Espionage scandals are hurting Germany’s far right
On April 27th Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, the co-leaders of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, held a rally in the southern town of Donaueschingen to launch their campaign for the European Parliament’s elections in June. Their Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) was not invited to speak. Maximilian Krah, a member of the European parliament, is in the doghouse. Last week Germany’s prosecutor-general arrested his aide Jian Guo, a German of Chinese origin, on charges of spying for China; he remains in custody. Mr Krah was known among fellow MEPs for his refusal to back resolutions critical of the Asian power. One fellow MEP called him “China’s loudest vassal”.
Like other hard-right parties, the AfD once expected huge gains in the European elections. But a series of scandals has made that look unlikely. In January the German press reported that, at a meeting with a notorious Austrian far-right activist, party members had discussed encouraging “remigration” of foreign-born Germans. That touched off weeks of protests which drew hundreds of thousands of people. In early April press reports alleged that Petr Bystron, an AfD mp, was paid €20,000 ($21,300) by a Russian disinformation network. Mr Bystron denies the allegations.
Mr Krah says he was unaware of the actions of Mr Guo, whom he sacked after the arrest. He will remain Spitzenkandidat: it is legally impossible to strike a candidate from the ballot once the list is submitted. “Ms Weidel and Mr Chrupalla are pursuing a course of strategic ambiguity,” says Johannes Hilje, an expert on far-right parties. They are trying to placate the extremist wing of the AfD without alienating voters outside its core constituency.
How much do the scandals hurt the AfD? A poll by Forsa on April 30th put the party’s support at just 16%, down from 23% in December. (The poll asked about German national elections, not European ones.) That was far behind the centre-right alliance of the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) at 30%. Even the beleaguered Social Democrats (SPD) drew 17%.
Yet the AfD has suffered less than the CDU/CSU or SPD would if one of their politicians were caught in a similar scandal, says Christian Stecker of the Technical University of Darmstadt. Its voters have far more tolerance for their candidates’ dicey behaviour, especially their dealings with authoritarian regimes. Mr Stecker compares it to the indulgence of Donald Trump’s supporters towards his legal difficulties. Hence the party’s leaders have distanced themselves only modestly from Mr Krah. He remains popular in his home state of Saxony. On May 1st he appeared with Mr Chrupalla at a rally in Dresden, the Saxon capital.
The scandals are unlikely to hurt the AfD much among its core voters, estimated to make up 12-14% of the electorate. But some voters are happy with populism of either the right- or left-wing sort, and have been flirting with BSW, a new party set up by Sahra Wagenknecht, a hard-left MP. After the AfD’s troubles, they may be inclined to try the other populists. According to leaked internal messages, the AfD itself has reduced expectations for the European elections: it is bracing for a mediocre 13-15% of the vote. ■
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