What if the fascists win in Germany?

1 0 6 minutes read

When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz finally rose to power in May 2025 after years of political failure and an inconclusive election, he already faced what looked like an impossible situation. He had Donald Trump on one side, a few months into an increasingly erratic and vindictive second term, and the rapid rise of the neofascist far right in Europe, and specifically the Nazi-curious Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, on the other.

Merz’s party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union, had just “won” a federal election in Germany with 28.5% of the vote, the second-worst result of its entire post-World War II history. The AfD had literally doubled its vote share, to nearly 21%, but enthusiastic support from Elon Musk, JD Vance and other MAGA ambassadors failed to push it over the top (and may even have backfired). Merz was able to forge an awkward governing coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party, the CDU’s longtime ideological opponents. The “firewall,” an agreement that Germany’s mainstream parties will do everything possible to block the AfD from power, had held for the moment.

If Merz briefly became a leading figure in optimistic media narratives about liberal democracy fighting back against extremism — alongside wounded-duck Emmanuel Macron in France and since-deposed Keir Starmer in Britain — that didn’t last long. After 15 months in power, Merz’s popularity has sunk to sub-Trump levels, while the AfD seems poised to become the largest party in upcoming state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany’s scenic and historic heartland.

Merz once vowed to cut the AfD’s support

Merz once vowed to cut the AfD’s support in half, essentially through a combination of appeasement and opposition. He could undercut the far right’s electoral appeal, he suggested, by cracking down on “irregular immigration” but not going all the way to MAGA-style mass deportation, and by shoring up the German welfare state and reducing wasteful spending. (Across party lines, Germans still support a social safety net that seems remarkably generous by American standards.)

In the judicious language of The Economist:

None of this has worked. Irregular immigration has plummeted, but the AfD has simply moved further right, now raging against “culturally foreign” workers and urging “remigration” (a slippery term that can mean anything from deporting asylum-seekers to ethnic cleansing).

The CDU/SDP government is widely seen as inept and bureaucratic, which is exactly what tends to happen in “grand coalitions” between parties with fundamental disagreements about the nature of society. Meanwhile, the AfD has gone from 10% support in 2021 to almost 30% in some national polls this year.

There’s a growing consensus that the firewall, or Brandmauer in German, has failed, but much less agreement about exactly why that happened or what opponents of far-right nationalism or neofascism should do about it. Although I doubt anyone in Germany is inclined to take history lessons from an American, I would suggest that in both countries the failure to suppress the fascist uprising speaks to fundamental flaws in liberal democracy, and that the bitter lessons of the Trump/Biden/Trump era may prove instructive.

Although I doubt anyone in Germany is inclined

Although I doubt anyone in Germany is inclined to take history lessons from an American, I would suggest that in both countries the failure to suppress the fascist uprising speaks to fundamental flaws in liberal democracy, and that the bitter lessons of the Trump/Biden/Trump era may prove instructive.

What we have perhaps learned during the second Trump term — let me emphasize “perhaps” — is that the only way out is through. The temporary return to “regular-order democracy” and the rule of law under Joe Biden (a tragic and pathetic historical figure, for sure) was a damaging illusion. Forceful resistance to the Trump virus has been crucial, for moral and symbolic reasons as much as anything else, but the only effective cure, it would seem, lies in widespread exposure to its most toxic effects.

To give Merz credit, he seemed to understand the historical moment and tried to embrace his role as Europe’s last man standing against tyranny. It was “five minutes to midnight” on the continent that had birthed liberal democracy, he announced, and the reawakening of fascism was “the last warning to the political parties of the democratic center” to reach consensus on immigration policy, economic reform, a shared European defense strategy and other thorny issues.

From the beginning Merz was about the last

But from the beginning Merz was about the last person you’d pick as defender of democracy, circa 2026. He’s more like a time traveler from the glory days of neoliberalism, a pro-American, pro-business multimillionaire with a wardrobe full of €3,000 suits, a copy of Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” under his arm, and an entire career of close ties to transatlantic high finance and the Reagan-era Republican Party. Photoshop him into a 2005 summit meeting alongside Tony Blair, George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac, and he’d fit right in. Today? Not so much.

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It’s also true, as German journalist Jörg Lau has observed, that Merz was essentially for Trump before he was against him. He first ran for the CDU leadership in 2018 as an overtly MAGA-friendly candidate, vowing to push the party back toward the right both on immigration and what we might now call “wokeness” after the downfall of longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel. If he didn’t exactly promise to make Germany great again, that was the general idea.

In short, this was the wrong guy pursuing the wrong strategy, in a manner that should sound familiar to American liberals and progressives: endless triangulation and compromise on right-wing policy goals, while refusing to stand on any bedrock principles except the increasingly shaky proposition that we’re decent people and the other side is dreadful. Furthermore, the mainstream German parties’ efforts to demonize or marginalize the AfD only seem to have activated public sympathy and increased its appeal, much as the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection and Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump only hardened his support.

Friedrich Merz is like a time traveler

Friedrich Merz is like a time traveler from the glory days of neoliberalism, a pro-American, pro-business multimillionaire with a wardrobe full of €3,000 suits, a copy of “The End of History” under his arm, and an entire career of close ties to transatlantic high finance and the Republican Party.

One could argue that a more vigorous prosecution of Trump and his allies, or for that matter an outright ban of the AfD, might have produced different results. But as they say, we are where we are. Perhaps the greatest weakness of the German firewall is that since the AfD has never held power anywhere, it can make increasingly outlandish, ultra-MAGA promises with no consequences and no accountability: It will deport literally all “foreigners,” up to and including the second- or third-generation descendants of immigrants, and pour money into the welfare state while reducing taxes and bringing back full employment.

Very little of that will happen in the real world, presumably. But in another echo of the second Trump regime, the AfD feels no need to compromise or moderate its positions, because its grassroots energy is driven by extremism. “We don’t think about how to make ourselves nice so that the CDU asks us for a coalition,” one AfD legislator told the Economist, while another said that those within the party who advocate moving toward the center have already lost the argument, since “our election results are getting better and better without us being forced to change.”

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From this side of the Atlantic, the inescapable conclusion is that Merz’s firewall is doomed, and that sooner or later his party will reach an accommodation with the AfD or simply surrender to it. That’s likely to end his political career and fracture the CDU; see also the current relationship between the British Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. That’s a prognosis, not a recommendation, and should not be confused with James Carville’s infamous doctrine that Trump-era Democrats needed to “roll over and play dead.”

What we are starting to perceive in the U.S., I believe, is a more difficult but ultimately more hopeful path forward. It may be necessary for Germany to go through its own period of far-right triumph, which will be especially painful for obvious historical reasons, in order to convince the public that fascism (whether old-style or new) offers no legitimate answers to inequality, alienation or global disruption. Those who stand up for their ideals and principles without compromise, and seek to communicate them clearly, certainly won’t win every election, and they may well suffer for their convictions. But they also have a better chance of turning the tide against tyranny than the professional prevaricators in business suits with bankers standing behind them. We’ve tried that, over and over. It has never worked.

from Andrew O’Hehir on our crazy world today