When Sabine Thonke joined a recent demonstration in Berlin against Germany's far-right party, it was the first time in years she
felt hopeful
that
the growing power of extremists
in her country could be stopped.
Thonke, 59, had followed the rise of the
Alternative for Germany (AfD)
with trepidation .
But when he learned of a plan to
deport millions of people,
she felt called to action.
"I never thought that such inhumane ideas
would gain popularity again in Germany
. I thought we had learned the lessons of our past," Thonke said.
Many Germans believed their country
had developed an immunity to nationalism
and claims of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of its Nazi past through
education and laws
prohibiting persecution.
They were wrong.
If elections were held today,
the AfD would be the second most voted party
, according to polls.
A march against AfD in Berlin.
Photo: AP
But national polls
camouflage a major divide
: The AfD has
disproportionate support
in the formerly communist and less prosperous states of eastern Germany.
After the fall of communism in 1989 and the reunification of East and West Germany a year later, many inhabitants of the five eastern states lost not only their jobs, but also their collective past, leaving
them disoriented and helpless
in the capitalist system.
The rise of the AfD was fueled by
anger at inflation
and, above all,
increased immigration.
The EU received 1.1 million asylum applications in 2023, the highest number since 2015. Germany received the largest number of applications - more than 300,000 -, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey.
The country also hosted more than
a million Ukrainian refugees
displaced by the Russian invasion.
Voters in Germany and across Europe increasingly give power to far-right nationalist parties that promise to
restrict immigration
and, in some cases, limit democratic freedoms of religion, expression, and the right to protest.
These forces arose in
France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.
The lessons of World War II
After 1945, West Germans
grew up with the guiding principle that there should "never again" be a dictatorship
on German soil.
West German leaders
visited Israel
and apologized to Nazi-occupied countries, while taking schoolchildren to see concentration camps or Holocaust memorials.
But in the East, a self-declared anti-fascist society, young people were taught that they were only
descendants of the victims of the Nazis.
Thonke, who works at the Berlin water company, grew up in Bavaria, which was part of West Germany before reunification in 1990. He says he didn't talk much to his grandparents
- the Nazi generation -
about what happened during the Third Reich. , but that he learned about Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the Holocaust in school.
Never again 1933, reads a sign during a march against the AfD.
Photo: AP
Today's far-right
uses similar tactics
, he said, exploiting people's fears to gain their trust and votes.
"I understand that many people are exhausted by all these crises - the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the many immigrants, inflation - and are afraid that things are going to get worse," Thonke said.
"But the solutions offered by the AfD
will not solve any of these problems
."
Polls show the AfD as the most voted party in
the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia,
with approximately 35% support in each.
Both states have elections this fall, along with the eastern state of Brandenburg, where the AfD is also expected to
score strong wins.
Young and male voters
The AfD's appeal is especially
strong among men
– about two-thirds of its voters are male – and, increasingly,
among younger voters
.
In the last state elections held in Hesse and Bavaria in October, the AfD scored significant wins among voters aged
24 and under.
The party
is much more familiar with the Internet
than its rivals and uses social media to get its message to young people.
At the same time, AfD leaders often avoid speaking to
mainstream media
journalists and sometimes
do not accredit journalists
they consider too critical of their party.
The party benefited from voters' deep frustration with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
His government came to power more than two years ago with a progressive and modernizing agenda, but many now consider it
dysfunctional and incapable.
The Thuringian branch of the AfD
is especially radicalized
and four years ago was placed under official surveillance by the national intelligence service as a
"proven far-right" group.
The AfD leader in Thuringia, Bjoern Hoecke, on several occasions espoused
revisionist views of Germany's Nazi past
.
In 2018, he called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a
"monument of shame"
and called for Germany
to make a "180-degree turn" in the way it remembers its past.
"AfD is a nationalist party, and nationalists
want to be proud of their history
, and anyone who wants to be very proud of German history must, of course,
minimize, downplay or even deny the shame of Nazi crimes
in order to tell the story." history of national greatness," said Jens-Christian Wagner, historian and director of the
Buchenwald
Memorial , a former concentration camp in Thuringia where
the Nazis killed more than 56,000 people.
Attacks on the former concentration camp have intensified massively in recent months: Wagner claims this is due to the "revisionist, anti-Semitic and racist slogans" promoted by the AfD.
An attention call
Since January, a wave of anti-far-right protests has spread across Germany, triggered by a report that
right-wing extremists gathered to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants
, including some
with German citizenship.
AfD members were present at the meeting, along with Martin Sellner, a persuasive young Austrian with neo-Nazi ties and convictions for violent extremism.
Since January, a wave of protests against the far right has spread throughout Germany.
Photo: AP
The meeting, held in November, bore an eerie resemblance to
the Wannsee Conference,
when the Nazis
agreed on the so-called "final solution,"
the systematic roundups that led to the murder of 6 million Jews.
Just as in the winter of 1942, when senior Nazi officials met secretly in a lakeside villa outside Berlin, the recent meeting also took place secretly in a villa not far from the German capital.
AfD party leaders
sought to distance themselves from the meeting
, saying that the party had no organizational or financial ties to the event, that it was not responsible for what was discussed there, and that members who attended did so in a purely personal capacity.
The head of the AfD in parliament, Bernd Baumann, complained that his party faces a "devious campaign by politicians and journalists from the bankrupt green-left class."
"Small private debate clubs are becoming
secret meetings
that are a danger to the public," he said.
Still, week after week, millions of Germans turned out to protest, attending events with slogans such as
"Never again is now
," "Against hate" and "Defend democracy."
Demonstrations in cities such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Düsseldorf brought together hundreds of thousands of participants at a time, so many that the authorities had to end some marches early for security reasons due to the overcrowding of the streets.
People also turned out for protests in smaller cities and even held weekly vigils in their neighborhoods to express their frustration over growing support at the polls for far-right populism.
More than
2.4 million people have so far joined the anti-AFD protests
, which began in mid-January, according to the German Interior Ministry.
The organizers of the demonstrations estimate that more than 3.6 million people have participated.
Among them was Thonke, who attended two pro-democracy rallies in Berlin, relieved that the country was, as she puts it, "waking up."
"I no longer have that feeling of helplessness that I had for the past few years while watching the rise and success of the AfD," he said, adding that the government must do more.
"The government has to find solutions to the migration crisis, otherwise the AfD will continue to exploit this issue for its own purposes and become even more powerful," he said.
Previous waves of protests against the anti-Islam and anti-immigration movement PEGIDA eventually petered out, although they were not as massive as the movement against the AfD that is brewing.
Still, the AfD is going from strength to strength.
In December, he marked another milestone, when for the first time his candidate won the mayoral election in a medium-sized city: Pirna in Saxony.
Now the party has its sights set on the European Parliament elections in June.
If Thonke and his colleagues want to push back the far right, they will have to convince their countrymen not only to protest, but to turn out en masse to the polls.
The author is a journalist for the Associated Press