How Germany can combat the AfD

The far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), a party with openly anti-democratic positions, has developed into the strongest force in nationwide polls, particularly in eastern Germany. Jana Hensel, author of “Once Upon a Time There Was a Country,” argues that although the rise of the AfD corresponds to a broader European trend, it can only truly be understood and countered if we understand the experiences of East Germans and address their grievances. To successfully confront this, the pro-democratic parties must not simply continue as before. 

Green European Journal: In the international press, eastern Germany is often portrayed as the problematic part of the country. It was first defined by “Ostalgia,” then by the shift to the right. What does eastern Germany mean to you?

Jana Hensel: I have been dealing with eastern Germany for more than twenty years. I have published many books on the subject and, of course, the east is my home. I come from Leipzig and in 1989 I took part in the Monday demonstrations with my mother. That is still one of the most important experiences of my life for me. Eastern Germany therefore means a great deal to me. It is a social, personal and political home for me. I feel very connected to East Germans and am, of course, very sad about what has become of the east.

But you say that there is no East German identity.

I no longer work with this concept of identity. The word does not appear in my new book, because identities are fluid and change depending on whom one is dealing with. Of course I am from Leipzig, but by now I am also a Berliner. I am German and sometimes become an East German, but I can also adopt a West German perspective. So the concept of identity does not get us any further; instead, I am concerned with the question of experience. In my book, I try to tell a political history of East German society from 1990 to the present and to answer the question of how it came to be that substantial parts of East German society – as I believe – turned away from democracy.

Green European Journal: When did you actually realise that German reunification might not be an unequivocal success story after all?

Jana Hensel: That is a difficult question, because I have always tried to describe, from an East German perspective, things that in my opinion did not go well. We have a major economic and financial divide, a high rate of emigration and truly inadequate representation of East Germans in leadership positions. So we have a great many problems. I have always tried to talk about them, in the hope that we would solve these problems from a democratic perspective. But now we have a situation in which many of these unresolved socio-political problems are accumulating around the AfD and are now leading to our shared democratic system no longer being improved, but actually even being destroyed. This is deeply tragic for me, because I see that the AfD is taking up many of the problems raised by me and others and using them as motivation for its destructive politics. When the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, says, “We are taking our country back,” the feeling of being second-class citizens naturally resonates.

The Monday demonstrations of 1989 were a sign of East German aspirations for freedom and democracy. What exactly did East German citizens understand democracy to mean at that time – in 1989?

Jana Hensel: There were two things. People took to the streets for civil liberties. They also saw successes there, for example regarding freedom of choice, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and, of course, freedom to travel. These were very important central demands in 1989.

But in view of the post-war history of the Federal Republic, democracy also always appeared as a promise of prosperity. In the post-war history of the Federal Republic, growing prosperity went hand in hand with a democracy that was becoming increasingly consolidated and stronger.

And that is precisely where East and West German experiences diverge. Democracy was fought for by East Germans themselves and from the outset led to major social and economic exceptional situations for many of them. By the end of 1991, three million East Germans had already lost their jobs, and 85% of all East Germans changed jobs during this transformation process. These are experiences that West German society does not know.

I think East Germans hold out for a long time, but at some point, because the expected prosperity fails to materialise to the same extent, they begin to withdraw from democracy.

The AfD began as a neoliberal party and remains the opposite of a welfare party. Why do so many people then think that it can provide an answer to citizens’ economic concerns?

Jana Hensel: It really is contradictory. Let us look only at Saxony-Anhalt, currently the clearest case. If we examine the post-election analyses very closely, we see that the majority of people who voted for the AfD did so because of social, economic and financial problems. We can see that people on low incomes in rural areas in particular no longer have any trust in democratic parties. But does the AfD solve these problems? Of course not. It is a strongly ideological party that is becoming increasingly radicalised and advocates extremely radical approaches in education, culture, migration and media policy. We can already see that there is a major gap between the motivations of voters in eastern Germany and the AfD’s promises. And that is precisely where the opportunity to defeat the AfD lies, because the political centre must solve the real problems facing a large proportion of the people in Saxony-Anhalt. People rally around the AfD in order to create a moment of disruption, that is, to damage the system in which they no longer place much hope.

You write that Hartz IV (the controversial social reform introduced by the centre-left government in 2005) was the real cause of the loss of trust. Could you explain this in more detail?

Jana Hensel: Until 2013, East Germans voted more strongly for left-wing parties than West Germans in every federal election. This means that we have to start from a society that still carries a certain post-socialist legacy within it. This was not immediately obvious, because in 1990 they naturally first voted for Helmut Kohl, since he wanted rapid unification.

The “ordinary people’s society” of the east is shaped by workers. That is actually a typical constituency for left-wing parties, for social democrats, for Die Linke and perhaps, in part, also for the Greens. Until 2013, East Germans also consistently voted for the Greens in respectable numbers.

Another important insight concerns when East Germans began to turn away from democracy. Most commentaries assume that this happened in 2015, with Merkel’s refugee policy and the rise of Pegida and the AfD. However, if we examine the figures very closely, we see that the first major turning point came with the introduction of Hartz IV, the largest reform of the social security system in the history of the Federal Republic. Hartz IV did not fit the East German labour market, which was already characterised by extreme unemployment at the time. Nevertheless, it was implemented by the centre-left coalition. We can clearly see that voter turnout in the east fell significantly afterwards.

In the meantime, the AfD has tried to create the impression that it stands for true democracy or the genuine desire for freedom.

Jana Hensel: Yes, that is what its voters believe, just as other groups want to believe that we are a resilient democracy – although I am no longer entirely sure that we actually are. For years, we have debated proceedings to ban the AfD, but have made no progress. As a result, people in Germany can currently use free democratic elections to vote for an anti-democratic, racist and far-right party, which then enters parliament. We have now experienced this in Saxony-Anhalt: Although this party was legitimised by democratic means, it by no means stands for democratic politics anymore. But we know this experience from many other countries – whether Hungary or America. This is an experience that is now also arriving in Germany, or rather in eastern Germany.

Does this mean that the AfD is not at all an East German or German phenomenon? After all, the rise of the far right is a trend we observe throughout Europe and even worldwide.

Jana Hensel: It is absolutely part of a global trend, but it has East German DNA. I believe that in every country we have to look closely in order to understand what happened there. Orbán’s rise in Hungary must be explained from a Hungarian perspective, and Trump is also part of an American history.

I am not turning this into an East German problem, but I am trying to explain it from an East German perspective. We must at least acknowledge that the AfD is twice as strong across the board in the east as it is in West Germany. One week after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, in which the AfD received 43.6 per cent of the vote, local elections were held in Lower Saxony, where the AfD achieved 15.9 per cent. We have to explain this enormous gap, because only then can we close it. I am firmly convinced of that. If we dismiss the AfD lightly as a pan-German phenomenon, we fail to address its different roots.

Even if the AfD has too many sympathisers in the west, should we say that it has East German DNA?

Jana Hensel: I do not believe that the party has East German reasons, but that its success in eastern Germany has East German reasons. In the west, we can see that the party has only been growing for a short time and has gained massively, above all, under the current Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz. However, this massive growth in the west is being added to years of gradual growth in the east. That is why we are now experiencing one of the darkest moments in the history of post-war Germany and reunification. And yet I have the feeling that the more closely we look, the more precisely we can also identify solutions. I am not particularly pessimistic about that.

The results in Saxony-Anhalt are providing us with precise guidance on how we can combat the AfD. However, this is the opposite of what Friedrich Merz and parts of the CDU/CSU are doing by adopting the AfD’s policies. Instead, what is needed is a specific policy for the ageing, depopulated and, in large parts, less prosperous east, which differs from the west on many socio-political issues. This was the case during the migration crisis, during Covid and also with regard to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

As a society, we have drastically narrowed the spaces for debate. I find it difficult to adopt the perspective of those who do not support Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. I do not adopt the perspective of those opposed to vaccination. But we must clearly acknowledge that in Germany over the past ten years we have primarily turned material problems into questions of attitude. We have made decisions largely on that basis instead of recognising that parts of the population view migration and war from a material perspective.

Is this also related to the fact that over the past three decades in the former GDR – apart from Die Linke – the main parties available to vote for were parties that originated in West Germany?

Jana Hensel: Die Linke was the East German party for a long time. And we can see very clearly that, at the moment when it tried to become a pan-German party – namely in the years after 2007 – it stopped being successful in the east. In 2007, the then Left Party merged with the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG). The AfD has partly taken its place.

So can one say that the AfD is currently the only East German party?

Jana Hensel: One can say that the AfD is the only East German party with the strength of a major popular party, because it now reaches polling figures of 35 to 40% in all the eastern German states. But at the same time, we naturally have strong minister-presidents in all the eastern German states. Michael Kretschmer (CDU, Saxony) defeated the AfD. Manuela Schwesig (SPD, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and Dietmar Woidke (SPD, Brandenburg) have also managed to do so. Each of these people pulls their respective party upwards. Sometimes that is the SPD, sometimes the CDU/CSU. However, if we look at which party still has broad-based identification, it is the AfD. Does that make it an East German party? I am not sure. It may well be that the AfD is repeating the same mistakes in the east as the other parties. It is possible that the AfD is merely using East Germans to roll out its radical, racist and nationalist programme without paying attention to the interests of voters.

It will take a few more years to see whether these voters actually remain with the AfD or whether they formed a temporary alliance at the election to blow up the system and then fall apart again afterwards.

There is one party, Die Linke, which now, for example in Berlin, seems to be reasoning with the voters. But there too, many complain that it is an anti-democratic and antisemitic party. Should we really be concerned about that?

Jana Hensel: This is one of the most absurd debates we are currently experiencing. I am appalled by how many people come up with the idea of equating Die Linke with the AfD. Not long ago, the minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate, Gordon Schnieder (CDU), called for an examination of a ban on Die Linke. This is an escalation spiral into which we are moving. Parts of Die Linke have a problem with antisemitism, and it must solve that. But we can see very clearly that the majority of voters, especially young people in Berlin, voted for Die Linke for social reasons. I find it fatal to now push all these people into an equally extremist spectrum. Friedrich Merz is someone who is further fuelling this development.

The Greens managed to hold their ground in the last two state elections. What would be necessary for them to gain strength in eastern Germany as well?

Jana Hensel: The east remains difficult territory for the Greens socio-economically and demographically. There is a lack of academic milieus and higher earners, especially in rural areas. But in all elections we have seen that the Greens can be successful in urban areas where the socio-economic structure, average age and density of institutions are similar to those in the west. This was the case in Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, Greifswald and other cities. It is also interesting that the Greens achieved an exceptionally strong result in Saxony-Anhalt – with a very strong lead candidate: Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz. In terms of her biography, she is not a typical Green. She is a trained nurse, worked in nursing for a long time and originally comes from the milieu of Die Linke. With just under 9%, she naturally also benefited from a massive second-vote campaign. But I believe she also won people over as a personality. Here too, it becomes clear that with convincing personalities who do not primarily represent the academic milieu, the Greens can be surprisingly strong.

I have never been among those who categorically accuse the Greens of not understanding the east. That is simply not true, because there have always been highly committed Greens in the eastern German states. The Greens have genuinely East German roots, which are also expressed in the name Alliance 90/The Greens (Alliance 90 was an association of opposition groups in the GDR), and I have not felt for a long time that the Greens are unaware of these roots. Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock also travelled around the east during their time in office and tried to adopt its perspective. As a party that invokes the revolutionary legacy of 1989, it has a very important role in the east. This remains true even if it achieves only 6% there, and it is all the more true the more successful it is.

Five state elections will be held in western Germany in 2027. What do you expect?

Jana Hensel: I am already looking with great concern at North Rhine-Westphalia. There is a stable centre-left alliance there, but we can see that the AfD is also very strong in regions undergoing transformation. We can only hope that the AfD will not achieve a major breakthrough in NRW. It would be good if the AfD did not exceed 15% in the west.

What would be a good strategy against the AfD, beyond banning it and maintaining a firewall?

Jana Hensel: In Saxony-Anhalt, the Gordian knot has been cut, as the BSW has appeared as a second political actor that also wants to pursue disruptive politics. Nevertheless, I believe that the firewall policy could be successful if it involved more than merely symbolically distancing oneself from a very radical party. We have seen this over the past ten years. All of us – myself included – have, so to speak, built this firewall while simultaneously invoking the status quo. But we have done far too little to understand what these voters actually want.

Fortunately, we can see that we are finally beginning to do so. After the local elections in NRW last year, we saw that the proportion of workers among AfD voters was very high. Suddenly, we connected the social question with the AfD. In the east, we have seen for ten years that the proportion of workers voting for the AfD has been steadily increasing, and yet we have not raised the social question. That is the decisive question, because 36 years after reunification, the east still has not reached the prosperity level of West Germany. Neither in wages, nor in incomes, nor in economic strength. We must slowly begin to address the different levels of prosperity in the two societies politically as well. Every chancellor since Helmut Kohl has failed to do so, because the east has always been administered from a West German perspective. We need a policy that actively works with these differences and looks very closely at them. A policy that carefully examines every measure and every law to determine how it affects the eastern and western German regions. The prosperity gap between east and west is structural. It will not disappear again and is clearly visible. That is why different approaches are needed.