Rising extremism in eastern Germany threatens political earthquake

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The writer directs the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Late summer in German politics is jokingly called Saure-Gurken-Zeit, or pickle time: an old name for the hot, humid days when Berlin grocers start bringing in ripe cucumbers, and newspapers have to print ridiculous stories on their front pages because everyone is on holiday, including politicians.

But this year has not been the case. Anxiety levels are high in the capital, because elections in the eastern German states of Saxony and Thuringia on September 1, and a third in Brandenburg on September 22, are expected to shake up German politics – just a year before the next Bundestag election.

A quick look at the polls explains the tension. In Saxony, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), with 17 percent of the national vote, is second with 30 percent, behind the conservative Christian Democrats. But in Thuringia and Brandenburg, the AfD is first with 30 percent and 24 percent respectively. Sahra Wagenknecht’s new far-left coalition (named after its founder) is on 7 to 8 percent nationally, but on 11 percent in Saxony, 19 percent in Thuringia and 17 percent in Brandenburg.

In other words, two openly anti-establishment parties, with a quarter of the national vote, are likely to win a combined 41-49 percent in these three states. Both are euroskeptic, anti-NATO, and anti-American. Both are pro-Russian, and opposed to supporting Ukraine. Yet neither will work with the other, let alone govern. But they are capable of wreaking havoc nonetheless.

The AfD has become more professional and established—but it has also become more radical than most of its European peers. It traffics in neo-Nazi slogans, is associated with violent extremists, and is supported by a vast network of far-right media outlets, associations, and activists. A German high court has confirmed the assessment of domestic intelligence services that the party’s branches in Saxony and Thuringia are “proven right-wing extremists.” The journalist Miriam Lau describes the AfD’s astonishing inability to shake off its Nazi past as “political Tourette syndrome.”

The rise of the BSW since its founding in January, and its unique combination of left-wing economics and national conservatism, which is based on taxing the rich and expelling immigrants, has taken Germans by surprise. Above all, they are fascinated by Wagenknecht, the party’s hardline populist leader, a Stalinist who favors sharp corporate design. In the European Parliament elections in June, the BSW succeeded in attracting voters not only from the AfD but from across the German political spectrum.

The outlook for all other parties ranges from dire to catastrophic. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats, who form Berlin’s unhappy coalition government, are facing political extinction in all three states. They are either just above or below the 5% threshold for parliamentary entry – with the exception of the Social Democrats in Brandenburg, where they have nominated the state’s prime minister. Governments have collapsed for lesser reasons in other countries. But with no clear constitutional or political path to new elections, the coalition seems doomed to drag itself to the finish line.

But the CDU also faces difficult dilemmas. It has objected to any cooperation with the AfD or the post-communist Left Party, which has left the CDU as a potential coalition partner in the three eastern states, and the only available partner in Saxony and Thuringia. It is an unthinkable alliance at the national level.

But many conservatives in East Germany think otherwise. Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader who wants to become chancellor in 2025, still needs to be nominated by his party as a candidate. That could spark a heated internal debate about whether the CDU state parties should be allowed to enter into pragmatic coalitions.

Wagenknecht is raising the stakes. She flatly refuses to enter into coalitions with any party that supports military aid to Ukraine or the deployment of US missiles in Germany: policies that the government and the CDU have embraced in Berlin but that are deeply unpopular in the eastern states. It takes little imagination to see that the conservatives could end up damaged and divided, whatever they decide.

In this context, the recent social media post of the new right-wing thinker Benedikt Kaiser describing the AfD's electoral strategy in Thuringia was instructive: “Play on the CDU's contradictions, work towards an explosion, and crush the CDU in the next elections.”

The elections in Germany in September could determine not only the ability of three eastern states to govern, but also the ability of the entire country to govern. It is time to recognize that democracy in Germany is under attack.

Video: Why the far right is on the rise in Europe | FT Film

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