The firewall against the AfD has failed

Germany’s political firewall against the Alternative for Germany has not contained the party. Eight years after the CDU ruled out coalitions and other cooperation with both the AfD and the Left Party, the AfD is stronger than ever, the editorial argues.

The piece points to AfD leader Alice Weidel’s recent ZDF summer interview as evidence of the party’s positions. It criticizes the party’s openness to leaving the euro, its repeated talk of leaving the European Union and its support for restoring permanent national border controls. A German exit from the EU, it says, would carry disastrous economic consequences, with Brexit offered as a warning.

Despite those positions, the AfD is drawing growing support. It polls above 40% in Saxony-Anhalt before the state election on Sunday and has stood clearly ahead of the Union in national polling for months, according to the editorial.

The article attributes that rise to a wave of public dissatisfaction whose main starting point it places in the 2015 refugee crisis. It says the party continues to benefit from the consequences of what it calls Angela Merkel’s largely uncontrolled admission of more than one million people, while crimes involving irregular migrants fuel public anger. It also cites COVID-19 restrictions and Germany’s apparent economic stagnation as factors.

The editorial says the AfD’s proposals are often impractical, counterproductive, unlawful or unaffordable, including large pension increases. But it argues that other parties made a mistake by relying on exclusion rather than confronting the AfD politically. “Behind the often-invoked firewall, the AfD has grown even more,” it concludes.

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Behind the often-invoked firewall, the AfD has grown even more.