AfD surge in German regional elections

The anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has created further panic within the German political establishment after historic regional election results in two eastern German states.

In Thuringia, AfD became the largest party with 32.8% and 32 seats (up from 23.4% and 22 seats five years ago). In Saxony, they finished only just behind the conservative CDU after advancing from 27.5% to 30.6% and from 38 to 40 seats.

Politics in eastern Germany is even more fragmented than previously, with many voters alienated from the Federal Republic’s mainstream parties. For many years, large numbers of Saxon and Thuringian voters backed the modern version of the old Communist Party, rebranded as the Left Party (Die Linke), and until about a decade ago the old German nationalist party NPD also polled well.

The NPD won seats in Saxony’s regional parliament in the 2004 and 2009 elections, but its decline was accelerated by the emergence of AfD. Last year the NPD renamed itself Heimat (Homeland) but has yet to revive, and had no candidates in either Saxony or Thuringia this year.

As we have previously reported, many radical nationalists abandoned NPD for the new party III. Weg (Third Way), which did not contest Saxony or Thuringia yesterday but after several years of growth will be contesting the Brandenburg regional elections later this month.

AfD began as a right-wing conservative party with quasi-Thatcherite policies, but began to take a stronger line against immigration after former Chancellor Angela Merkel shocked her countrymen by admitting a mass influx of refugees in 2015.

Paradoxically, Thuringia (which saw the greatest AfD success yesterday) hasn’t seen much immigration. Its population has declined markedly since German reunification, from 2.7 million to 2.1 million, and outside major cities its population is noticeably ageing.

This feeling of being abandoned and exploited by the federal political elite is a major factor in the success of both AfD and a new leftwing party founded by Sahra Wagenknecht, the half-Iranian former leader of the pro-Moscow faction who broke away from Die Linke to form her own party BSW.

In Thuringia BSW polled 15.8% and took 15 seats, while in Saxony they were similarly in third place with 11.8% and 15 seats.

In theory AfD and BSW combined would now have a majority in the Thuringian Parliament, but although they agree on some foreign and defence policies, the state government has no power in these areas, and in most domestic policy areas the two parties are enemies: no such coalition is on the cards.

From a racial nationalist perspective, yesterday’s results are in some ways welcome news. But we should have few illusions about AfD, which is essentially another civic nationalist system party, and some of whose leaders have corrupt links to Moscow.

The most positive aspect of all this is that Germany (like France) is moving towards irreconcilable political divisions. AfD are not the answer: but they are posing questions that can cripple Germany’s ‘democratic’ constitution, and lay the foundations for better movements in the future.

In the short term, the challenge for the establishment parties is to find some way of patching together minority governments that exclude both AfD and BSW, though it’s possible that the CDU will demonstrate their lack of principle by seeking some sort of arrangement with Wagenknecht.

(Germany’s federal constitution divides power between the central government in Berlin and various states or Länder, in a somewhat similar manner to the USA. Thuringia has a population of 2.1 million, similar to the US state of New Mexico, or slightly smaller than West Yorkshire. Saxony’s population is just over 4 million, similar to Oklahoma, or slightly less than half the size of Greater London. The Saxon capital is Dresden, the historic city devastated by Allied terror bombing in February 1945.)

Historic win for anti-immigration party AfD

The anti-immigration German civic nationalist party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (Alternative für Deutschland – AfD) took control of a town council for the first time on Sunday when AfD candidate Robert Sesselmann was elected ‘district administrator’ of Sonneberg, a town of just over 20,000 inhabitants in Thuringia.

Sonneberg is in the east of today’s Federal Republic, though in the centre of traditional Germany.

AfD was founded as a right-wing Conservative party espousing what British voters would call ‘Thatcherite’ economic policies, but has steadily moved to the right and is now mainly identified with a strong anti-immigration stance. The Thuringian region of AfD is seen as especially right-wing and controlled by the party’s so-called Flügel or ‘wing’ led by Björn Höcke, who has made controversial remarks on racial and historical topics.

The party was greatly boosted by Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than a million extra immigrants and ‘asylum seekers’ in 2016 – a policy which alienated many traditional conservative voters who had once backed Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU.

After losing its focus and slipping in the polls during the pandemic, AfD has greatly revived during the past 18 months due to economic problems that are felt especially keenly in regions such as Thuringia that were part of the old East Germany.

Voters in such areas are often nostalgic for aspects of communist rule, without being ‘left-wing’ in the usual sense of that term.

And partly for reasons discussed in a broader context by Ian Freeman in the forthcoming issue 115 of H&D, hard-pressed voters in such areas believe that environmentalist policies pushed by the German Green Party (who are coalition partners with liberals and socialists in the present federal government) are an ill-considered luxury that the country can ill-afford right now.

Foreign and defence policy has little relevance to a local election in a small town, so the controversial pro-Moscow stance taken by some AfD leaders is unlikely to have had a decisive influence on Sonneberg’s voters.

This latter AfD policy is utterly rejected both by the right-wing of CDU and CSU (who sympathised with AfD on immigration) and by the racial nationalist party III Weg (which regards Putinism as a betrayal of Germany’s and Europe’s fundamental interests, and strongly supports Ukraine’s defiance of the Kremlin).

Nevertheless, AfD’s latest electoral success has alarmed the liberal-left establishment and might be a sign that increasing numbers of German voters are no longer afraid to assert their national identity and turn back the immigration tide.

Change to German electoral system – is Sir Keir watching?

This week the German coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals began moves to reform the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) in what would be their country’s biggest constitutional shake-up for many years.

With electoral reform likely to be on the UK’s political agenda after the Conservatives almost certainly lose the next general election (due by January 2025 at the very latest) the choices made in Berlin are worth examining. Especially because their present government is ideologically very similar to a likely Labour-led coalition in the UK.

Germany has a hybrid system, with some MPs elected on a Westminster-style first-past-the-post system, but others elected via a top-up list so as to make the entire Bundestag represent the nationwide percentage share of the vote.

This hybrid system means that the Bundestag is not simply divided proportionally to match the parties’ share of the vote. For example, to gain proportionally-based seats, a party must poll at least 5% nationwide, or qualify for proportional top-ups if it wins at least three directly-elected seats. This happened recently with the far-left party Die Linke.

On the other hand, a party with a very strong regional base can end up winning more directly elected seats than a proportional carve-up would have given them. This is the case with Bavaria’s conservative party CSU. Extra seats are created to balance out such anomalies and are known as ‘overhang’ seats: these have meant that the present Bundestag is the largest ever, with 736 MPs.

This week’s proposed reform would eliminate ‘overhang’ seats, and fix the number of German MPs at 598.

At a basic level the reform is likely to be popular with voters, since it will save money and cut bureaucracy. And it’s a cunning move by the government because it will weaken the CSU. Even though CSU is the sister party of CDU, the present system of ‘overhang’ balancing takes no account of that, and gives an artificial boost to the combined CDU-CSU strength.

Reforming this would be likely to make any future conservative-led government more dependent on a deal with parties further to the right – presently AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) or whichever party succeeds AfD if it splits/declines. Unsurprisingly, the present reform is similar to a policy that the AfD itself promoted four years ago.

Here in the UK the party in a similar position to CSU (though very different ideologically) is Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party. The present electoral system gives the SNP grossly inflated importance at Westminster, relative to its share of the UK-wide vote. At the last general election SNP won 3.9% of the UK-wide vote, and 48 MPs (i.e. 7.4% of the House of Commons). The system almost doubled the SNP’s importance at Westminster, and this would be far more important in the event of no major party gaining a Commons majority, thus making Sturgeon and her allies kingmakers.

By contrast a more purely proportional system would probably give a populist/nationalist party (i.e. whatever replaces Reform UK and UKIP) more Westminster seats than the SNP. The other big winners from a change to a German-style system would almost certainly be the Greens.

Most importantly for racial nationalists, it would end the ‘wasted vote’ argument that has so far prevented many of those who sympathise with our ideas from voting for a racial nationalist party.

Race-mixers and conspiracist cranks – the German ‘coup plot’ farce

Here at H&D we thought we had seen every possible method of discrediting the nationalist cause, and every form of embarrassment among our so-called leaders dragging the noble ideals of racial nationalism into the gutter.

But the tragi-comedy of this week’s “far right coup plot” in Germany has plumbed new depths.

When raids took place across Germany (plus one in Austrian and one in Italy) early on Wednesday morning, we were told that a German Prince and various “far right” politicians and ex-military figures had been plotting to overthrow German “democracy” and restore the monarchy.

This was said to be based on a so-called Reichsbürger movement who deny the legitimacy of the present German state.

As it happens they have a pretty good case. German “democracy” has after all brought in tyrannical laws silencing historical debate, and is on the point of sending the 94-year-old scholar Ursula Haverbeck back to prison for the “crime” of questioning the “Holocaust” and asking whether it was truly feasible for six million Jews to have been murdered in supposed “homicidal gas chambers” on the apparently non-existent orders of Adolf Hitler.

Earlier this week this same German “democracy” staged another political show trial against the philosopher and former lawyer Horst Mahler, who will be 87 next month and has had both legs amputated due to health conditions aggravated by previous prison sentences for Orwellian “thought crimes”.

Notwithstanding this tyrannical treatment of its own citizens, the present-day Federal Republic is of very doubtful legitimacy: it doesn’t have a proper constitution, only a “Basic Law” that was drafted as a temporary measure for the former West Germany when it emerged from Anglo-American military occupation. The idea was that this Basic Law would eventually be superseded by a new constitution voted on by an eventually reunified German people.

That referendum never happened and the “temporary” Basic Law remains in force.

So the alleged coup plotters in some ways had a sound argument. We have no idea whether the lurid stories of attempted armed insurrection were true, false or half-true. Doubtless more details will emerge at future trials.

What we do know is that the ideological background of the “coup plotters” is an utter shambles, bearing no relation to any form of racial nationalism, let alone national socialism.

The latest to be unveiled is a celebrity chef who worked for the prince. This chef, Frank Heppner, was married to an Asian: his half-Asian daughter is the girlfriend of an “Austrian” negro footballer David Alaba, whose father is Nigerian and mother from the Philippines.

In short, a model European family!!!

And these are the people who were going to save Germany: a sick joke.

They have nothing to do with racial nationalism or national socialism. Rather they represent the decadent remnant of Eurotrash “aristocracy” and reactionary politics, with an ideology cobbled together from pre-war “conservative revolutionaries” and 21st century crank conspiracy theory.

It is embarrassing that they could in any way be linked to the true European cause.

German anti-immigration party split as co-leader resigns

Regular H&D readers will know that the German anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was originally a eurosceptic party focused on a Thatcher-style tax-cutting, state-shrinking, anti-Brussels agenda: a more moderate version of UKIP.

After Angela Merkel’s infamous championing of asylum seekers during the immigration crisis of 2015 – summed up in her phrase at a press conference on August 31st that year: “We can do this!” (i.e. Germany can admit millions of ‘refugees’) – AfD rapidly became more of an anti-immigration party than a eurosceptic party, and began shedding its more moderate conservative activists including several MEPs.

Even so, there have always been deep ideological divisions within AfD. One wing – actually called Der Flügel (“the wing”) – is much closer to explicit racial nationalism and sometimes approaches ‘forbidden’ historical questions. The most prominent Flügel leader is Björn Höcke, AfD leader in the central German state of Thuringia (once part of communist East Germany), where the party is especially strong.

In 2020 Germany’s domestic security service BfV (equivalent to Britain’s MI5) announced that the Flügel was under surveillance as a potential threat to the democratic order.

Until this week the most prominent figure in AfD’s ‘moderate’ wing was its national co-leader Jörg Meuthen, who has now resigned not only from his leadership post but from the party.

Meuthen claims that he was losing the battle against the Flügel faction and that as a result AfD was no longer clearly a “democratic” party.

“The party’s heart is beating very far to the right today, and permanently at an elevated rate. I do see quite clear totalitarian echoes there.”

These are very strong words to use (especially in a German context) about a party of which you were co-leader until the previous day!

Many observers predict that Meuthen will join forces with the main German conservative party CDU, which recently elected a new and more ‘right-wing’ leader, Friedrich Merz. If so, this would be a significant boost to the CDU, which polled a record low vote in last year’s federal election.

Meuthen has suggested that as it becomes more radical, AfD will only be relevant in the more economically depressed and radicalised regions of the former East Germany, including Höcke’s Thuringia and the neighbouring state Saxony.

This split has been brewing for some time, though until recently it seemed more likely that the Flügel would be expelled rather than the ‘moderates’ resigning. A crucial role has been played by the middle ground of the party, including co-leader Alice Weidel, who seems to have sided with Höcke and the radicals.

Alongside recent developments in France, Spain and Portugal, Meuthen’s resignation is one of several significant changes on the European ‘far right’, which will be analysed in the March edition of Heritage and Destiny.

German conservatives elect new ‘right-wing’ leader

After their devastating defeat in September year, the German conservative party CDU has chosen a new ‘right-wing’ leader.

66-year-old Friedrich Merz was for years seen as the main right-wing rival to long-serving Chancellor Angela Merkel inside the Christian Democrats.

Merkel’s retirement from German politics (which she dominated as CDU leader since 2000 and Chancellor since 2005) came in two stages: stepping down as party leader three years ago, then as Chancellor after this year’s federal elections.

Friedrich Merz was twice defeated in elections for CDU leader: first by Merkel’s chosen successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, then after this ‘mini-Merkel’ proved not up to the job, by another ‘centrist’ Armin Laschet in January this year.

It was Laschet who turned out to be a hopeless leader, taking the CDU to its worst ever federal election result.

Last week, at his third attempt, Merz easily won the CDU leadership with the backing of more than 62% of members in the first ballot, easily defeating centrist Norbert Röttgen and close Merkel ally Helge Braun.

Yet H&D readers should look carefully at exactly what sort of ‘right-wing’ policies the new CDU leader stands for. Friedrich Merz is not our sort of ‘right-winger’. He is a throwback to the pro-business, small-state, market capitalism of the Thatcher-Reagan era.

A former corporate lawyer, Merz spent years outside politics during which he led the German operations of the investment firm BlackRock, regarded as the world’s largest ‘shadow bank’ and headed by New York billionaire Larry Fink. In 2018 Merz showed his true political colours, rejecting the Ludwig Erhard Prize (named after one of the CDU’s founding fathers) because he found the views of the Erhard Foundation’s chairman Roland Tichy to be too right-wing.

While he will probably win back some support from the more conservative, bürgerlich wing of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), radical nationalists inside and outside AfD should be able to establish clear water between ourselves and the likes of Friedrich Merz.

The same applies here in the UK, where during 2022 we can define a distinct nationalist ideology, very different from the neo-Thatcherism and libertarianism on offer from Boris Johnson’s likely successors in the Conservative Party, or from increasingly irrelevant civic nationalists in parties such as Reform UK and the moribund UKIP.

During 2022 H&D will play its part in defining racial nationalism with a social (even ‘socialist’) dimension, relevant to our times and to voters who might have backed Brexit, UKIP, and even Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the false hope that these causes and parties would rescue our people and our nation from cultural decay and economic stagnation.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you will stay with us in the New Year.

German Federal Election – end of Merkel era

Results are being declared of today’s German election for the Bundestag (federal parliament). H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton has been in Germany during the campaign and will report here and in the November issue of H&D on the results and their implications for the racial nationalist and broad pro-White movement in Europe. (click here to view detailed NPD results from this year’s election)

The German electoral system is a combination of constituencies (which elect members of the Bundestag on a similar basis to the UK Parliament, i.e. first-past-the-post) and a proportional ‘additional member’ system. This means that parties polling more than 5% nationwide are guaranteed Bundestag members.

The main outcome was a strong result for the social-democratic SPD, whose leader Olaf Scholz seems very likely to become Chancellor. Meanwhile the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) slightly slipped back from 12.6% in 2017 to 10.3% this year.

The constituency held for thirty years for the CDU by retiring Chancellor Angela Merkel was among those lost to the SPD, who won every directly elected seat in Merkel’s Mecklenburg region.

Despite its vote declining nationwide, AfD has gained numerous constituency seats across its strongholds of Saxony and Thuringia (regions of the old East Germany), though once the proportional element is allocated AfD ends up with 83 seats in the new Bundestag, down from 94 last time.

Of the sixteen constituencies in Saxony, AfD retained two, also regained the seat won four years ago by former leader Frauke Petry who had since quit the party, and gained another seven (from the collapsing CDU). This makes ten Saxon constituencies for the AfD, while just four were retained by CDU (including the two Dresden constituencies), one (Chemnitz) gained by SPD, and one (in southern Leipzig) retained by the Left Party.

Of the eight constituencies in Thuringia four went to AfD, three for SPD, and just one for CDU. Moreover in a highly symbolic victory AfD took the largest vote share in Thuringia with 24%, ahead of SPD on 23.4% and CDU on 16.9%. This is all the more significant as AfD’s leader in Thuringia (Björn Höcke) heads the party’s most hardline nationalist faction.

Slightly to the north of Saxony and Thuringia, AfD gained two of the eight constituencies in the Saxony-Anhalt region. While it’s often assumed that the seats won by European racial nationalist parties are because of the proportional voting system, the fact is that today AfD has won sixteen seats in parts of the old East Germany under the “UK style” first-past-the-post system.

The CDU’s collapse means that in large parts of the old East Germany it will now be AfD that is the main voice of opposition to the likely new SPD-Green government. The great pity for AfD is that had they been able to continue concentrating on their popular policies on immigration and crime, these results could have been much better. It’s clear from today’s results that the party’s flirtation with Covid/vaccine conspiracy theory has been an electoral liability. Various candidates and parties focused entirely on anti-lockdown and/or anti-vaccine campaigning fared even worse, polling insignificant votes.

The big losers of this election seem to be both conservatives and the far left (with the ex-communist Left Party losing 30 seats, down to 39 in the new Bundestag): the big winners are Social-Democrats and Greens.

AfD polled 12.6% at the last federal election in 2017, winning 94 seats to become the third-largest party in the Bundestag, but their 10.3% vote this year left AfD in fifth place nationwide (overtaken by both the Greens and the liberal FDP).

More radical racial nationalist parties (of which by far the largest is the NPD) have been electorally eclipsed for the time being by AfD’s success and tend to concentrate more on local and regional elections where they stand a chance of winning seats. In the 2017 federal election the NPD polled just over 175,000 votes nationwide (0.4%). This fell to just under 65,000 votes (around 0.1%) this year.

The one certain result of this election is the retirement of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been in power since November 2005 (latterly leading a coalition government of conservatives and social democrats). Her successor as head of the conservative CDU/CSU – Armin Laschet – had a disastrous campaign and seems most unlikely to become Chancellor: his party polled a record low vote and will finish slightly behind the SPD. Merkel will remain in post until coalition talks have agreed a new government, probably involving three parties in the new Bundestag: the SPD, Greens and liberal ‘Free Democrats’ (FDP).

One consequence of this conservative disaster will be a bitter battle for control, with the more ‘right-wing’ leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU – Markus Söder – likely to push his claim to lead the conservative alliance, and probably arguing that it should drop its traditional refusal to negotiate with the ‘far right’ AfD.

see also “Return of the Schleswig-Holstein Question!”

NPD results in detail – German nationalist vote shifts to AfD

As expected the NPD – Germany’s main racial nationalist party – lost votes again this year to the civic nationalist anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

For the time being NPD activists and candidates will concentrate their efforts more on local and regional elections. The NPD’s best Bundestag vote was in 1969 when they polled 1.4 million votes (4.3%). In the 2004 and 2009 elections the NPD won seats in the regional parliament of Saxony, as they did in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2006 and 2011. In 2009 they were only a fraction short of winning regional parliamentary seats in Thuringia.

Even regional parliamentary gains are unlikely while AfD remains a powerful force, yet NPD campaigning remains important both to build a core of radical nationalist support, and to continue influencing the radical faction of the AfD, some of whose leaders have a great deal in common with the NPD even while most AfD leaders are closer to the right-wing of CDU/CSU.

At this year’s Bundestag election the NPD put up party lists in every part of Germany but not constituency candidates. Every German has two votes – one for an individual candidate, and a second vote for a regional party list. It is for these second votes that the NPD was competing.

In the two states where AfD was the largest party this year – Saxony and Thuringia – the NPD vote fell to 0.3%.

The Thuringia NPD slate headed by Thorsten Heise polled 4,105 votes (0.3%), down from 1.2% in 2017. Bear in mind that AfD became the largest party in Thuringia this year, with a 0.6% lead over the SPD – so this AfD lead can be attributed to the transfer of previous NPD votes.

AfD was already narrowly the largest party in Saxony but consolidated its position this year with a 5.3% lead over the SPD (the conservative CDU having collapsed to third place). Here the Saxony NPD slate headed by Maik Müller polled 7,489 votes (0.3%), down from 1.1% in 2017. The smaller Dritte Weg party (Third Way – no connection to the NF splinter group once led by Patrick Harrington and Graham Williamson!) also stood in Saxony this year, taking 4,285 votes (0.2%).

In Mecklenburg – Western Pomerania (on the north-east border of today’s Federal Republic) the NPD vote didn’t fall quite so dramatically, perhaps because this region was less intensely targeted by AfD than Thuringia or Saxony. Here the NPD slate headed by Michael Andrejewski polled 6,399 votes (0.7%), down from 1.1% in 2017.

These three remain the strongest racial nationalist areas of Germany. In remaining regional / city state results were as follows:

Brandenburg, the NPD slate headed by Klaus Beier polled 4,871 (0.3%), down from 0.9% in 2017

Saxony Anhalt, the NPD slate headed by Henry Lippold polled 3,003 votes (0.2%), down from 0.7% in 2017.

Saarland, the NPD slate headed by Otfried Best polled 1,375 votes (0.2%), down from 0.5% in 2017.

North Rhine-Westphalia, the NPD slate headed by Ariane Meise polled 8,959 votes (0.1%), down from 0.2% in 2017.

Baden-Württemberg, the NPD slate headed by Edda Schmidt polled 6,029 votes (0.1%), down from 0.3% in 2017.

Bavaria, the NPD slate headed by Sascha Roßmüller polled 5,768 votes (0.1%), down from 0.3% in 2017, with Third Way taking 3,545 votes (slightly under 0.1%).

Hessen, the NPD slate headed by Stefan Jagsch polled 4,528 votes (0.1%), down from 0.3% in 2017.

Lower Saxony, the NPD slate headed by Manfred Dammann polled 4,374 votes (0.1%) down from 0.3% in 2017.

Rhineland Palatinate, the NPD slate headed by Udo Voigt polled 2,773 votes (0.1%), down from 0.3% in 2017.

Schleswig-Holstein, the NPD slate headed by Mark Proch polled 2,015 votes (0.1%), down from 0.2% in 2017

Berlin, the NPD slate headed by Andreas Käfer polled 1,979 votes (0.1%), having had no slate here in 2017.

Hamburg, the NPD slate headed by Lennart Schwarzbach polled 651 votes (0.1%), down from 0.2% in 2017.

Bremen, the NPD slate headed by Heinz Seeger polled 290 votes (0.1%), down from 0.3% in 2017.

Nationwide the NPD’s list votes totalled 64,608 (0.1%), down from 0.4% in 2017.