Episode 407: The Rise of the AfD and What It Means for Germany

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Sophie Schmalenberger about the AfD’s historic result in the Saxony-Anhalt state election and what it means for Germany’s political future. 

The discussion examines what is driving the party’s rise, particularly in eastern Germany, and whether Germany’s postwar “firewall” against the far right can still hold. It also explores how the AfD uses history and emotion to build support, and what a stronger AfD could mean for Germany’s role in the EU.

The conversation explores:
-What the AfD is, where it came from, and what it stands for
-What the Saxony-Anhalt result means, and how Germany got here
-How memory and emotion have shaped the AfD’s appeal
-Whether the “firewall” against cooperating with the far right is still working

Dr. Sophie Schmalenberger is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research focuses on the German New Right, particularly the communication and mobilization strategies of the AfD, and how the party uses memory politics and emotion to build support. She holds a PhD from Aarhus University, where her dissertation examined how the AfD constructs identity and memory.

The International Risk Podcast brings together global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers to explore the forces transforming our world — from geopolitical instability and organised crime to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare.

Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and one of Europe’s leading experts on international risk and crisis management. He advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across Europe on how to prepare for uncertainty, navigate crises, and build strategic resilience in an increasingly volatile world.

Further reading: 
Dr. Sophie Schmalenberger’s open access book chapter, which looks at the far right’s strategic reinterpretation of the German past: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111588551-022/html

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#Geopolitics #Germany #AfD #FarRight #Europe #Democracy #Russia #Ukraine #PoliticalRisk #InternationalRisk #Strategy #Extremism

Transcript

Sophie Schmalenberger: Post-war German identity very much centered around Holocaust memory and distinguishing contemporary democratic Germany from its Nazi perpetrator. What I argue, at least, is that the AfD offers an alternative memory culture that leaves out this detour, you know, via feeling bad about the German past. Basically offers a way of feeling what they would say a normal sense of national pride.

Dominic Bowen: Germany has spent the past eight decades building a political culture around two powerful words: never again. But something significant is changing in Germany, and there’s a political earthquake that’s occurring. And in September, in Saxony-Anhalt, the far-right AfD surged past 43% of the vote, winning 39 of the 83 available seats. That’s just three short of the majority needed to govern in their own right. And this would have been the first time that a far-right party has controlled a German state since 1949.

So in today’s podcast, we’re digging into what’s actually fueling this surge and whether Germany’s resistance against the far right can hold out for much longer, but also what a shift like this could actually mean, not just for Germany, but also for Germany’s role within the European Union and within NATO.

I’m Dominic Bowen, and I’m host of The International Risk Podcast. And our guest today is Dr. Sophie Schmalenberger, whose research examines how far-right movements use history. They use collective memory and emotion to challenge established political narratives and sometimes to redefine what it means to belong. Dr. Sophie, welcome to The International Risk Podcast.

Sophie Schmalenberger: Hi Dominic, thanks for having me.

Dominic Bowen: Thanks very much for coming on. Whereabouts in the world do we find you today?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Right now in Aarhus in Denmark, where I live currently, but I’ll also be moving to Helsinki, where I start another postdoc position.

Dominic Bowen: Fantastic. Well, it’s always good to be moving and heading between Denmark and Finland. Two lovely countries to be traveling between.

Sophie Schmalenberger: Yes, definitely. if you’ve got the right outdoor gear.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, If you don’t mind the cold, especially at this time of year.

Sophie Schmalenberger: For sure.

Dominic Bowen: Well, when we look at recent electoral trends and political polling in Germany, I find it particularly interesting. And if we look at the numbers specifically, you know, in 2021, AfD had about 10% of the vote nationally. In 2025, that doubled to about 20%, but today that’s around 28%. So it’s gone from 10% to 20% to nearly 30% in just a few years. And then obviously in the recent vote, as I mentioned, they had 43%. So I don’t think we can just say this is a protest vote anymore. It’s just a push against the mainstream. Can you tell us what’s changing? What’s actually happening behind these numbers?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Obviously 2021 was an election that still happened during the COVID crisis, or sort of in the context of the COVID crisis, when the AfD, in a sense, was not very good at exploiting the crisis. It started by being very critical of the government not doing enough, and then it was sort of hard to change towards a COVID-skeptic discourse. So they didn’t manage to do that very well in 2021. On the other hand, I think it’s also important to keep in mind that in the 2021 elections, the topic that is sort of the heart of the AfD, right, migration and immigration, had very little public attention. So I think it’s also remarkable that even though their hard topic, so to say, was not on the political agenda, they still managed to do almost as well as in the 2017 elections, when they first entered the Bundestag, where they had, I believe, 12.6% or something like that.

I think what happened since then, among others, is that for multiple reasons there’s more economic hardship that people start feeling, of course in the aftermath of the COVID crisis and sort of the refinancing of all the different kinds of supports and costs that the state just needed to carry in order to keep society and the economy going throughout the crisis. Obviously the energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as being something that makes everyday life expenditures just rise and rise and rise for many people.

But I think also another reason is sort of a creeping normalization of far-right positions in overall political discourse, where also sort of conservative or right-wing conservative parties have adapted some of the central points of the AfD. And that’s, you know, there’s studies, several studies, showing that that never works. So the idea to win back voters from the far right by adopting their positions usually helps the far right, but not the centrist or conservative parties that try to do that.

Dominic Bowen: Definitely. Yeah, I think that’s been something that we’ve discussed quite a few times on The International Risk Podcast, about how, you know, that normalizing of extreme positions rarely helps anyone except parties on the extreme. If we look at the election on the 6th of September, can you walk us through the results in Saxony and what that meant, and was it really significant? Because a lot of media made it sound very, very important.

Sophie Schmalenberger: Yeah, I mean, just a very small correction: it’s actually in Saxony-Anhalt, which is the federal state next to Saxony. So, you know, the intricacies of German federalism.

Dominic Bowen: No, no, that’s important. I shouldn’t leave off the second word.

Sophie Schmalenberger: I mean, it is maybe important insofar as the state is a very, sort of overall a very rural state. I mean, you have Magdeburg and Halle as sort of two bigger cities or urban centers, but apart from, you know, in Saxony you have Dresden and Leipzig as sort of even bigger centers. So that actually, I think, played a role for the AfD support we can see in Saxony-Anhalt, because the AfD is generally more successful in rural areas and non-urban areas, right? So in that sense it’s important. Yeah.

So what happened was essentially what a lot of polls before predicted. The AfD won just under 44% of the votes, with actually very high voter participation of 73%, I think, as compared to 60% five years before. So they managed to mobilize a lot of non-voters and to mobilize a lot of voters from conservative parties mainly, and also from the German Liberal party, which is not present in the regional parliament anymore because it didn’t make the 5% threshold. So of course one could say it’s only one federal state in Germany, but as you say, it’s a caesura insofar as it’s the first time since 1945 that we have a far-right party winning a state election. And also due to the federal system, some decisions being made in the Bundesrat, which is sort of the second chamber of parliament, where some laws need to pass through and where the federal states are represented. Having a far-right party represented there, possibly as the leader of the regional government, might stall things happening there and might impact things happening there. And of course there’s also a lot of policy areas, for example education and culture, that are very much up to the federal states to determine, like what is being taught in schools and so on. So having an AfD government in a state like that would mean they would have a lot of influence on these kinds of areas.

Dominic Bowen: And I think the divide, and some of the things we’ve seen over the last few weeks when looking at the analysis, is that geographic divide is quite significant, with the AfD approaching 40% or more in parts of eastern Germany, whilst in western Germany the support, although it’s growing, remains much lower than in the east of the country. And I believe that your research argues that economics and immigration alone don’t explain this phenomenon entirely. So what are we missing? What are the outsiders missing when it comes to the legacy of the party, about reunification, about the experience of East Germans compared to West Germans? And then I guess how has the AfD managed to turn these memories into some sort of contemporary political power?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Yeah, I just would like to highlight a small caveat, because we talk a lot about the east, right? And it’s of course, you know, its significance, the levels of support they reach there. But I think also in the last three or four years the support in Western Germany has grown from 10% to 20% on average, right? So that’s also like, you know, a 100% increase basically. And we’re also talking about much more people in Western German urban centers, right? I mean, in total, I think in Saxony-Anhalt it’s one and a half million people out of 83 million in Germany, right? So I don’t want to, you know, relativize. I just want to say I think we often forget to also look at what’s actually going on in Western Germany.

But that being said, I think what the AfD has managed to do extremely well, unfortunately, is to exploit experiences of marginalization, of economic precarity, of sort of cultural [unclear] in sort of a, what do you call it, like a whole German [unclear] settings that Eastern Germans have, and still are, even 36 years after the wall came down, or 37 years, have experienced and continue to experience. And the AfD has been very good in sort of rearticulating this, you know, mistrust against political elites that is often based on, you know, real-life experience of not necessarily being taken care of or being taken seriously, into far-right support. And they’ve also been very, very active on the local level, being present in villages, doing, you know, like they call it family parties in the villages or in smaller towns where basically nothing else is happening, right?

Dominic Bowen: Yeah. And I think one of the things I’ve read is that the AfD has been offering Germans this alternative way of feeling German, and, you know, they’ve leaned on memory and identity. And so I think people that aren’t familiar with German politics and the social fabric in Germany: can you describe how is the AfD doing that? And you started to touch on that with, you know, what they’re doing in smaller towns and villages, but what are they doing? What are they promoting? What is that memory and what is that identity? How are they doing that?

Sophie Schmalenberger: So, I mean, yeah, that’s essentially what I explore in my thesis. Summing it up very briefly, right? Like post-war German identity, at least after, you know, the 1970s, 80s, since the 1970s, has been very much centered around Holocaust memory and distinguishing contemporary democratic Germany from its Nazi perpetrator past, and basically saying we’ve learned from the past and we are good again, we’ve become good democrats. And of course that was a central narrative in the Federal Republic before reunification, and then was sort of adopted as a whole-German major narrative. And while it allows you to effectively, you know, reach a point where you can feel good as a German because you’re a good democrat now, it sort of forces you to do the detour via feeling, you know, shameful or bad about your past. And what I argue, at least, is that the AfD offers an alternative memory culture that leaves out this detour, via, you know, feeling bad about the German past, and basically offers a way of feeling what they would say a normal sense of national pride. Not by denying the Holocaust and World War, but basically saying, “Yeah, it happened, but it’s not really that important anymore for today.” And we should focus on the good things in the German past, on the patriotic past, on all the smart Germans who did great stuff. And we should be allowed again to be proud of a nation.

Dominic Bowen: And I think that’s one of the things, as I’ve learned more and more about Europe and specifically Germany, that it really has built such a strong culture about that historical remembrance precisely to ensure that certain political mistakes could never be repeated. And I think this is the thing that some people are concerned about, that some of these political mistakes could be repeated. And I know your research has looked at how far-right actors use that historical narrative and that collective memory. Can you talk to us about what are they actually drawing on? What are the stories that they’re actually using? Because what you describe sounds reasonable: that we’re a great country, you know, yes, we’ve made mistakes, but we’ve got a great history in the past as well and we should be able to celebrate that. That sounds reasonable. But what are the stories that the AfD is telling, and how are they getting people to buy into that and to really see the appeal in what they’re selling and the narrative that they’re telling?

Sophie Schmalenberger: So what the AfD is basically trying to do is moving German identity back to that völkisch understanding of being German. By, on the one hand, saying, yeah, Nazis were bad, so they don’t fall into the trap that would sort of disqualify them as, you know, being equal to Nazis. But they draw on the same ideological basis. So basically they want Germany as if the Holocaust and Second World War never happened. That’s basically what they’re offering Germans: a sort of relief from an alleged, I mean, as they would call it, like opinion dictatorship, where you’re not allowed, allegedly, to say racist things or say things, you know, embrace, love Germany. So I mean, that’s on an affective level. That’s one of the central elements, I think, of mobilization: rediscovering a love for your nation and for your country that allegedly Germans have been forbidden in the last 70 years or so.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah. And I think the way we remember our history is very important. And I know sometimes, even in Australia where I’m from, you know, being too nationalistic can automatically have you branded a racist. And I think a lot of people have said, you know, we should be able to reclaim the Australian flag not as a racist symbol, but as something, we just love our country. And so, you know, I think you can understand to some extent the appeal about, you know, Germans wanting to be proud of Germany. But of course how it remembers its history, I think, is also really important. And I understand that just days ago councilors in one German town voted to stop installing new memorial stones for victims of the Nazis and World War II, and that it had support from both the AfD but also the Christian Democrats, the representatives. And I think, you know, this is something that I think is really interesting about why our interpretation of histories matters so much. And I think how a society remembers its past will influence what society thinks is politically acceptable. You know, how are you seeing that change the narrative about how we’re remembering the past, but also how that’s starting to influence what becomes politically acceptable to talk about and do and say, and then of course policies that are implemented and pursued by political parties in Germany?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Ways of talking about the past of course make some things sayable and some things non-sayable, or at least, you know, socially sanctioned to some degree. I think essentially how we tell our past determines how we define belonging in the present and in the future, right? So the way that the AfD is renarrating the past basically only opens up belonging to those with some kind of imagined German descendant, white people basically, so people who would visually pass as Germans. Well, it excludes a lot of other groups from national belonging, which is of course, you know, breaking with the modern democratic idea of the nation as not being an ethnonationalist collective but as sort of being a rule-of-law-based entity, where, you know, based on citizenship and equal rights.

Dominic Bowen: As we start to reimagine history, how does that actually strengthen or change our ability to consider what’s normal in society and politically acceptable?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Yeah, I mean, the presence of the AfD, definitely, and sort of like diminishing the meaning of the Holocaust again and again and again, and they’ve been doing that for, I mean, 10 years or so now, right, is I think exactly the example you mentioned: that it has become sayable, you know. Yeah, the Holocaust, for example, it’s not important anymore, it shouldn’t sort of determine how we behave in the present anymore. And that of course connects to tendencies that have also always been present in Germany, which is sort of the rejection of guilt and sort of the stories you would tell yourself about your own family, that nobody in your family actually did something, which is, I think, like 70-something percent of Germans believe nobody in their family did anything. It’s obviously historically incorrect. So the presence of the AfD has definitely contributed to a mainstreaming of that sort of rejection of only relying on Holocaust memory as sort of the defining moment in recent history, that should more or less, you know, be the foundation, or the lessons learned from that should be the foundation, of who we are today as Germans. To people in the AfD, but also people in the conservatives, people articulating this idea of we should have a healthy patriotism again, you know, like the re-emergence of the German flag as national symbol and so on.

And I think what we’ve seen especially in the last couple of years, the sort of fight against antisemitism being very central to the German reason of state and self-understanding, that has become intertwined with far-right political mobilization, you know, where it’s then said, actually we Germans have learned from the past and we are free of antisemitism, but the real antisemites are the immigrants. And that is then actually used as justification to deport, mostly of course, you know, Muslim or people from the Middle East, immigrants and refugees, because they bring something we have already overcome, allegedly, back to Germany.

Dominic Bowen: And I’m wondering now, what does this actually mean for democratic resilience? Because normally that would mean, you know, we’re talking about defending institutions. We’re defending the boundaries against any anti-democratic movements. But I’m wondering if resilience now needs to talk about how we mainstream politics, so that we hear, we discuss, we respond to grievances, we consider identities, we talk about emotions that people are feeling, and making alternative political narratives that are reasonable and fair and talk through. But how some that are more extreme start to become attractive, and whether that is anti-democratic or whether that is part of a healthy democratic process, because, you know, the risk of course and the danger is that if we start treating the millions of AfD voters as extremists, you know, is perhaps strengthening some of the problems that we’re seeing in society. So how should we be looking at defending democratic resilience at the same time as, you know, not marginalizing or demonizing or creating more hate within our electorates?

Sophie Schmalenberger: I mean, I think one major mistake that the center parties, or, you know, the Volksparteien as we call them in German, like the big parties, the conservatives and the social democrats, have been doing is mistaking what the AfD is articulating as the will of the people or whatever with the actual problems that people have. Because I think what needs to be taken seriously is exactly, you know, the question of what are the underlying reasons, and to what kind of grievances and experiences and lived realities can the AfD connect and/or redirect them into their, you know, political mobilization machine. Sort of taking over the central claim, for example, that the arrival of foreigners is the problem has been the central mistake, I think, or sort of in any way, you know, accepting that claim. Because I think there’s a lot of social issues and inequality issues, and, you know, living becomes more expensive, because of, I mean, renting apartments becomes more expensive, energy prices become more expensive. It’s problems that people experience relatively close to their real life, let’s say, or their lived life, that are then sort of abstracted and directed against others. And then sort of the claim is made, oh, you know, all of this will go away once foreigners go away.

And I remember before, when the AfD was still relatively small, there was also this movement in Eastern Germany, Pegida. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it: the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident, or something like that. So I just went to do interviews there for a student job I had at the time, right? And one of them was sort of getting to talk to people and, like, why are you here today? And there was really sort of, there were people there who were dressed in, you know, SS kind of leather jackets and, you know, coats, so like definitely sort of right-wing neo-Nazi people. And then there was, like, I mean, you know, normal people, old ladies, who said, yeah, I’m just concerned, like, in my grandchildren’s school they have really bad food and something needs to change, you know? And like a lot of kind of eclectic grievances that somehow were channeled into this, back then, protest movement. And I say it’s one to one the same with the AfD. They’ve been very close, or managed at least to create the impression of being very close to the people and knowing the everyday worries.

And I think what could strengthen democratic resilience would be, for example, investing, I mean, money and time in sort of local civil society. Because that’s, I mean, that’s also one thing the AfD wants to cut down: like pro-democratic social initiatives that are sort of directly or indirectly state-funded, right? Because they give people a sense of agency, of actually being able to do something about their situation that is not voting for far-right parties, but that actually gives people the idea that they can actually change something about their lives, that they can act in productive ways.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah. No, I think that’s very relevant. And I wonder, if we look outside of Germany, what this means. I mean, if the AfD’s influence continues to grow, what happens to Germany’s role, that really stabilizing and leadership role, both within the European Union but also within NATO?

Sophie Schmalenberger: I mean, we already see that, I think, our chancellor has the lowest-ever approval ratings that a chancellor has had, at least in post-war Germany, and the coalition is unstable, and sort of starts to, because we have a strengthening of the far right, or the extremist right, with the AfD on the one hand, and then sort of the further left parties, right? So you have the Greens, you have the Social Democrats, the conservatives and the Greens being more or less forced to form a team, even though they might fundamentally not agree on some things, like about climate change or how to, you know, how to do a transition towards a greener economy. But they’re forced to find some kind of consensus. And you can, I think, already see how it’s really putting this strain on the German government, to be in this constant conflict where both try to get out as much as they can for their electorate and to appear positive in order not to lose even more votes to the far right. But then the coalition’s way of working together is not very productive. And of course that, I think it creates a more sort of, I think it does create also political instability, a real one. And of course also sort of on a more [unclear] from the outside level, of course, I guess Germany is also increasingly being seen as sort of not having, you know, a government not having a lot of public support. And that of course, in case the AfD will be heading the regional government in Saxony-Anhalt, that will of course, I mean, you know, become even stronger, because, as I said, then we have a far-right party in the second chamber of parliament, where they can stall some decisions.

And of course what is also one of the major concerns, maybe talking about, like, you know, security and NATO and so on, is that some AfD politicians have, relatively, have strong ties to Russia, have been in Russia several times since the invasion and the war, and continue to argue against support for Ukraine, and also continue to have personal relationships with Russian oligarchs and sort of people close to Putin, essentially. Which is of course, I mean, another way for Russia to sort of undermine democracies in Europe and increase sort of this instability.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, I think the ties that several German politicians and former politicians and business leaders still have with Russia is something that’s quite concerning. And the AfD certainly favors closer ties with Russia. The AfD has called for sanctions on Russia to be lifted. They’ve called on economic relations between Germany and Russia to be restored. They’ve called on the German military and financial support to Ukraine to be reduced or cancelled. And at the same time, this is occurring when Germany has become Ukraine’s most important bilateral partner, and Germany’s really advocated for, you know, this to be a central pillar of NATO’s defense posture in Europe. And Germany’s intelligence agency has warned just today that Russia is testing Germany, is conducting hybrid attacks in Germany and across Europe, and that signs of wavering in Germany’s stand against Russia could actually invite greater pressure from Russia. So my question to you, Sophie, is: if the AfD’s approach to Russia gained real influence over Germany’s foreign policy, what would that mean for Ukraine? What would that mean for Europe’s ability to actually deter the Russian threat if, again, they got into government?

Sophie Schmalenberger: In Saxony-Anhalt, the ties are of course questionable. What, you know, what kind of access would that mean to public infrastructure, to, you know, all kinds of things that could undermine security or simply, you know, German society working? What kind of access to information might Russia get? What I find, I mean, relatively safe to predict, let’s say, is that it would have a sort of a stalling effect. I mean, it would get even more difficult for Germany on a federal level to make decisions, to find political majorities to decide on actions in support of Ukraine, which of course, I mean, would sort of, in a trickle-down, or I don’t know, trickle-up effect, influence Europe’s ability to speak with one voice, so to say, and also NATO’s ability to do that, with Germany sort of being, I mean, just by its [unclear: the answer trails off]

Dominic Bowen: And you talked about making safe predictions. So I’m going to ask you a prediction question, Sophie, which I know everyone loves. But when we look forward to the 2029 federal election, is it realistic that the AfD has a path to national power?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Unfortunately, yes, in my opinion. You know, of course, that’s, but I think, given that they now are also at 28 or 26%, you mentioned earlier, it always fluctuates a little bit, on a federal level they are relatively the strongest party at the moment. You can already see on regional levels and local levels how, let’s say, the firewall, as it has often been called, has been starting to crumble between the conservatives and the far right, because I mean, there is also points where, you know, on the content level, the conservatives have drifted so much to the right that there is, you know, not that big of a difference anymore on some points. And I think, I’m not sure if there will be an AfD chancellor, but I could very well see, either in 2029 or the year after that, there’s either a coalition government or, you know, that maybe the only way of forming a government is, like it’s done in many other European countries, where one party relies on different kinds of majorities, and where there’s at least, say, cooperation between a conservative government and the AfD supporting it. Yeah, unfortunately I think we will continue to see that on the regional and local levels up to a degree, when it will also become more normalized. So, you know, the federal level is ready for that. I hope I’m wrong. [laughter]

Dominic Bowen: No, I understand. Thanks for explaining that. And the last question that we ask all the guests that come on The International Risk Podcast, Sophie, is: when you look around the world, when you’re seeing what’s happening globally, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

Sophie Schmalenberger: Oh God. Where to start? I mean, obviously climate change, and then all the various multiple risks and, you know, dangers that implies, and all these, all the inequalities it will sort of make even stronger. Like this idea, you know, like, I mean, hybrid warfare maybe as a concept. So, like, you know, as war is something that is being fought out within societies, in a sense. And that’s sort of the undermining of social cohesion, that I also, I think, notice, not necessarily in my everyday life, when I’m back in Germany, where people have, people become, I feel, sort of a mood where people are just very, people are very stressed because life becomes hard, and they also become more aggressive against each other and more, you know, self-focused, and so on.

Dominic Bowen: No, that’s understandable. Well, thanks very much for sharing that, Sophie, and thank you very much for coming on The International Risk Podcast today.

Sophie Schmalenberger: Yes, thank you so much for the invite.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a great conversation with Sophie Schmalenberger. I really appreciated hearing her thoughts on the AfD’s rise, what it means for Germany’s political future, and what it can mean for the country’s role in the European Union, and of course right across NATO.

Today’s episode was produced and coordinated by Marine Christ. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening to The International Risk Podcast. If you like our content, please remember to subscribe and like and maybe even share it with a friend. Thanks very much. We’ll speak in the next couple of days.