How the AfD got its swagger back

IT IS A bitingly cold evening in Bautzen, a handsome town nestled in the hills of the Oberlausitz, deep in the east German state of Saxony. But spirits are high at the election stand of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (afd). “Our land first, because we love Germany!” proclaim banners in the party’s trademark bright blue. “The mood inside the party is really good,” beams Frank Peschel, who sits in Saxony’s parliament. The afd took 39% of the vote here at last year’s European election, and your correspondent struggles to find any local not planning to vote for it at the national election on February 23rd. “The left calls us Nazis, but we just want a normal life,” says Simon, a 20-year-old. He will deliver his first vote to the party next month.

There is a swagger to the afd these days. Having fallen back in early 2024, the party has engineered a well-timed recovery. Its current polling, at around 20% and climbing, could double its representation in the Bundestag. Party spirits have been lifted by events in Austria, where an afd-like party is set for power after a centrist attempt to block it fell apart. Elon Musk, a plutocrat close to Donald Trump, recently conducted a rambling interview with Alice Weidel, the afd’s co-chair. Party insiders cringed, but say his endorsement will spark the interest of younger voters and German business, many parts of which remain deeply afd-sceptical. Once-bitter divisions inside the party have been muted in the service of election discipline—largely in favour of its more radical wing.

This points to a puzzle. Comparable hard-right outfits in Europe, like the National Rally in France or Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, have moderated to broaden their appeal. But the afd has grown even as it radicalises. At its pre-election conference in Saxony last weekend Ms Weidel, an ex-banker once seen as a comparative moderate, thrilled delegates with a red-meat speech culminating in a call for the “remigration” of illegal migrants, a controversial term she lustily emphasised. The party anointed her its first-ever candidate for the chancellery: a signal of its confidence, if not an ambition that will be fulfilled any time soon. “Alice für Deutschland!” hollered the crowd, a pun on “Alles für Deutschland”, a banned Nazi-era slogan. “There aren’t really any moderates left in the party,” says Anna-Sophie Heinze, a political scientist at the University of Trier.

The afd’s rebound has been powered by the government’s failures on migration, energy prices and the economy, says Tino Chrupalla, who shares the leadership with Ms Weidel. Just 22% of Germans think the country is up to the challenges of the future. The afd is honing its message for angry voters, muffling issues that excite passions inside the party but have little broader appeal, such as quitting the eu, while playing up concerns over immigration and energy. Yet speaking out of both sides of its mouth is essential to its success. Scandals help: in the latest, an afd branch distributed election flyers in the form of fake plane tickets pledging to deport illegal immigrants, a stunt with roots in the Nazi era. The party says it simply wants adherence to the law. But the dog-whistle is audible. “Yes, our rhetoric has sharpened,” says Mr Chrupalla. “But we just reflect political reality. People are fed up.”

The afd’s electorate has grown more heterogeneous as its support has risen. In parts of the east it commands well over a third of the vote, yet it has far more voters in the (larger) west. The archetypal afd voter is a middle-aged blue-collar worker in a small town, but the party is making inroads among youngsters. Its voters are not notably poor members of the “left behind”. But they tend to see themselves as badly off. The afd’s big weakness is with female voters, and candidates: just one in nine in next month’s election is a woman.

afd voters tend to be loyal. Most do not see themselves as radical. Instead, many regard other parties, including the conservative Christian Democrats (cdu), as having gone soft. But they are disproportionately likely to hold extremist views, including tolerance towards political violence (see chart). The party is under surveillance by domestic spooks for “suspected right-wing extremism”. More than 100 mps have backed a proposal to ban it.

It is surely too late for that. But the afd does remain locked out of power. Elsewhere in Europe, centre-right parties’ firewalls against the hard right have tumbled. But Friedrich Merz, head of the cdu and Germany’s probable next chancellor, says to work with the afd would be to “sell the cdu’s soul”. In eastern states the cdu has formed ideologically outlandish coalitions to keep it out. Many Germans turned off by the party’s fascist aura vote tactically for its opponents. The anti-afd firewall may even have advanced the party’s radicalisation by removing an incentive to moderate.

Few afd insiders think its polling can get much higher this time around. Yet no one in the party thinks it can be blocked from power for ever. “If you make firewalls, you’ll get burned behind them,” says Mr Chrupalla about the cdu. And although Mr Merz has tacked right, he will probably have to govern with a leftist party in coalition. That, says Krzysztof Walczak, from the afd’s Hamburg branch, means he will be unable to deliver his promised (and afd-adjacent) policies, such as rejecting asylum-seekers at Germany’s borders. The party is campaigning hard on this message.

The firewall is most at risk in the east. Mr Chrupalla expects a new cdu-led minority government in Saxony to fall apart, presenting an opening. An election next year in Saxony-Anhalt, another afd stronghold, looks appetising. Nationally the task is harder; Mr Merz knows the risks of even hinting at an opening to the afd. But his aides fear that if they fail to get on top of Germany’s problems, notably illegal immigration and economic stagnation, the afd could win the next election in 2029. That would not necessarily open the door to power. But it would be a grim milestone.■

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