Mr. Merz, Tear Down This Firewall

The evening before the German parliamentary elections, I saw a young man drop his empty beverage can on the platform before entering a regional train. I asked him why he didn’t throw it in the trash. He promptly replied, “I do that for the deposit collectors.” (In Germany, the recycling deposit for cans is 25 cents.) The young man is not unlike Germany’s representatives. Those at the top claim to be “saving democracy” through “good deeds” that are actually acts of decadence. 

After Sunday’s election, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated the German “conservative party” on its victory. His statement can be interpreted in three ways: first, Trump could have been referring to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). With 28.6 percent of the vote, party leader Friedrich Merz is set to be the country’s future chancellor. Second, he could have been referring to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which almost doubled its support with 20.8 percent of the vote. Or third, by “party,” Trump could have meant “camp.” The conservatives from the CDU and AfD together have 360 of a total of 630 parliamentary seats—a stable majority. 

For conservatives, the election result was highly gratifying. But it is unlikely that the incoming government will reflect what the people voted for. Germany’s proportional representation system gives small parties great power and allows for all sorts of coalitions. Given the “firewall” against the AfD, the new government is sure to be formed not only without but against them: “The biggest loser this evening is the people,” stated a well-known retired TV journalist. On the evening before the election, Friedrich Merz had promised that the CDU would once again “make policy for the majority of the population” and not “for any green and left-wing crackpots in this world.” After the election, Merz coolly ruled out a coalition with the AfD. 

Merz does not need the Green party, which sees the salvation of the world in the impoverishment of Germans, as Gloria von Thurn und Taxis put it on Sunday. But he does need the Social Democratic party (SPD), which also refuses to cooperate with the AfD. The SPD have been moving further and further to the left for years. Almost nothing remains of the once great national tradition of the Social Democrats.

During the election campaign, Merz said that the right thing does not become wrong just because “the wrong people” agree with him. But he is willing to do the wrong thing to have “the right people” on his side. Earlier this week, his faction asked the government 551 questions about the state-funding of numerous NGOs that are prominent in the “fight against the right.” This questioning angered the SPD. At the same time, however, the CDU has been in talks with the SPD to boost defense spending by €200 billion. The measure is unlikely to get the necessary votes in the new Bundestag, so Merz is pushing for a vote before it convenes for the first time in March. If Merz continues this strategy of trying to appease everyone, sooner or later, he will lose the respect and trust of both sides. 

Merz must adapt to the new reality if he wants to remain in power. The AfD has replaced the “old aunt” SPD as a people’s party. With 16.4 percent of the vote, the SPD suffered its worst election result since 1890. In the new Bundestag, only 120 instead of the previous 206 members of parliament belong to the SPD.

While the SPD has lost almost 10 percent, the AfD has gained over 10 percent. The party has seen the greatest increase in support among workers and the unemployed. Like Donald Trump, the AfD received many votes from young men. In the eastern part of the country, in the territory of the defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR), the party captured forty-five of forty-eight constituencies and has almost twice as many seats as the CDU. 

Germany is divided again: The west of the republic is almost entirely black (CDU), while the east is blue (AfD). The divide runs exactly where the inner German border was from 1961 to 1989, separating the free West from the communist East. 

The Islamist terrorist attacks of recent months have brought the AfD a lot of new supporters, and East Germans have had too much experience with authoritarian rule to be distracted by media propaganda from the reality of life. Some of them recognized as early as thirty years ago that the Federal Republic of Germany was developing into a kind of GDR.

If the CDU gets into bed with the SPD, the general assessment is that the conservative camp will split. Some in the party want to work with the AfD, especially in the eastern counties, while others, still following Angela Merkel, are moving further to the left. But Germany has no time to lose, with ten thousand industrial jobs currently disappearing every month. A chancellor who acts from a position of weakness, who appears as insecure and fickle as Merz, will not be able to achieve much. 

The Berlin Wall stood for almost forty years and claimed many lives. It is already clear that ten years of the firewall against the AfD have claimed many more, including the victims of Islamist terror. In addition to the enemies from outside, there are the “anti-fascist” enemies from within. In Berlin, the police have to protect two types of buildings above all: Jewish institutions and the offices of the AfD. The attackers, it is said, are sometimes the same people. While Germany is simultaneously taking on the great powers of Russia and the U.S., it is risking civil war at home. Germany’s representatives must accept that things cannot continue as they have. For the good of their people, they must tear down the firewall.