BERLIN — Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has a simple plan for gaining power: use the far left as a foil and deepen the country’s partisan divisions.
It’s a strategy that appears to be inspired by Donald Trump’s electorally successful approach in the United States.
“Our goal is to create a situation in which the political divide no longer runs between the AfD and the other political currents, but rather one in which a bourgeois-conservative camp and a radicalizing left-wing camp face each other, comparable to the situation in the U.S.,” reads an internal party paper, seen by POLITICO. The aim, according to the strategy, is to create a “duel between two irreconcilably opposed camps.”
The AfD is now the largest opposition party in parliament following a best-ever, second-place finish in a national election in February. But despite its growing popularity, the party remains far from the levers of real national power because other parliamentary blocs, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, refuse to govern in coalition with it, upholding a postwar Brandmauer, or firewall, against the far right.
The AfD’s most urgent political objective is finding a way to knock down the firewall by shedding its taboo status and convincing conservatives and other voters that AfD politicians should no longer be blocked from entering the halls of power because they are seen as too extreme.
The AfD tasked senior lawmaker Beatrix von Storch with developing a strategy for breaking the firewall and charting a path to entering government in coalition with German conservatives.
It’s no surprise that she’d seek inspiration from the U.S. AfD politicians applauded U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s depiction of the firewall, in a speech in Munich earlier this year, as anti-democratic and a way of “running in fear” of voters.
Von Storch has maintained contacts to allies of the Trump administration. She and her husband attended U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration and have met with Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally and leading figure in the MAGA movement.
Storch’s strategy appears to take a page out of the book of Trump, who often depicts center-left opponents as “radical left lunatics.”
Needing the far left as a foil
For the AfD, the clearest political foil is the Left, a far-left party that surged in popularity among young voters ahead of February’s national election. AfD leaders see that party’s rise as weakening center-left parties, including the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which governs in coalition with Merz’s conservatives. The far-left’s strength will force center-left parties to pivot further left, goes the thinking, making centrist alliances across the political spectrum more difficult.
“The separation from the radical left, which holds positions that are unacceptable to the majority of Germans, makes it easier for the AfD to position itself as a bourgeois-conservative force,” reads the strategy paper. “The AfD and the Left form the two ideological poles of the social debate. As the antithesis to the ideological and woke left, the AfD can sharpen its bourgeois profile.”
Germany’s firewall blocking far-right parties from power has been far stronger than in other European countries on account of the country’s Nazi past. But the AfD’s rise has increasingly tested the firewall — and cracks have emerged, particularly in local government across eastern Germany, where centrists have cooperated with the party. Merz’s move last January to accept AfD support for passing tough migration legislation led to fears the firewall was about to fall, unleashing a fierce debate that struck at the core of the country’s postwar identity.
Though the firewall remained intact — albeit damaged — the AfD wants to make it increasingly tough on Merz and other conservatives to maintain it. The AfD “will launch proposals and initiatives that will meet with a high level of approval” of center-right voters, especially those disappointed with Merz’s coalition with the SPD, according to the strategy paper.
The aim, at first, is not necessarily to win all those voters, but to make the firewall increasingly unpopular among them. This, in turn, would force conservative leaders to drop their opposition to governing in coalition with the AfD.
At the same time, the AfD strategy paper says the party will try to win new support within some of the voting blocs where it is weakest, including among women, older voters, academics and people living in cities.
“These groups are not homogeneous and cannot be addressed uniformly,” reads the paper. In order to “win them over to the AfD, we need a socio-demographic microanalysis of these groups. We need to identify subgroups to which we can build a bridge.”
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