January 31, 2024 - 1:15pm
Is Germany entering Weimar conditions and becoming increasingly ungovernable? At first glance, an observer might come to such a conclusion. During the interwar period, there were more than 40 different parties represented at some point in the Reichstag; now, contemporary Germany is seeing a similar rise in party registrations. While almost all of them have a populist bent, the cohort boasts representation from both the Left and the Right and even a party that attempts to appeal especially to Germans with a Muslim-migrant background.
On the Right it is the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who is making waves. Maaßen, a longtime member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), lost his job in 2018 after he appeared to downplay Right-wing violence in the eastern city of Chemnitz. Once isolated within the CDU, he announced alongside the so-called WerteUnion (Values Union) that he would found a new, conservative-liberal party to compete in German elections.
The WerteUnion was originally a splinter group within the CDU that opposed the Leftward shift under Chancellor Merkel, but has since become a political movement in its own right. One of its main features is to not only be a potential alternative to the AfD (itself a self-styled alternative to the established parties), but also a willingness to cooperate with them, thereby ignoring the CDU-decreed “firewall” vis-à-vis the AfD.
But it is not only the conservative party that is splintering. Die Linke (The Left) last year lost its most prominent member, Sahra Wagenknecht, to a new party — named after her — which is hoping to capitalise on the Left-wing firebrand’s popularity. Wagenknecht is appealing to East Germans especially, for she combines nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic and the welfare state with calls for a more restrictive migration policy and an end to arms deliveries for Ukraine.
In fact, if one listens to her speeches it is tricky to find significant differences with the AfD. Both Wagenknecht and Maaßen want to appear as softer versions of the Alternative for Germany but fish in the same voter pool — one that is growing due to widespread dissatisfaction with the current traffic-light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and the Liberal Party. Germany does not have any federal elections – with the exception of votes to the EU Parliament in the summer – but the two new parties do have a realistic chance of gaining seats in three state elections this autumn.
What’s more, another unlikely actor has entered the fray: a new party called Alliance for Diversity and Renewal was founded a few days ago in the hope of gaining votes in the upcoming EU elections. The party, run by individuals with close ties to supporters of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and various Islamist movements, is appealing to the 3.2 million Germans with a Turkish background. It has not yet been included in any polls, but there is a possibility that the next EU parliament will have members who openly sympathise with Islamist ideology, while officially representing Germany in Brussels.
None of these parties, it has to be said, are openly agitating against the democratic system in Germany, so the comparison with the Weimar Republic has to be taken with a grain of salt. Back then, communists and national socialists were running on platforms calling for the end of democracy, something that (thankfully) is absent from the current debate.
Nonetheless, German democracy is not a bouquet of flowers with everything nicely arranged, but instead a workshop where there is hammering, welding, and yelling. And from time to time, someone has to pick up the broom and clean it all out. Germans seem to be desperate to find that someone, as this flurry of new parties demonstrates.
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SubscribeIf the history of the Weimar Republic is to be repeated then we will see reckless Government spending and money printing next.
The UK illustrates how to accomplish that in the 21st century.
Actually, the British pound is doing just fine, thanks.
Not according to my food shopping basket or fuel bill or the rising interest rate on UK Government issued gilts.
Compared to which other economy in Europe that’s doing so much better than us?
Being best of the no hopers isn’t terribly inspiring for the general populace…and the prospective new officers of the good ship Great Britain inspire less but will get the job merely because they aren’t the present lot…
I see the point you are making, agree the UK is not the worst example in Europe.
My point is that the conditions of the 1920’s and 1930’s in Germany could be replicated again in Europe right now a century later.
The old historical presumption that the excessive terms of the Versaille Treaty inevitably lead to WWII are now questioned. The newer viewpoint is that the reckless spending of the liberal Weimar Republic led to hyper inflation plus money printing.
Stir in desperate people who believe a fringe party is the solution. Finally substitute racial hatred of 1933 with EU immigration fears, then substitute fear of Bolshevism with the new creed of Climate Change and Bang.
Except the hyper-inflation in Germany from 1921-23 was caused by high war debt repayments and the policies used to try to pay those and not “reckless spending”.
So there’s really no parallel to today’s situation.
Given your dates you might have a point. I still think it is worth considering whether in the years between 1919 and 1932 the Germans destroyed their own country and fermented the rise of the Nazis.
Blaming the Versaille Treaty feels like an historical cop-out. Historians are sometimes guilty of giving a society what it needs to feel better about the present.
No, that’s just incorrect. The actual reparations Germany paid were modest.
the rising interest rate on UK Government issued gilts.
thats why the £ is relatively strong-its pure interest rate differentials at the moment-if that prop goes then “timber”-certainly against the $-I suspect the Euro is equally f….d
Err…isn’t seeking a ban on a political party, the end of democracy?
Democracy has a different meaning in Germany.
The omission does make one wonder about the editorial process. Why was he not asked to address this?
I’m presuming the suggested ban on the AfD, which indeed isn’t mentioned in the article, is very unlikely to happen.
apparently not, if you have unilaterally defined them as ‘bad,’ according to your own lights
Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Churchill remains relevant today, perhaps more so than before.
I think it’s quite exciting to watch actually. These new parties are out to get the votes of the (I believe) huge number of people in Germany who are of a moderate political bent but who are sick to the back teeth of all the mainstream parties and want something different.
The people find the AfD distasteful, but who desperately want to vote against the status quo. Who can’t make up their minds who constitutes the biggest threat to democracy: the idiot right who get mixed up in dodgy meetings in Potsdam, or the idiot left who don’t realise that a) banning the AfD might just be as anti-democratic as they say the AfD is, and b) fail to understand that it’s their politics that have lead to the AfD getting so popular in the first place.
The coming round of elections will be a fight for the centre ground like no other elections in recent memory. The party who successfully identifies where the middle ground actually is in 2024, finds a way of speaking to that block of weary, disenfranchised voters and putting together practical policies which appeal to them will carry home the spoils.
One thing to be said in favour of proportional representation is that it encourages diverse parties to form and this in turn provides a nation with a sensitive smoke alarm that warns of developing social unrest. The German establishment know they are at risk of loosing power.
The two-party system in the UK with declining party membership allows the governing class to carry on as usual under the delusion the people are not interested.
It would take a storming of the Bastille type event in the UK before the Civil Service, Downing Street and the MSM comprehend their failures and the rising tide of anger.
Same with the US re: the two party system. Too often, we’re left choosing between the lesser of two evils, which means accepting evil as the default.
However the method of proportional representation has to be carefully considered. I am not sure it currently delivers in Scotland for example. It can entrench minority rule.
While almost all of them have a populist bent
I’m close to say “When I hear the word ‘populism’, I reach for my gun”.
When the old parties give the impression of moth-eaten dolls in a puppet theater, unable to cope with any of the challenges of our time, the search for new structures and destroying dilapidated is the most natural democratic process with its inevitable extremes and surprises.
And yet journalists frown in disgust and call it ‘populism’. Sorry, this is the same as loudly declaring your own professional incompetence, which is what almost the majority of media representatives do, not noticing that this is tantamount to the statement “I am a fool!”
The whole point of democracy is to appeal to the people – and contrary to the firm belief of the elites, who are convinced they need to lie to the people for their own good, the people in general understand that there is no free lunch.
As Ed West recently said on one of his Substack, far from that being the case, on economic issues many of the British people at least appear to verge towards communist ideas! The government can solve every problem, print money, pay people to do nothing etc!. The response to covid was an absolute disaster in this (and many other respects). Britain has one on ten of the working age population idle and on benefits.
What on Earth is wrong with the term “populist”? It is not equivalent to the very inaccurate and propagandistic use of “fascist” by the Left.
Words don’t have intrinsic meanings, the word “gay” for example might be used as a positive one by some and negative by others. The same applies to “woke” obviously.
The problem is that under Germany’s electoral system, many of these new parties will get parliamentary seats. That wouldn’t happen if they had a nice, sensible FPTP system (like Britain).
“None of these parties, it has to be said, are openly agitating against the democratic system in Germany”
Not yet they’re not
Maaßen didn’t “downplay Right-wing violence in the eastern city of Chemnitz”, but he told an inconvenient truth (no violence took place, the one publicized incident was staged by antifa) when the entire media apparat and the self-declared ‘keepers of democracy’ spread disinformation about what transpired in Chemnitz. It was the same anti-right propaganda that we have seen around the farmers’ protest currently taking place in Germany, where media and the political class try to frame the protests as right-wing extremism.
The German elites are corrupt to the core as they are everywhere in the west, but maybe a bit more so than in the rest of the west. Just like 90 years back, when everybody believed in eugenics, only the Germans just went a step further. The same thing is happening today.