Fyodor Lukyanov: Germany’s political ‘elephant in the room’ has gotten bigger, so what now?

How the successes of the far right and far left will affect politics in the EU’s most powerful state

The elephant in the room has gotten bigger. There’s yet more anxiety in Germany after the non-systemic parties (often dismissed as “populists”) scored significant electoral successes in two eastern states over the weekend. ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AFD) won the contest in Thuringia and finished just behind the establishment CDU in Saxony.

The newly formed ‘Sarah Wagenknecht Bloc’ crushed her former Die Linke (the Left) colleagues and placed third in both states. The complete collapse of the ruling federal coalition (the so-called ‘traffic lights’ – denoting the colors of the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens) came as little surprise. More elections are due later this month in Brandenburg, where this weekend’s big winners also have high hopes.

It is only relatively recently that the eastern states have become the subject of increased interest by the German (mostly western) establishment. Almost 35 years have passed since the dissolution of the GDR and the absorption of its territory by the Federal Republic. The difficulties of integration were actively discussed in the 1990s and then faded into the background. Even in the first phase, the main issues were the scale of investment required in the new states and the efficiency with which the money was spent. The socio-political situation in the territories themselves had little impact on the general state of overall German politics.

In fact, it is only in the last decade that it has become clear in various situations that integration has not been so successful and that differences have not disappeared. In the changed external and internal circumstances, the former GDR proved to be fertile ground for the rise of very right-wing (some call it xenophobic, others nationalist) and very left-wing sentiments. The latter were of little concern as long as their spokespeople were the Left Party, the heirs to the GDR’s old Communists. Its split, and the emergence of the charismatic Frau Wagenknecht as a force in her own right, has made the ruling classes anxious, although it is still unclear how long her star will shine. And there is a chance that she will be co-opted by the mainstream.

In any case, the existence of a separate eastern dynamic within Germany has been quite visibly confirmed. This has again proven the damage from the arrogance that gripped the Western establishment after the Cold War, both globally and nationally. Ignoring the opinions of those considered to be the losers has led to major problems both worldwide and inside individual countries. More generally, the elections in Thuringia and Saxony confirm an interesting West European trend. The successes of the extreme right and the extreme left (to use the terms favored in the West) won’t bring either of them to power. A very clear example is France, where Macron, after all his embarrassment and being declared a hopeless lame duck, is about to appoint the prime minister he wants, not one the recent election winners prefer.

However, this sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed. The political process is resorting to ever more sophisticated political-technical manipulations in order to completely bypass, or at least neutralize as much as possible, the non-systemic parties and their growing support.

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The greater the number of persona non grata entities, the more difficult it will be to form coalitions without their participation. This requires an ideological levelling out of the rest, which renders the electoral process meaningless. During the campaign, the parties emphasize their differences, and afterwards they are forced to focus on their similarities.

In principle, this is normal; it is the essence of any multi-party democracy in which there are more than two main players and they unite on the basis of counter-compromises based on the results of elections. But the emergence of the “elephant in the room” – political forces whose influence is clearly growing but whose participation in government is considered illegitimate – distorts the previously natural process.

The coming together of old rivals doesn’t happen because it serves their core interests, nor on the basis of reasonable concessions, but rather in a slightly panicky atmosphere of ‘anything but not this!’ As a result, exactly what makes extreme but ideologically labelled movements more attractive is reproduced: the merging of respectable forces into a common centrist mass of vague and now often ‘rubbery’ views stretching in all directions (hello Macron and his associates). So we get a dichotomy not of views, but of the kosher – the ‘clean versus the unclean’. This irritates voters, and the proportion of those who think they are being sold a lemon is growing. And they are drawn to the ‘impure’, who seem more honest to them. It’s a vicious circle. 

So far, everywhere (except Italy), the ‘extremes’ haven’t had enough skill and cunning to outwit their opponents in this post-election game. And the Italian case shows that whoever ‘slays the dragon’ ends up copying it. Nevertheless, the growth of disaffected people who vote ‘wrong’ is linear. That is what makes the establishment scared. Although it has managed to hold onto the helm so far, it is not certain that it will continue to do so.

It is reasonable to assume that, in the medium term, such processes should lead to a reshaping of the broad European political landscape. Strangely enough, however, it is quite stable in its current state. In fact, no one has convincingly formulated ideological alternatives to the current ‘European values’ under American auspices. As mentioned above, the breakthrough of the former ‘outcasts’ into the first echelon does not mean a rearrangement of the elites, but instead the normalization of the newcomers. The EU/NATO framework has a high safety margin to keep the political field within the same parameters. This brings us to the question of whether we should expect any changes in course that would affect Russian interests. So far, the answer is no.

This article was first published by Profile.ru, and was translated and edited by the RT team