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Will democracy still prevail in the west in a decade? It was certainly a question weighing on the minds of the hundreds of Die Linke supporters crammed into a former film studio overlooking Berlin’s Tempelhof airport last weekend. They were gathered to listen to the results of Germany’s election – and their reactions were mixed. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had just doubled its support in federal elections, securing a fifth of the vote, yet Die Linke came top in the capital, albeit with 21% of the vote. They cheered, hugged, kissed and cried.
We were in Neukölln, a diverse neighbourhood of south-eastern Berlin, and the triumphant candidate was Ferat Koçak, a charismatic Kurdish-German leftist. His grassroots campaign knocked on every door in the district – not unusual in the UK and US, but a novelty in Germany. “For several years, the left has been in a kind of shocked paralysis about what to do with the rising right,” explained 30-year-old activist Isabelle: grassroots campaigning, she believes, brought the left out of its bubble.
A few months ago, Die Linke seemed sunk, its former co-leader Sahra Wagenknecht splitting away to forge a new alliance blending leftwing economics with social conservatism. But the alliance failed to win seats. “Young people are more attracted to connecting leftwing economics with antiracism and feminism, and not putting them against each other,” said fellow activist Johanna.
Die Linke’s support was once concentrated in a generation that grew up in the former East Germany, battered by deindustrialisation and nostalgia – ostalgie – for the security of Stalinism. But as that generation drifted to the far right, the West German youth shifted leftwards. The party also prospered with women, with more than a third voting for them. A quarter of men opted for the far right.
Even though Koçak stormed to victory in Neukölln with 30%, his mood is sombre. “Dark times are upon us,” he tells me in a cramped room away from the crowd, pointing to how “everyone was talking about deportation and migration”. When I ask why the AfD has suddenly surged, his answer is clear: “They’re gaining strength in a social environment where people can no longer afford to live.” When he knocked on doors, one woman pointed to her single shopping bag. It cost €50, she said: that would once have filled two bags.
Germany was once Europe’s powerhouse, benefiting from a euro that made its exports to eurozone countries much cheaper than the old deutschmark. In the past three years, inflation as a result of the energy shock produced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hit people’s pockets. More than half of Germans say they worry about increasing prices meaning they can’t pay bills, rising to 75% of AfD supporters.
There are long-term issues, too. “In the last 20 years, neither the state nor private sector did enough investment,” Carolina Ortega Guttack, an economist at the thinktank FiscalFuture, tells me. A “debt brake” – introduced in 2009 by the then chancellor, Angela Merkel, to commit to limit borrowing – helped deter investment. In real terms, the German economy is smaller than it was five years ago. Germany brims with discontent: 83% of Germans say the economic situation is bad – compared with 39% in 2022 – rising to 96% with AfD voters.
Without migrants filling vacancies left by an ageing population, its economy would probably be worse, but, encouraged by the AfD, politicians of different flavours have willingly made them scapegoats. Under Merkel, the centre-right CDU brought in more than 1 million refugees: but it has since swerved rightwards on migration. A few weeks ago, the CDU – now set to lead the government – passed a parliamentary motion clamping down on asylum seekers with the support of the AfD, violating the “firewall” against the far right that has persisted since the second world war.
Helena Marschall, a young activist who helped organise protests against the firewall desecration, said all parties played with fire. “My deportation plans are better than your deportation plans” is how she sums up the mainstream parties’ campaigns. Across Europe, these parties attempted to defuse far-right surges by raiding their rhetoric and policies, only succeeding in legitimising them.
Here’s the fear. The AfD co-leader Alice Weidel sees Hungary’s far-right Viktor Orbán as a “great role model”. Orbán has gradually dismantled democracy by rigging the game against opponents in politics and media. It is a playbook comparable to Vladimir Putin’s strategy in Russia, a repressive autocracy that still allows opposition parties for appearance’s sake.
Across the west, economic discontent fused with anti-migrant scapegoating has driven a far-right insurgency. In power, all are likely to adopt this strategy: see how Donald Trump and Elon Musk are wearing down US democracy by attrition. Germany’s past, you would think, may help immunise the country from this threat: but the stigma of that nightmare has diminished with time.
“I think our collective memory is very short,” warned Jamil, a 31-year-old Syrian-German citizen who fled Bashar al-Assad’s regime and came to Germany in 2015 as a refugee. Then, he and his fellow arrivals were welcomed at train stations by volunteers giving out food and donations. The mood has since darkened, and with a new grand coalition of centre-right and centre-left set to assume office, the AfD are circling like vultures, waiting to feast on the disillusionment to come.
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Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
