Words: Ruby Morgan (She/Her)
CW: Holocaust
The quest for a cohesive national identity drives societies to seek narratives that satiate a lust for belonging and collective pride. In the context of the sudden rise of the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), this need has manifested itself as a terrifying push to redefine German nationalism. Marked by its abhorrent past and the legacies of the Berlin Wall, Germany has long-championed its culture of remembrance to bridge the chasm left by the Iron Curtain. In true populist fashion, the AfD has feasted on such fragmentation and capitalised off growing economic instability, Germany’s East-West divide, and malleable memories.
This September, the AfD made history by becoming the first right-wing party to win a state election in Germany since 1945, taking power in the eastern state of Thuringia. As former members of the communist GDR, Germany’s East harbours frustration towards their Western neighbours whose economic prosperity and political dominance are reflected in higher wages and employment rates. Huge losses in traditional industry and a serious lack of regional investment have left these communities craving a sense of cultural identity. Polling highest in the industrial areas of Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, the party has cultivated a lust for identity and social belonging by any means necessary. Despite lower levels of immigration in those eastern states, the AfD has satiated economic frustration with a buffet of xenophobic rhetoric. By scapegoating immigrants and refugees as the source of regional hardship, the party has entrenched its appeal among those seeking to reclaim a Germany they believe to have been lost.
Drawing on distorted historical narratives, the AfD aims to glorify Germany’s past. Founder Alexander Gauland stated that Germans ‘have the right to be proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars’ while AfD leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, infamously described the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as a ‘monument of shame’. Such a condemnation of Germany’s reputable culture of historical remembrance (Vergangenheitsbewältigung: the process of working through the past), encapsulates the party’s relentless pursuit to whitewash German history. Never outright supporting holocaust denial but employing repugnant rhetoric at every turn. The AfD’s narrative of ‘taking back our country and history’ resonates particularly with the East, where dissatisfaction with re-unification has created fertile ground for abhorrent political distortions. By these means, the AfD satiates a longing for agency amongst the disenfranchised and successfully exploits the malleability of memory and nostalgia.
Polling at 19% today, this right-wing party has shot forward in popularity while other German parties are left in its wake. Their popularity has contributed to the “mainstreaming” of the far-right, whilst other parties brave an ideological shift in an attempt to win back voters lost to the AfD. This appetite for extremism reveals an aggressive rise in nationalism – but how extreme is it? Well, former leader Frauke Petry and current leader Alice Weidel have suggested that German police use force, including shooting, against immigrants and have even demanded headscarfs and burkas be banned in public places. To put this into context, both these politicians are deemed the liberal moderates compared to their colleagues. The party’s voracity to blur the line between Germany’s past and its present has fostered pockets of deep ignorance and an eerie familiarity. Challenging taboos and spouting out Nazist slogans, the AfD demands Germans to spit out the onerous Vergangenheitsbewältigung and soak in a culture of intolerance and bigotry.
But what does it really mean to “deal with the past”? Firstly, mastering the pronunciation of the all-important Vergangenheitsimpossibletospell. But most importantly, it includes community projects like Neighbourhood Mothers, which brings together immigrants and non-immigrant partners and encourages engagement with Germany’s past. Linking Germany’s memory culture with the migratory dynamics of the present creates a “thickening of memory” and a stronger cultural network that the AfD’s grossly simple slogans couldn’t even hope to cultivate. Sincerely indulging in collective memories provides the tools to understand how the past interlaces itself with the tensions of the present.
The rise of the AfD exemplifies how extremism thrives in environments characterised by economic and cultural neglect. While the party may not earn any awards for originality, it serves up a heaping plate of ultra-nationalism and profound ignorance. As Turkish-German writer Zafer Senocak aptly noted, ‘Only he who truly knows the worth of his own culture can negotiate with the other.’ Given that the AfD’s identity is rooted in “the other,” it’s little wonder that its political opponents won’t come within an inch of them at the negotiating table – sorry AfD, but no one wants to sit next to the Holocaust-denier. To truly address these challenges we must engage sincerely with the complexities of our past, connecting them to the present and satiating a desire for collective pride and cultural identity.
References:
- https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/02/europe/afd-germany-election-thuringia-saxony-intl/index.html
- https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2023-10-18/differences-economic-structure-explain-wage-gap-eastern-western-germany
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/01/success-far-right-afd-shows-east-west-germany-drifting-further-apart
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037841/afd-votes-by-region-2017/
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41279300
- https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NostalgiaInEuropeReport.pdf
- https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/
- https://www.wsi.de/fpdf/HBS-008835/p_wsi_report_92e_2023.pdf
- https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-afd-wants-ban-on-wearing-a-headscarf-in-street/a-39010637
- https://verfassungsblog.de/the-collective-memory-of-trauma/
- Michael Rothberg Multidirectional Memory in Migratory Settings: The Case of Post-Holocaust GermanyTransnational Memory : Circulation, Articulation, Scales, edited by Cesari, Chiara De, and Ann Rigney, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gla/detail.action?docID=1663132.
- https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Ch.7,Doc.10FIN.pdf
