Where support for Germany’s far-right AFD is growing and why – podcast
Germany is holding an election on February 23 and the contest is attracting an unusual amount of attention. That’s because the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) is polling in second place on 20% of the national vote.
Should the party end up with a vote share on this scale, it would be its best ever result in a national election. It would change the face of the German parliament and force mainstream parties into difficult questions about their longstanding refusal to work with extreme parties.
The AFD’s roots are in nationalistic and racist movements. It continues to take an ultra anti-immigration stance and, in this election, is calling for “demigration” – effectively the deportation of migrants.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Rolf Frankenberger, an expert on right-wing extremism at the University of Tübingen in Germany, explains where the AFD draws its support from and what type of Germany it wants to return to.
Frankenburger has found two clear trends in the geographical distribution of AfD voting. The first is common among far-right parties around the world:
“ There are always exceptions, of course, but the main pattern is that around the big cities like Berlin, like Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Münster, Stuttgart, Munich, Frankfurt in these cities and their direct environment and suburbs, the AFD is less important. Whereas in the specific rural areas, like in Saxonia, in the Erzgebirge, in Baden-Württemberg, in the Black Forest, in Rhineland Palatinate, in the more rural areas, they have their strongholds.”
The second, however, is unique to Germany. Support for the AFD is far more concentrated in the east of Germany. This region was the part of the country that made up the communist German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1990, before German reunification.
“Reunification in Germany produced winners and losers. And in the view of many East German people – and much of it is true – there are inequalities that were produced by reunification.”
These divisions are being exploited to push what Frankenburger terms a form of white supremacist, traditionalist “Völkisch nationalism” – not a term that is well understood outside of Germany but which resonates heavily in domestic politics.
“And so the AFD comes in and says ‘hey, there’s something wrong with the state, there’s something wrong with democracy, and there’s something wrong with our heritage. So we have a strong German heritage. We have an identity, we have an idea and all the others are trying to destroy it’. So it’s a kind of protest.”
To find out more about narratives pushed by the AFD, listen to the interview with Rolf Frankenberger on The Conversation Weekly podcast.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Clips in this episode from AFP News, AfD in English, DW News and Al Jazeera English.
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