Being associated with actual Nazis is, for fairly obvious reasons, something of a taboo in Germany—for the time being, at least—so the firewall keeping AfD will function this time around, but, already, Merz has shown his willingness to weaken it to serve his own interests. He recently aligned his party with the AfD in order to clamp down on migrants, and that, surely, is a sign of how things are likely to play out across this next term. Merz will pander to the AfD, which is much more sensitive than he is to how pissed off German people are these days.
Life is bad and getting worse in Germany, particularly in the east of the country, with the war in Ukraine drastically accelerating its decline. The last German government, bending the knee to the Biden administration, threw all its weight behind a total Ukrainian victory, which, in practice, meant cutting itself off from cheap Russian gas and inducing a severe energy crisis. Costs soared, hitting households hard and speeding up the country’s dramatic deindustrialization. Germany’s traditional elite revealed themselves to be incompetent vassals of the United States, making wild decisions at Washington’s behest, even when those decisions went against Germany’s own national interests, and now it is the AfD that has most effectively seized upon the consequent disillusionment of the public.
The AfD is pernicious, and it does not actually represent the interests of working-class people. But it plays the part, positioning itself against the war in Ukraine and rightly pointing out the incompetence and hypocrisy of the ruling elite, while, at the same time, cynically blaming migrants and the green agenda for much of Germany’s ills. But even here, on climate policy, the AfD’s insane, dangerous stances are at least partly rooted in a legitimate critique of the ruling elite’s ineptitude and callousness.
The last government in Germany planned to phase out oil and gas heating systems in people’s homes, which, on its surface, is a good idea. But, to achieve that, it was only willing to subsidize a fraction of the costs of the heat pumps that were to be used instead. These things are much more expensive than the older, more polluting gas and oil systems, so this whole policy, which essentially burdened ordinary people with the costs of the green transition, came to be understood as profoundly elitist. This is something the AfD has seized upon, and now the whole climate movement in Germany is at risk of stalling. Merz, for his part, has already been clear that he thinks green policies have gone too far, which, perhaps, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. The man owns a couple of private jets, after all.
Merz is a millionaire businessman who once worked for BlackRock, so it doesn’t take the most politically astute mind to understand whose interests he will serve as chancellor. He will cut taxes and slash the welfare state, pursuing the same old, dead neoliberal policies that helped drive Germany and Europe into the ground in the first place. He will suck up to the far right, and he will clamp down on the most vulnerable. It will be down, then, to the left to offer a proper opposition.
That’s a bleak prospect, but, unlike in, say, the United States or United Kingdom, the left is at least something of a force in Germany. There are signs of life there, as the Left party, Die Linke, did better in the election than expected, even after its vote was split by its former leader Sahra Wagenknecht’s breakaway party standing against it. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) runs on an economically socialist, but socially conservative and anti-migrant platform, but, mercifully, Die Linke’s focus on housing and the cost-of-living crisis during the election proved more attractive. It did okay this time around, without falling into anti-migrant bullshit like Wagenknecht, and it is that basis from which it must grow over the next term.
Merz and whatever coalition he cobbles together will do what they can to keep the status quo chugging along over the next few years, serving corporations and the military industrial complex as best they can, and life for ordinary Germans will get worse. Merz will drag the country ever rightward, blaming migrants for everything and further emboldening the AfD, which will become more powerful and, maybe, position itself to win the next election. The far-right genie is out of the bottle now, and the left needs to be ready to fight it.
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