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AfD logo at the party conference in Riesa, June 17, 2022
Photo:
Filip Singer/EPO
Will the AfD soon disappear?
And what does that mean for East Germany?
Will the relatively new nationwide interest in the East dwindle if right-wing populists also become less important?
In order to answer these questions, I have to go back a bit.
Since 2015, at the latest since entering the Bundestag in 2017, the AfD has acted as an accelerator for East German interests, a threatening backdrop through which criticism and complaints have reached big politics.
Those who voted for the AfD not only attracted attention in their own state, but also nationally.
The AfD also functioned more effectively than the PDS/Linke, the other protest party.
The "Zeit" author Jana Hensel once spoke of an "emancipation from the right".
Whether it was an emancipation – or self-exclusion – remains to be seen, but it is essentially true that the AfD has increased interest in the East among the West German-dominated public.
But now something is turning.
Many seem to write off the AfD and see it as a party that is on the verge of disappearing.
It was observed almost with relief that the AfD was thrown out of parliament in the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein, in North Rhine-Westphalia it only just got over the five percent hurdle.
At the party conference last weekend in Riesa, which had to be broken off due to the tumult, the party also showed itself to be internally shattered; East-West conflicts in the assessment of the Ukraine conflict came to light.
Thousands of members have left the party in recent months.
The reporters from »taz« to »Bild«-Zeitung in the perception that the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke, who lives in Thuringia, is pulling the strings and that the AfD is on the way to becoming an East German regional party.
A certain relief shimmered through and maybe also hope: If the AfD disappears, one might no longer have to deal with the East.
Finally peace from the jammer Ossis!
The party system seems to be going back to the old Federal Republican tracks anyway: the AfD is weakening, the left is dismantling itself. Soon it will be like it used to be!
And what do Easterners still have to whine about anyway, when the East is turning into the German windmill Silicon Valley thanks to Tesla and Infineon?
The AfD as a temporary historical phenomenon – this is how Bayerischer Rundfunk typically put it in a report on Andreas Wilcke’s documentary »Volksberater«.
This film needs to be talked about again because it explains a lot about the interaction between the AfD, the media and the East.
Wilcke has repeatedly accompanied four MPs for several years since entering the Bundestag.
Unlike the often moralizing reporting on the AfD – which may have contributed to the electoral success in the East in a kind of defiant reaction – Wilcke from East Berlin chooses an observational approach.
He refrains from classifying or commenting on the sometimes racist statements and lets the protagonists expose themselves in their vanity, incompetence and hatred.
The film just hit the cinemas
more on the subject
Reorganization of the AfD: "The AfD is becoming more and more loyal" A video analysis by Ann-Katrin Müller and Martin Jäschke (video)
Dispute over the direction of the alternative for Germany: the next crisis is certainAnn-Katrin Müller reports from Riesa
AfD federal party conference in Riesa: Höcke's construction project A comment by Severin Weiland
Writing off the AfD - that's another typical West German perspective.
Because in the state parliaments of Thuringia and Saxony, the party remains strong.
Now the expert has to help.
Call the sociologist Raj Kollmorgen, who lives and researches in the AfD stronghold of Görlitz.
He also sees the "tendency of the AfD losing importance" and a "dwindling ability to mobilize" in general.
The mobilization problem does not only have the AfD, but it goes across all groups of voters.
In other words: People are in permanent exhaustion mode after Corona, war and inflation and just want to switch off.
The AfD also had difficulties finding suitable candidates in the state and local elections in the heartland of Saxony.
Like a normal party in the east.
However, the AfD drew its power and its attractiveness for voters in Saxony or Thuringia from its strength in the west.
Just because she was strong in the West, media and political interest grew.
If the defeats continue, for example, in the elections in Lower Saxony next fall and they lose more and more importance and influence in the West, then the party would eventually no longer function as a means of exerting pressure on East German interests.
Then she could adopt such radical motions to dissolve the EU that hardly anyone would be interested.
The party would annihilate as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To counteract this
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Sociologist Kollmorgen warns against prematurely writing off the AfD.
Even if the AfD loses importance, in East and West, that does not mean that the specific problems, the distance to institutional politics, the contempt for classic engagement, will magically disappear.
The AfD has given expression to a political and cultural mentality that has its roots in the GDR era and that was formed after the experiences of the transformation and the most intensive period of unification: »They up there, we down here«.
Raj Kollmorgen: "For right-wing populist to openly right-wing extremist politics in the East there is a potential electorate of about thirty, maybe even forty percent." Their votes not only end up with the AfD, but also with the CDU or even the left.
»This affinity will certainly remain with us in the next two decades.
Politicians have to deal with that,” says Kollmorgen.
And if everyone is sitting in cold apartments in winter due to a lack of gas and oil, the potential for protests may increase again.
And not just in the East.