The anti-fascist wall that has preserved European democracy since the end of World War II is cracking. The overwhelming victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt opens a gap that frightens the Élysée, Downing Street, Moncloa, and other chancelleries, such as the Polish one, which fear Europe’s return to 1933.
Today we are far from 1933, but next year we could be a little closer if Marine Le Pen’s radical right wins the presidential elections in France, if political instability worsens in Germany, and if Vox governs with the PP in Spain. It is most likely that these forecasts will come true.
German domestic intelligence assures that AfD is a “radical far-right” organization. Its leaders sympathize with Nazism, minimize the Holocaust, have criticized the Bauhaus design school, which the Nazis closed in 1933, and treat immigrants as second-class citizens.
It has the support of almost a third of the German electorate, and its victory in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt (2.1 million inhabitants) opens the doors to government. It has obtained 43.8% of the votes, while the Christian Democrats of the CDU came in second with 17.2%. It thus approaches an absolute majority, and its government depends on a small radical left-wing party allied with Russia that has already indicated it will give a free pass.
AfD wants Berlin to restore good relations with Moscow. This alliance allowed German industry to operate with low-cost Russian gas, a strategic advantage over its competitors that was lost with the EU sanctions on the Kremlin for the invasion of Ukraine.
Germany is the economic engine of Europe. However, it has barely grown for years. The forecast for the end of this year is 1.4%. The growth model seems exhausted. Not only because of the lack of Russian gas, but because it is an export model and China, its main market, no longer buys cars from it; on the contrary, now its electric cars are eating Volkswagen’s European market.
The model also worked thanks to budget austerity and wage containment. The working class, especially the laborers, has been left behind. Austerity has weakened the welfare state, and the cost of living rises so much that it is difficult to fill the fridge, go out to dinner, and go on vacation.
No European government manages to reverse the feeling of loss, even abandonment, of the middle and lower classes, an anxiety that far-right parties know how to exploit very well.
AfD, for example, presents itself as the party of the working class and peace. It criticizes that there is money for weapons and not for industrial growth. It also criticizes the immigrant reception policy and advocates expelling as many as possible. It considers them an unsustainable burden on social services.
The governing coalition, formed by Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and Greens, has decided to go into debt to spend more on defense, but not on welfare. AfD accuses Chancellor Merz and his allies of having lost touch with reality and not addressing the needs of the citizens.
The ruling class, in any case, considers Russia the main threat facing Germany and the rest of NATO territory. It considers rearmament so urgent that it has amended the Constitution to overcome the debt limit. If it is for defense, there is no problem with the budget exceeding the 0.35% deficit set by the Constitution.
The spending figures are astronomical: 100 billion euros to start and an annual expenditure of at least 150 billion towards the end of the decade. The goal is to have the most important conventional army in Europe by 2039.
AfD states that it is not at war with Russia, and Kirill Dmitriev, advisor to President Vladimir Putin, was one of the first to celebrate its victory. Donald Trump has done the same.
The ultra-nationalist oligarchies that govern Russia and the U.S. are interested in a Europe under the direction of the German and French radicals.
The conservative parties of the anti-fascist front have been trying for years to hold on by assuming the anti-immigration measures of the far right. Saxony-Anhalt demonstrates the failure of this strategy, which already crashed two years ago in Thuringia, where AfD also won, although there the sanitary cord worked and it has not been able to govern.
No society has reviewed its past with more honesty than the German one. Processing history and assuming the legacy of the Third Reich has been complex. Saying, as Chancellor Schroeder did in Auschwitz, that Nazi crimes are also part of German identity, shows great honesty and courage. France, for example, has not yet assumed as its own the collaboration of the Vichy regime with the Nazis, and Spain is still far from a consensus on the civil war.
It is these embers of the past that now revive in Saxony-Anhalt. The containment wall is cracking. Millions and millions of Europeans have lost their fear of fascism. They believe their successors will succeed where the democrats have failed.
The hope for democrats is that the same ballot boxes that pave the way for the far right to power can also close it off, as has happened in Hungary. Three years ago, the far right won elections in the Netherlands, where today a centrist coalition governs.
If the institutions held in Hungary and the Netherlands, they can also do so in the rest of Europe. This is the big difference between today and 1933.
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