum, its member base includes national conservatives as well as liberals that are pro-European but against the euro. Not surprisingly, the party already faces internal struggles over policy and organisational issues. Those voters who sympathised with the AfD before the 2013 election place themselves in the political centre but at the same time clearly embrace very conservative, if not authoritarian, positions on family or immigration issues.

The AfD is neither the United Kingdom Independence party nor the Front National of Germany. Labelling the AfD as ‘rightwing radical’, as its opponents sometimes tend to, neither meets its complexity nor its ongoing development process. However, with the AfD likely to be in the European parliament soon, the process of professionalisation might lead to its consolidation – or provoke a revolution by its more radical members.

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