The leaders of the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD, floated a new plan last month meant to vault them into power.
It had two simple parts. Divide mainstream parties with culture wars. Then, soften the AfD’s image for Germans who say they’d never vote for it, turned off by its denigration of migrants and other stances.
The AfD got an earlier-than-expected opportunity to put the plan in motion recently, seizing on a political rift in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government over a high-court nominee. The AfD injected disorder into the proceedings, turning it into exactly the sort of culture-war fight that its leaders say could help the party.
The AfD’s new strategy emerged from an internal analysis of its performance in national elections in February. It ran on an anti-elite, anti-immigrant platform that included promises of mass deportations. It also vowed to reignite the nation’s industrial economy, powered by German coal and Russian natural gas. The party finished second, winning more than a fifth of the vote.
But the AfD found itself shut out of government, with no other party in Parliament willing to work with it.
Unable to cement its place in the Bundestag, the AfD decided that it needed to expand its appeal at the ballot box and in circles of power in Berlin.
Enter the new approach, which takes as its starting point the idea that German voters are fundamentally conservative — an assertion that center-left parties dispute. It is based largely on a surface read of February’s election, when more than half of voters backed either the AfD or the center-right sister parties of Mr. Merz, the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union.
Mr. Merz’s voters broadly agree with AfD’s view that Germany needs to strengthen the economy and reduce migration, said Beatrix von Storch, a senior AfD member of Parliament and an architect of the new strategy. Opinion polling shows that Germans are worried about migration and security above all other issues.
The AfD, she said, will try to appeal to center-right voters through those issues. It will also try to provoke Germany’s major liberal parties to move to the extreme left on social issues like abortion and transgender rights, she said, by raising the profile of those matters and of Germany’s growing far-left party.
“There is a cultural war in the western world,” she said, “and we will win it.”
She said she hoped for an echo of last year’s American presidential election. “Moderate Republicans voted for Donald Trump, even though they don’t approve of everything he says or does,” Ms. von Storch said. “But the divide between moderate Republicans and the progressive Democrats is so deep that these reservations no longer mattered.”
There are many reasons the AfD’s effort could fail. Mr. Merz’s voters disagree with the AfD’s stances on several issues, surveys suggest, most notably Germany’s backing of Ukraine in its war against Russia.
And Germans tend to be consensus builders. While its political extremes are growing, many voters still balk at supporting any party seen as too far on one end or the other.
“You could say that the political center is a kind of ideal in Germany, which is why I believe that, despite the potential for polarization, there is no great desire for division among the German population,” said Johannes Hillje, a political scientist who has studied the new AfD strategy.
Some voters have also been turned off by the AfD’s sharp rhetoric, particularly on immigration. German intelligence has formally declared the AfD to be extremist over what the government called an unconstitutional campaign to treat migrants differently from other German residents. The extremism designation could someday lead to the party being banned from German politics.
The force of many voters’ distaste for the AfD helped prompt the other part of its strategy, the effort to soften its image without retreating on policy. In May, AfD drafted penalties for members who had acted uncivilly in Parliament, including fines of up to 5,000 euros and a three-month ban from giving speeches in the chamber. Earlier, it dissolved the Junge Alternative, the party’s notoriously radical youth wing.
The AfD is now polling around 25 percent nationally, but it has lost ground to the center-right since Mr. Merz took office in May.
His party gained support after loosening government borrowing limits, cutting some taxes and tightening border controls. The chancellor has rallied Germans around increased military spending, as longstanding American security guarantees for Europe have faltered. Until recently, he had avoided the sort of coalition bickering that brought down former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government last fall.
To rattle Mr. Merz’s coalition, the AfD needed a controversy — one that combined hot-button social issues and hot-tempered political infighting.
This month, Mr. Merz’s government provided both.
A progressive law professor named Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf had been nominated for a seat on the nation’s constitutional court by Mr. Merz’s center-left coalition partner, the Social Democrats. But Mr. Merz’s party was balking at supporting her.
The far right had helped provoke the dispute. The AfD and social conservatives had been attacking Ms. Brosius-Gersdorf, claiming without evidence that she supported legalized abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy.
Such a stance would have been far outside the German mainstream, were it true. Abortion is illegal in Germany, but there are no penalties for the procedure through 12 weeks of pregnancy. Ms. Brosius-Gersdorf had worked on a commission to change the law to decriminalize those early-term abortions, but she never publicly supported late-term abortion.
The AfD, which opposes abortion, cares little about that distinction. When Mr. Merz took questions in Parliament earlier this month, Ms. von Storch asked whether he could in good conscience vote to seat Ms. Brosius-Gersdorf.
After verbally attacking Ms. von Storch, Mr. Merz said yes.
Soon, an edited version of the exchange raced across social media. Outrage built among conservatives, who fumed that Mr. Merz had effectively endorsed legalized abortion. Some Catholic bishops warned against confirming the nominee. Mr. Merz’s governing coalition had to postpone the vote, fearing Ms. Brosius-Gersdorf had insufficient support.
The nomination remains unresolved, though Mr. Merz has refocused his attention in recent days onto foreign policy.
Government aides say the best way for Mr. Merz to thwart the AfD is to stay out of culture wars and stick to solving problems that rank high among voters’ concerns.
That includes restarting economic growth, reducing migration and restoring German leadership on the global stage. And doing so while projecting unity inside the government.
Some AfD leaders agree that policy wins would be Mr. Merz’s best weapon against them. Ms. von Storch said AfD voters could flock to Mr. Merz if he effectively adopted the party’s platform on immigration, including blocking new migrants from crossing the German border and deporting millions of asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere. Mr. Merz has tightened border controls and stepped up deportations, but there is no indication he would support anything close to the full AfD migration agenda.
Even as she stressed the importance of culture wars to divide the Merz coalition, Ms. von Storch said that for the AfD to grow in popularity, it must sell Germans on its plans for their pocketbooks. “Voters want a government that can lead the economy out of crisis, secure prosperity and ensure sound public finances,” she said. “The AfD will gain massive acceptance and support if we aggressively stake out these areas.”
Clay Risen contributed reporting.
Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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