“Faschisten sind keine alternative für Deutschland.” Fascists are not an alternative for Germany. “Kein platz für nazis.” No place for Nazis. “Nie wieder ist genau jetzt.” Never again is right now. From Berlin to Munich and from Hamburg to Dresden, these slogans hang in every plaza and echo across every street.
This rhetoric, which is reminiscent of the 1900s-era resistance movement against the Nazi regime, is part of today’s large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations in Germany. According to the German Interior Ministry, these demonstrations have attracted over 2.4 million supporters since mid-January. Some organizations estimate the participation at more than 3.6 million people. The root of the protests lies in growing anger and frustration with Germany’s far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and its disturbing extremist agenda.
Founded in 2013, the AfD emerged as a political contender with a platform centered around economic dissatisfaction. Its origin lies in the Global Economic Crisis of 2008, which triggered the European debt crisis. As a result, many Eurozone countries were unable to pay their government debt. The AfD, with a founding cohort of free-market economists and academics, opposed German-backed bailouts to the indebted governments. It also challenged the adoption of the euro on the basis that it led to high levels of trade imbalances, which exacerbated skepticism about the European Union.
“The AfD was not initially a far-right party in its founding,” said Prof. Dr. Kai Arzheimer, a professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz and a leading expert on the AfD and the far-right in Europe. Instead, the AfD was a “party that consisted of people who could have been or were in fact members of center-right parties, but always had a strange mix of right wingers on its team.” However, “the party began to transform quite quickly,” Arzheimer asserted.
Originally, the party failed to muster even 5% of the votes required to meet the threshold to enter federal parliament (Bundestag). Now, they hold close to 11% of the seats in the German legislature.
The growth can be mostly attributed to the diversification of the AfD’s political platform. The party incorporated new, far-right policies alongside its original eurosceptic, economy-focused approach. Prof. Dr. Alexander Wuttke, the Professor of Digitalization and Political Behavior at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, said, “there has been a reservoir for parties to tap into xenophobia, widespread dissatisfaction with the political system, or anti-elitist sentiment, all of which has existed for quite some time in Germany.”
Arzheimer echoed Wuttke’s perspective. “Upon its transformation, the AfD fit the stereotype of a European radical right party, so it became very anti-immigration, anti-climate change, anti-gender equality. Whatever you imagine, [the party] did it all,” he said.
The AfD’s broad platform attracted new voters and led to a significant increase in membership from nearly 17,000 members in 2013 to around 40,000 in 2024. The expansion signals a deepening divide between Germans over the meaning of their national identity, and it necessitates a reexamination of Germany’s complex history and contemporary problems.
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Some have attributed the rise of the AfD indirectly to former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany’s conservative parties. She is described in a Time article as “a symbol of stability, a ‘civil servant-in-chief, floating above parties.’” But her drive for consensus may have had unintended consequences.
“The CDU has shifted toward the center-left of the political spectrum in the last decade under Angela Merkel’s leadership, [creating] an opening for the AfD,” said Nathan Illies, a Politics, Philosophy and Economics student at the University of Bayreuth in Germany and a current Carlo Schmid Fellow at the United Nations in Washington, D.C..
Proponents of the AfD suggest that the current government, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), in coalition with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens, has had an unsatisfactory track record.
“Partly because of the nature of the complexity, partly because of strife and political ineptitude, the German government’s leading elites have not found answers to Germany’s problem,” said Rüdiger Bachmann, a Stepan Family College Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame who holds dual citizenship from the United States and German. “This coalition really had a chance to modernize Germany, to stick together. The way they are conducting themselves, we have sort of three parties, ideologically far apart. There was a hope that [the coalition] could work on a project with a narrative to benefit modernization, and that just never happened.”
The AfD’s main concerns have worried German citizens for decades, but other issues have recently developed. According to Nathan Illies, “people are presently very unhappy with the coalition of the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP. The government has failed to stimulate the economy after the COVID pandemic and inflation, effectively address the challenges posed by the increasing numbers of migrants, or restrict Germany’s structural budget deficit. Instead, the coalition, amidst public infighting and disputes, pursues an unpopular green agenda, including banning oil and gas heating systems, despite widespread protests against these compulsory regulations.”
And it is these policies causing dissatisfaction that the AfD has strategically weaponized to attract more supporters. “The AfD attracts dissatisfied citizens by creating the perception that there are simple solutions to complex problems,” said Ludwig Illies, a Politics student at Kings College London from Coburg, Bavaria.
Just as economic disaffection was the fundamental reason for the AfD’s founding, it continues to be a policy priority today. Since the 2000s, Germany has experienced an outflow of private capital due to slow domestic demand and weak business activity. Thus, German governments have struggled to attract investment in economic growth and are under constant pressure to stabilize financial markets. As Bachmann straightforwardly put it, “there is a feeling, and not unjustifiably so, that Germany is having economic difficulties.”
In 2023, German labor shortages prevented progress in construction and energy-intensive industries. Generally, “there is a lack of labor supply right now in Germany at every skill level,” said Bachmann.
In addition to the challenge posed by labor shortages, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has increased the price of energy and led to higher inflation rates. The purchasing power of households decreased, while the cost of living increased. Consequently, citizens lost faith in the government’s ability to address their needs and looked for other options to improve their prospects. The AfD offered just that—an alternative to the spectrum of established parties.
The AfD promised to redirect money from foreign aid, including assistance to Ukraine, toward domestic development. To revitalize the German economy while staying in line with the party’s foundational free-market principles, they also proposed minimizing government subsidies, lowering taxes, and eliminating wealth and inheritance taxes. For those experiencing stagnation and economic insecurity under the current administration, these proposals appear like a much-needed change.
Perhaps the most impactful topic on the AfD agenda, however, is its stance on immigration and its perceived resulting shift in German values.
In 2015, escalating wars in the Middle East and the onset of the Arab Winter led to an influx of migrants and refugees seeking entry to European countries. In response, many European nations tightened their border policies. Despite backlash from her own party, then-chancellor Merkel chose an open policy, processing applications from approximately 1.5 million asylum seekers between 2015-2019. The policy overextended the country’s resources and carrying capacity, leading to anti-immigration protests and stricter immigration controls.
According to Arzheimer, “many people had the impression that Germany was losing control of the border. And that made it possible to start a party that splintered from the mainstream and transformed to a more radical right party.”
Jannik Schilling, a German-born venture capitalist with deep ties to both Germany and the U.S., said that the pursuit of liberal immigration policy has pushed people who “oppose immigration and asylum practices” and “do not feel represented by the established parties” to the “far, far right because [the AfD is the party] that opposes immigration practices the strongest.”
The AfD, for many voters, represents a radical, new path forward with an extreme position on immigration. Prof. Dr. Anselm Hager, an international politics professor in the Institute of Social Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin, said that the AfD is “very strict on not having immigration, and some [in the party] have even suggested expatriating current Germans with a migratory background.”
In 2023, in Potsdam, Germany, AfD members attended a secret conference with Martin Sellner, an infamous Austrian right-wing extremist, who gave a presentation about “remigration,” a euphemism referring to the forced removal of asylum seekers and non-assimilated German citizens. Although the AfD claimed that none of its members attended in an official capacity, the presence of AfD representatives and affiliates nevertheless incited public outrage.
On a fundamental level, current conversations around anti-immigration reflect a purported shift in the cultural values and social identity of Germany. For example, PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), an extremist political movement group based in Eastern Germany, sensationalizes a white nationalist conspiracy theory that argues Islam will conquer Europe if Germany continues to accept more immigrants. As Hager put it, immigration is perhaps “a threat about status loss—people feel like things are changing for the worse individually and for the country at large, which worsens their standing in society.”
The climate crisis, the pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine War are also important drivers of the AfD’s growing popularity.
Addressing climate change is a significant goal of the current government, especially because of its coalition with the Greens. “Although most people recognize the existence of a climate crisis, many view the government’s approach of addressing it critically. A primary worry is that these environmental policies might negatively impact the economy,” said Ludwig Illies. The AfD, while recognizing that the climate is changing, denies that humans are the root cause. Thus, the party maintains that fossil fuels are a necessity for Germany, and that people should be able to live without government policies forcing them to make energy use transitions.
Another recent factor influencing the AfD’s stances has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Ludwig Illies said that the pandemic represented a “significant event that led to societal divisions based on a wide array of differing opinions.” The AfD criticized the German government for handling the pandemic by imposing lockdown measures, and former AfD Bundestag representative Florian Jäger went as far as to “[equate] the injustice of the Nazis against the Jews with the measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.” The AfD manipulatively tapped into uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, portraying public health measures as oppressive and an infringement on freedoms, thereby appealing to voters who were fearful and susceptible to misinformation.
The Russia-Ukraine War also contributed to the AfD’s ascent. According to Bachmann, “there will be a military transformation with the increased threat from Putin; Germany will have to do more for European security.” For the AfD, this idea is incompatible with its policy priorities. As Ludwig Illies said, “while a large portion of Germany, along with the current government, is in strong support of Ukraine, the AfD has adopted a more reserved position, suggesting a focus on domestic financial priorities.” In line with its Eurosceptic roots, the AfD has repudiated EU sanctions against Russia and continues to visit Russian-occupied areas like Crimea, indicating its aim to restore economic and political ties with the Kremlin and “normalcy” in Germany.
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The AfD has strategically targeted voters. Alongside maintaining a strong social media presence to engage with young voters, they have also focused on the demographics most likely to receive the party agenda well.
“Being unemployed is a major driver for right support in many European countries; the same goes for the AfD,” said Kai Arzheimer. “The majority of the voters are reasonably well-off middle class, lower middle-class, but they are all worried about the future. They are worried about the future of their children. They are concerned about the way the country is going.”
Anselm Hager agreed, highlighting a distinction between perception and reality: “It’s not necessarily the case that poor voters tend to flock to the AfD. The more convincing explanation that I have come across has to do with perceptions about the mainstream party not doing so well.”
Notably, the AfD’s support displays a distinct regional divide between East and West Germany. As Bachmann said, “East Germans were never exposed, or only belatedly exposed, to democratic reeducation and were left with less than favorable circumstances. They witnessed a collapse of their livelihood and their economy. For many of them, the whole idea of Germany being deeply rooted in a western democratic, rule-of-law type situation probably has less appeal than for West Germans.”
Schilling expanded on this, positing that “even 30 years after reunification, there are still significant differences—such as a lower GDP per capita or lower employment rate—between East and West Germany.” He added that “many of the most skilled workers have left East Germany, partially due to wage differences with West Germany. This leaves behind some people who did not have that option. The dynamic is slowly changing, as there are now more university towns and employment opportunities, but the change has been very gradual.”
Arzheimer claimed that economics may not paint the full picture. “The south of the former GDR (German Democratic Republic) is an area where many people are very unhappy about politics, even though this is the most economically advanced part of the former GDR and reasonably well-run states. Yet, still, there is a sense of being mistreated by history and of being alienated from the government,” he said. Many individuals in this area continue to harbor historical grudges, leading to a sense of disconnect from the government that even improved material conditions fails to alleviate.
In light of these factors, Bachmann said that “it is perhaps no surprise that most of [the AfD’s] vote share is somewhat concentrated in East Germany.” However, he also acknowledged that “it is wrong to only perceive this as a problem of East Germany: the AfD has considerable vote shares in West German states, too.”
History is important to understanding the regional divide of support, but it is also crucial to understanding the way in which the AfD has used memory politics to garner support. The AfD has challenged notions of guilt associated with Germany’s past, contending that all nations have their share of bad history. To this end, they have appealed to nostalgia and invoked selective interpretations of history to garner support: using a Nazi-era symbol to protest against gender-inclusive rhetoric, reclaiming Nazi language, and questioning the Holocaust commemoration policy.
In discussing the importance of historical remembrance in the AfD, Wuttke said that “there is a strong norm against anything that tries to pick up on the Third Reich. It is a clear taboo, but it seems that our constitutional culture, which has been a consensus for quite some time, is being challenged.” While “[the AfD] cannot overtly argue against democracy, they can challenge it subtly by proposing a limit on historical education on Nazi Germany or lamenting a dedicated space to a large memorial in the city center of Germany’s capital,” Wuttke explained.
“The Holocaust and remembrance has been a defining feature of postwar Germany,” Hager elaborated. “It has been one of the reasons that, for a long time, we have not had a very far-right party because it was always part of our DNA that it should never happen again. ‘Never again’ is the slogan. But of course, the genie is out of the bottle.”
Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works: the Politics of Us and Them, commented on the discussion surrounding the AfD’s weaponization of German identity. “If you take your country’s identity to be standing for liberalism, standing for equality, standing for freedom, and standing for values that are admirable, it is okay to be patriotic and say that these are your values,” Stanley said. “But if patriotism means being proud of your country just because you think it is better than others, it is no longer patriotism: it becomes supremacy.”
While it is fine to be proud of democracy, what the AfD is pushing, Stanley explained, is that Germans “should believe that their Fatherland is the greatest country on Earth and needs to be kept pure.” In this case, the AfD has left patriotism behind and is “getting into ethno-nationalism.”
For Selma Sondern, a PhD candidate in Modern History at the University of St. Andrews, who lives and works in Berlin, the AfD’s emphasis on German identity may carry a hidden benefit. She recognized that “compared to other countries, it is very hard to be comfortable and patriotic waving around a German flag, for example. People react differently to that.” But, at the same time, this may provide the opportunity to “foster a new dialogue about how Germans allow themselves to think about their nation and their identity.” She noted that there needs to be “a new conversation about patriotism in Germany” in order “to create a balanced and historicized way of identifying with Germany that allows more than we currently allow ourselves.”
Some point to the fact that there are many other ways to show pride for Germany’s culture and democracy without resorting to extremism. Karoline Meta Beisel, who is the deputy head of the politics section at Süddeutsche Zeitung, the biggest broadsheet daily newspaper in Germany, shared one story.
“In 2006, the World Cup was held in Germany. German people are crazy for soccer, so you had these German flags and signs all over Germany. It was one of the rare times that people had this feeling of it being acceptable, even liberating, to wave a German flag in certain circumstances. That was an occasion where you would see a lot of German flags and not be associated with Nazi Germany.” This example illustrates that there are alternative means to express national pride without neglecting Germany’s past.
As Beisel succinctly put it, “I don’t think that you need to vote for AfD to have ways to feel patriotic.”
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Citizens who feel the same way as Beisel have taken to the streets to demonstrate their staunch opposition to the AfD and its policies. Wuttke, who has participated in two of the protests himself in Munich, stated that “they were some of the biggest protests that the city has ever seen.” He noted that “we have always had protests in Germany, but now people will take their evenings just to say ‘I want democracy.’”
Hager also remarked that “the protests were quite surprising. Sure there was a catalyst, the secret meeting, but for anyone studying the far-right for a long time, it was common knowledge. But people saw it, and it gained a lot of traction, so it was the big spark that led people to take to the streets. And there were a lot of people.”
Sondern shared that the protests even managed to transcend the stark East-West divide that still exists in Germany. “Protests did not just happen in a big city like Berlin,” she said. “They happened in really random and very small places as well. And I think it is great to see that there is a political consciousness that appeared a bit dormant, coming back.”
The demonstrations, Beisel said, “were [originally] protesting the AfD and extremism, but in some places, they were also about rage against the system more generally. Some people are not happy with the government’s conservative shift.” She added that these protests are not limited to a certain group or demographic. Instead, “it’s a broad mixture of people. It’s not only young people, but also old people. There are even grandmothers who gather and hold up signs that say ‘Grandmas Against the Far Right.’” She also remarked that the most impressive thing was that the protests were continuing to happen today, months after the secret meeting was revealed.
Alongside this public fervor, the mainstream parties, the CDU and SPD, are strategizing about responses to the rise of the AfD and reflecting on political approaches to address the concerns raised by protestors.
Generally speaking, the mainstream parties have agreed against collaboration with the AfD. The leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, has said that the AfD is anti-democratic and that its values are incompatible with German principles. Wuttke said, “there has been a phase of ignoring the new party—which is known as a ‘firewall’ that separates the mainstream party from the AfD. Not cooperating with the new party marks the AfD as not viable or an illegitimate political competitor.” Ludwig Illies elaborated, “this approach, however, results in AfD supporters feeling overlooked, which only leads to more polarization.”
The rise of the AfD is perplexing. According to Bachmann, “the AfD party program makes no sense. It is not internally coherent or reflective of the facts. It is all about appealing to emotion: to people with instincts of xenophobia or misogyny.” Yet, the AfD still manages to exert considerable influence over political discourse, elevating immigration as the most salient issue and forcing mainstream parties to adjust their political strategies. The AfD’s radical stance resonates with a significant portion of the public who are disillusioned with the current government and the erosion of European values. The mainstream parties thus face the difficult task of responding to these legitimate concerns, while also maintaining an identity distinct from the AfD.
“It’s a double-edged sword for the mainstream party to respond,” Hager said. “The center parties are sort of stuck between either trying to accommodate the more right-leaning voters and also wanting to draw a clear line, so they do not know how to react. So far, it has been a little bit of both, they accommodate some things but also have a clear set of boundaries.”
Arzheimer further emphasized the difficulty of mainstream party responses: “The mainstream parties, up to a point, try to appeal to AfD voters in a bid to win them back. So, they talk tough on immigration, and they copy parts of [AfD] rhetoric in a bid to win voters back. The only thing they have achieved with this is that they keep immigration on the top of the agenda.”
Within the CDU, leaders have chosen to adopt increasingly right-leaning immigration policies. For instance, they proposed measures such as moving prospective refugees to countries in Africa like Rwanda, or non European Union states like Moldova as applications are processed. The CDU’s shift to these strict immigration policies is a strategic way to regain the support of voters lost to the AfD.
Leaders of the more liberal SPD Party support an open immigration policy, while also exercising caution regarding legitimate security concerns and resource limitations. The SPD has investigated legal action to ban the AfD and disqualify it from candidacy for its extremist positions.
A “new, allegedly left authoritarian populist outfit in Germany,” also clouds the AfD’s future, according to Arzheimer. The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party has been “explicitly targeting former AFD voters, offering economically left and socially conservative policies” and is “polling around 5%.” This new party has been forecasted to draw support away from the AfD, although supporting either extreme may not be a good solution to the problem of extremism.
Nevertheless, as a result of widespread anti-AfD and pro-democracy protests, the AfD’s polling numbers have declined. It is uncertain whether the slight dip indicates a larger trend: whether the AfD has surpassed its peak popularity or if these recent events represent minor setbacks that may not affect the party long term.
For now, however, it seems that “mainstream parties are not winning voters back; in fact, they are losing more voters to the AfD,” Arzheimer said. The AfD continues to make significant headway in state elections, especially in the East. Additionally, the upcoming European Parliament elections will include 16- and 17-year-old voters for the first time (as a result of a lowered voting age for this election), and numerous other municipal elections will be contested this year. Looking ahead, the federal elections scheduled for Autumn 2025 promise more shifts to Germany’s political dynamic.
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Ultimately, the AfD has shrewdly framed cultural and political anxieties as threats to German identity and sovereignty. “People have seen AfD voters mainly as protest voters, but now this view has started to shift,” Beisel said. “Now, AfD voters are perceived by many to truly believe that they are voting for the right politics for the country.”
As Hager shared, “the world is getting more complex. There’s migration, there’s globalization. So a lot of forces lead people to look for easy answers, perhaps idealizing the past.”
The party has leveraged these issues, forcing the public to confront its historical legacy and engage in discussions about the meaning of German identity, linking this discourse to grievances that the present administration has been unable to satisfactorily address. While the ascendancy of the AfD threatens democracy, it also highlights the resilience of civil society in Germany. Pro-democracy protests reveal that most citizens reject a revisionist perspective of their history, instead opting to remember their past while striving to create a Germany that instills pride.
“These status-quo movements were surfacing everywhere, but one of their consequences may have been to prompt people to realize what they hold dear, and how precious and fragile democracy is,” said Wuttke. “And people have started to internalize this, including myself, that we take democracy for granted, and we actually need to work for it on an ongoing basis.”