Since the beginning of the pandemic, this feeling has built up in Germany. And it is true that Germans have had to deal with a lot: the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, inflation and, most recently, the painful fallout from war in Gaza. Even though immigration is rising, we still lack skilled labor — teachers, plumbers, I.T. specialists — and public infrastructure is crumbling. Add in an ambitious government green transition agenda hamstrung by brutal infighting and you get a grim picture. Everything, it seems, is changing — and not for the better.
In recent months, this dissatisfied feeling has thickened to contempt. Anecdotally, it seems like everybody knows someone who has dropped out of the mainstream, vowing to vote for the AfD or talking about emigrating. The collapse of support for all three parties of government — the most popular among them, the Social Democrats, stands at around 15 percent in the polls — is eloquent of widespread antipathy. And that fundamental rejection is beginning to show in public.
This month, farmers took to the streets in several cities. The protests, ostensibly against cuts to subsidies, soon turned into dark anti-government demonstrations: Some protesters even erected gallows. The threat was not just symbolic. When Robert Habeck, the economy minister and the face of the government’s green transition agenda, returned from holiday at the start of the year he was met by an angry mob. This act of intimidation, reporting later showed, was orchestrated by individuals with ties to the far right.
There is no way to know all the motivations of the millions who’ve turned out these past few weeks. Judging from what protesters told reporters, the wide range of groups organizing the protests and the varied signs on display, I suspect that it would be hard for everybody to agree to a common manifesto. Many came because they are from migrant families or have friends and family who are, or simply because they reject racism. Some were protesting the AfD; others were there to blame the political class for fostering extremism. A new political movement, to be sure, has not been born. But there is a common denominator: a new sense of urgency.
What has started to dawn on us in recent months, and what the meeting in Potsdam laid bare, is that the far right is not about having horrific ideas — it is about enacting horrific ideas. Germany’s far-right adherents really mean it. With funding, support and a very real chance of winning federal states this year, they are closer to power than they have ever been in the nearly 75-year history of post-Nazi Germany.