Accompanied by a dozen other young people, Fritz, a 22-year-old metalworker, traveled to Wagenitz, a rural town in Brandenburg, to listen to one of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) candidates in the regional elections on September 22. Dominik Kaufner, 6th on the list, palavered in the middle of an attentive audience under the vaults of the Kellergaststätte brewery, with its typical decor, its ceilings decorated with deer antlers, its stuffed badger in the fireplace and its tall beer mugs on the tables.
Convinced that “it is not well seen to vote for this party”, Fritz prefers not to give his last name. “You can no longer give your opinion in this country,” he insists. “We fear consequences at work, in schools or in public life in general. To find a job in the police, for example, it is not easy: they check who you vote for.” However, the young man should not feel in the minority, as his camp’s victory is no longer in doubt. The vote promises a new triumph after that of Thuringia, on September 1, which saw the extreme right win for the first time in a region since the end of Nazism (nearly 33% of the vote). Created in 2013, the AfD has become in a few years the main political force in this former region of communist East Germany. She could come out on top in the elections ahead of Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), according to polls.
Omnipresence
In this part of Germany, the AfD has become omnipresent in the villages, where the far-right’s votes often exceed 50%. “In the countryside, no one dares to contradict the arguments of their activists anymore,” observes Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist at the University of Trier who grew up in the former GDR. Since reunification, the Greens or the Social Democrats have never managed to establish themselves. They are considered parties imported from the West, who do not listen to the people and do not understand their concerns.” The AfD, very well established locally, has taken advantage of this vacuum. Its activists infiltrate sports and cultural associations, sponsor the firefighters’ ball, etc.
Even the big cities, strongholds of the traditional parties, are faltering. Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg, a sort of “German Versailles”, is no longer a “progressive” city. The far right is gaining votes in this SPD stronghold where Scholz was elected MP in 2019. In the municipal elections, the AfD is practically on a par with the environmentalists and conservatives. A result that would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago.
All eyes will therefore be on this regional election in Brandenburg, which is politically unprecedented. If the AfD wins, the SPD state minister-president, Dietmar Woidke, has promised to throw in the towel. For Olaf Scholz, who has been asked not to come and campaign, it would not only be a local electoral rout. With one year to go before the legislative elections, it would be difficult for the chancellor to claim a new candidacy when he is already the most unpopular in this position in the history of the Federal Republic.
Fritz, the young metalworker, would be wrong to feel isolated, as his ideas are so shared by his generation in the former GDR. In Thuringia, more than a third of 18-24 year-olds (38%) voted for the far right, more than any other age group. Buoyed by this success, and because for the first time this election is open to those aged 16 and over, the far right in Brandenburg has put its all into young people. The AfD has even designed a special brochure “aimed at schoolchildren”. She takes up on one page part of her vast program: creation of a “remigration officer” (and suppression of the “integration officer”), freedom of thought at university (implied, fight against woke ideology), end of sanctions against Russia, ban on sexual diversity and limitation of migrants in schools, suppression of the fee, ban on wind turbines in fields… “Distribute this brochure!”, encourages Dominik Kaufner, the AfD candidate, a 41-year-old teacher.
Distrust of the West
As everywhere else in East Germany, the far-right vote is an expression of great disillusionment. People feel like they are reliving the same trauma as at the time of reunification: a total upheaval of their lives. While Brandenburg was nothing more than a field of industrial ruins in the 1990s, young people left to look for work in the West; the older ones stayed, nourishing a growing distrust of the elites. “Many have never managed to adapt to democracy,” analyses Benjamin Höhne. “They have accumulated wounds that have gradually made them swing towards the far right. It is impossible to win them back politically.” With the climate transition, the war in Ukraine and especially immigration, they feel their existence threatened again. And they fear losing everything a second time.
Tempers are running high. The slightest rumour about the construction or expansion of a refugee centre can set things off. At the end of February, in Lübben, in the south of Brandenburg, a crowd of 300 people spontaneously marched through the streets to protest against the construction of a 94-bed centre (each municipality is allocated a quota of refugees based on demographic and economic criteria). The head of the AfD list, Hans-Christoph Berndt, was among the demonstrators who chanted racist slogans and threw eggs at journalists. A few days later, death threats were made against the family who had made the land available to the municipality.
Exasperated, the young Fritz denounces the “ideology” of the old parties. “I don’t want gender lessons at school. The way gender equality is presented doesn’t correspond to my vision of family and society,” he says. “Will the AfD be able to ensure that my grandchildren can drink a beer in the historic center of Berlin again without getting stabbed?” asks a grandfather in the audience at the beer hall, referring to the attack in Solingen at the end of August, committed by a 26-year-old Syrian refugee.
GDP multiplied by 5
It is difficult, however, to perceive the objective reasons for the discontent. It is indeed good to live in Brandenburg, a large green belt around Berlin. Its population is one of the least dense in the country (2.6 million inhabitants), the rate of foreigners is the lowest in Germany (7.5%); and the economy has got off to a good start thanks to the electric car. The car manufacturer Tesla set up its first factory in Europe there in 2022. GDP has increased fivefold since reunification and growth remains strong at 2.3% in 2023, which places this region in the trio of the most dynamic in the country. “We live very well in Brandenburg, but tomorrow?” worries Henri, a 67-year-old retired civil servant, over his glass of beer. The AfD is our last resort, the only party that takes the time to answer us.”
The AfD, on the other hand, is furious about the energy transition, which is very advanced in the region with 95% of electricity consumption produced by wind turbines and photovoltaics. And it wants to restart thermal power plants. “Coal has always been a source of energy! I think it’s better than hectares of wind turbines in the fields that threaten the birds,” says Fritz. The environmentalists, in particular, are booed by the guests. “We’re tired of being lectured. We shouldn’t eat meat, we shouldn’t drive too much… We don’t want to be told how to drive anymore!” Henri gets angry.
Another refrain, for the president of the Brandenburg federation, René Springer, who came to reinforce the brewery, the “decline” of Germany can be explained by the connivance between the elites and the “corrupt” media. His diatribe against the “journalists of the capital”, whom he promises to “get rid of”, is symptomatic of the AfD’s conspiratorial narrative. “We have already seen this state propaganda [en RDA, NDLR]. They keep comparing us to Adolf Hitler! I ask you: do these activists on public television suffer from Tourette’s syndrome? [NDLR, caractérisé par des tics vocaux]”, he says to the laughter of the audience. “Our goal is not just to save Brandenburg. It’s to save Germany,” he insists, before concluding, pointing at the group of young people: “the future belongs to us.”
Sharp sentences
Already, the “JA” (Die Junge Alternative), the youth organisation of the AfD, plays a very effective role of support on social networks. As a result, this party has more followers on TikTok, favored by young people, than all the other parties combined! “Multiculturalism in football? We don’t need it,” exclaims a voiceover in the JA campaign video. “Should we expel thousands of people? Yes!!!”, the activists in the image respond in unison, a reference to the far-right’s plans to expel Germans of foreign origin (revealed earlier this year by the investigative website Correctiv).
In recent years, the AfD has significantly improved its communication through social networks. “The speeches of the federal assembly (Bundestag) are written in such a way that short sequences with sharp sentences can be posted quickly,” notes specialist Benjamin Höhne. However, there is no question of following the RN’s normalization strategy. After the victory in Thuringia, won by the most radical members of the party, the AfD candidates in the east of the country have further accentuated their identity and nationalist profile. “When we are in power, we will abolish the party system,” vowed Lars Hünich, AfD deputy in the Brandenburg parliament, referring to the “bringing into line” of Germany by the Nazis in 1933. The head of the German far-right list in the last European elections, Maximilian Krah, even reappeared at election rallies in Brandenburg, even though he had been sidelined during the campaign by the national leadership for having declared that “the SS were not all criminals”. The slip-up triggered the break with his French allies of the RN in the European Parliament.
“Every time we say something, we are called Nazis. But we are not Nazis! You can see it here,” Henri, the sixty-year-old, defends himself. The leaders of his favorite party are in any case clearly close to neo-Nazi circles. And that is far from reassuring. However, he is preparing to vote for elected officials who advocate the “ethnic homogenization” of Europe, deplore the “strategy of reproducing Africans”, consider Russia as a “natural ally of Germany” and are convinced that Hitler “is not absolute evil”.
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