Emmett Chung - 2023 Mitra Scholar

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2022-23

Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient

New Politics, Old Challenges: Mainstream Responses to the Far-Right in Reuni cation-Era Germany

Emmett Chung

New Politics, Old Challenges:

Mainstream Responses to the Far-Right in Reunification-Era Germany

Emmett Chung

2023 Mitra Family Scholar

Mentors: Mrs. Meredith Cranston and Mr. Matt McCorkle

April 12, 2023

Parties that, by reason of their aims or the behavior of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, shall be unconstitutional.

Article 21, “Political Parties,” Basic Law of Germany, 19491 There is no nation on earth more dedicated to avoiding repeating a harrowing past than Germany. With its surrender in May 1945, Germany now faced not only destruction but also shame: shame that a nation could perpetuate as horrific a crime as the Holocaust, shame that a nation could incite as massive a conflict as World War II, and shame that a demagogue could have so easily dismantled the fledgling Weimar democracy. Germans were reluctant to display any national pride, and West Germany’s postwar constitution, or Basic Law, aimed to prevent another Hitler from ever taking power again, creating a militant democratic system attuned to any threat against itself. Yet after a rough birth, West Germany ultimately developed a stable democracy and robust economy, flourishing as a leader in an increasingly integrated Europe. Amid West Germany’s postwar revival, the issue of national identity remained unresolved. German citizenship was historically defined in ethnic terms, a concept increasingly challenged by the country’s growing diversity. Fueling greater diversity was the guest worker program, in which thousands of eager temporary workers arrived from southern Europe and especially Turkey to address labor shortages. Many of these workers never returned home and instead founded new communities. The German constitution was also lenient toward asylum seekers, but a crush of new refugees from around the world in the late 1980s presented new challenges.

1 Christian Tomuschat et al., trans., "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany," German Federal Ministry of Justice, last modified 2022, accessed February 16, 2023, https://www.gesetze-iminternet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.pdf.

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At the same time, the far-right had not disappeared with the Nazis. Intellectuals spouting right-wing rhetoric capitalized on the rise of immigration and Germans’ discontent with the country’s minority groups, including guest workers. These same ideas, combined with a lasting ethnic concept of German citizenship, manifested themselves in new far-right parties. In addition to neo-Nazis, comparatively moderate far-right parties running on identity politics began to emerge, comprising a potential threat to the democratic order. One party in particular, the farright Republicans or REP, along with some more established neo-Nazi parties, experienced a string of successes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, REP faded quickly and never seriously contested power nationwide. Nevertheless, within the uncertain environment of the years immediately before and after German reunification, the revival of the far-right in Germany was cause for alarm both domestically and abroad. Though several other factors played a role, mainstream parties’ issue ownership, or perceived competence, of immigration fundamentally accompanied the rise and fall of far-right ideology in reunification-era Germany. Despite challenges stemming from reunification, party disorganization, and the design of the German political system, issue ownership of immigration was the primary cause of the Republicans’ success in 1990, offering a viable way of containing populism in Germany.

The Republicans

In the early 1980s, television personality Franz Schönhuber and two members of the West German parliament or Bundestag, Franz Handlos and Ekkehard Voigt, founded a new political party, the Republicans (REP). The three were former members of the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU) in the state of Bavaria who left the party because of their opposition to a CSU-backed loan to East Germany.2 In a 1983 interview for Der Spiegel, one of

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2 Michelle Hale Williams, The Impact of Radical Right-Wing Parties in West European Democracies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 117-118.

Germany’s most popular and influential news magazines, Handlos and Voigt portrayed themselves as a political alternative to the CSU’s lack of adherence to the party platform and bickering with coalition members. Speaking vaguely about their actual policy positions, Voigt claimed that CSU members in the Bundestag or German parliament would find REP “not bad.”3 Schönhuber, a member of the Schutzstaffel during World War II, had been fired from his television post after publishing a controversial book about his war experiences. Leadership disputes would eventually result in Handlos and Voigt leaving and Schönhuber becoming head of the party in 1985. Under Schönhuber, REP transformed from a right-wing party into a farright nativist populist party with a nationalistic platform calling for the rapid reunification of the divided Germany.4 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, REP made waves by winning notable segments of the vote in several states as well as in European Parliament and federal elections

Hans-Georg Betz, an expert on populism, notes that a strong showing in the 1986 state election in Bavaria, where REP won 3.1 percent of the vote, marked the beginning of the party's national aspirations.5 In addition, REP's 1986 performance in Bavaria, while less spectacular than that of other established far-right parties, drew national attention. Following strong showings in 1989, including 7.5 percent in West Berlin and 7.1 percent in European Parliament elections, what another populism expert Cas Mudde describes as “REP mania” began, with scholars expressing

3 "'Wir werden einen Flächenbrand erzeugen'" ["We Will Light a Conflagration"], Der Spiegel, December 4, 1983, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/wir-werden-einen-flaechenbrand-erzeugen-a-323cb0970002-0001-0000-000014024268?context=issue

4 Hans-Georg Betz, "Politics of Resentment: Right Wing Radicalism in West Germany," Comparative Politics 23, no. 1 (October 1990): 50-51, accessed October 13, 2022, JSTOR.

5 Betz, 51.

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varying levels of panic surrounding the new development.6 Shortly after reunification, in the 1990 federal election, REP only won 2.1 percent of the vote, which while not insignificant, did not satisfy the 5 percent threshold necessary for representation in the German Bundestag. Occasional state-level success continued after this point: 10.9 percent in Baden Württemberg's 1992 campaign and 8.3 percent in Hessen in 1993. However, REP fared worse in the 1994 European Parliament and federal elections, costing Schönhuber his position as party leader, and the party ultimately faded into infighting and irrelevance.7 In order to understand the ways in which REP capitalized particularly on the issue of immigration yet failed to persist as an electoral force, a brief survey of German postwar history is necessary.

Postwar Germany

A militarily and economically devastated Germany, now burdened with its responsibility for the Holocaust, emerged from World War II, divided into a capitalist West (the Federal Republic of Germany or BRD) and a communist East (the German Democratic Republic or DDR). In the West, the Allies designed a new government that became known as the Basic Law.8 Three main political parties emerged as the protagonists of German politics up to the present day: the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), and economically liberal Democratic Party (FDP). The CDU and SPD are the primary parties, while the FDP serves as a coalition-builder. The CDU also always appears in coalition with its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria; any

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6 Cas Mudde, "Die Republikaner," in The Ideology of the Extreme Right (Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press, 2002), 33, accessed October 24, 2022, JSTOR. 7 Mudde, 34-35. 8 Steven E. Ozment, A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 309.

reference to the CDU in this paper describes both center-right parties. These parties, known as Volkspartei, roughly translated as big tent, are ideologically inclusive, to the point of appearing arguably too similar, and receive significant support from the central government, leading scholars like Geoffrey Roberts to characterize them as “cartel parties.”9 With regards to the system of government in which the parties operate, the Basic Law intended to repair the deficiencies that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic; it begins by first guaranteeing unamendable rights to the German people.10 Despite the country's small size, the Basic Law created a federal system of government, dividing the country into states or Länder (singular Land). Federalism intended to uphold Germany's historic composition as a number of independent kingdoms as well as limit the power of the central government both by dispersing centers of power across the nation, placing the central bank in one city and the constitutional court in another, and by creating guardrails for an aspiring autocrat through decentralization of power.11 The Basic Law created an electoral system that required a minimum 5 percent of the popular vote threshold for representation in the Bundestag, creating a higher threshold for smaller parties. Voters cast two votes in every election: one to represent their constituency and another to a national party list, with the exact size and final breakdown of the Bundestag ultimately calculated through complex formulae (overhang seats).12 Both features aim to prevent the endless legislative squabbling, especially among small parties, that doomed the Weimar Republic by precluding the creation of effective coalitions, a key component of German

9 Geoffrey K. Roberts, German Politics Today, 3rd ed., ed. Bill Jones (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 11, 97-98.

10 Roberts, 36-38.

11 Roberts, 105.

12 Roberts, 53-54.

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democratic traditions.13 Unlike Weimar, where President Hindenburg effectively handed over his office to Hitler, the West German president was denied significant political power, while the chancellor was given a broad mandate to rule with the Bundestag’s approval, creating “chancellor democracy.”14 Finally, Basic Law aimed to create a militant democracy that actively attempted to identify and defuse potential threats to the system of government, allowing the highest court to ban “anti-democratic” political parties, creating federal and state agencies for civic education, and most radically, creating the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungschutz or BfV). The BfV’s sole duty is to search for and report on potential actors who threaten democracy, though it does not have the ability to arrest suspects.15

The threat of BfV action is significant, as the agency can both gather intelligence and refer a party to the courts, where it can be banned. In a 1989 interview with Der Spiegel, Schönhuber stressed the need to differentiate REP policies and their “democratic legitimacy” from neo-Nazis. He also warned that being placed under BfV surveillance would be a “fatal mistake.”16 These comments illustrate the challenges upstart right-wingers faced in postwar Germany, a country intent on never repeating a grim past. A successful party would need to be to the right of the mainstream yet close enough to the center to avoid Nazi associations and being labeled antidemocratic. Schönhuber’s efforts to portray the party as moderate, though more so as different than the CDU/CSU, which he considered insufficiently conservative, would fuel early success.

13 Roberts, 5.

14 Roberts, 128.

15 Roberts, 212.

16 Dirk Koch, "'Unser Endziel ist der Bundestag'" ["Our End Goal is the Bundestag"], Der Spiegel, February 5, 1989, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/unser-endziel-ist-der-bundestag-a-f36c332d-00020001-0000-000013492903?context=issue.

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However, Nazi associations proved hard to shake. Extremist voters, rather than the disgruntled voters REP also targeted, preferred neo-Nazis, while eventual BfV surveillance beginning in 1992 undermined the party’s moderate image.17 Other far-right parties experienced even less success in the context of militant democracy and the 5 percent threshold: in 1952, the courts had banned the Socialist Reich Party, while other neo-Nazi parties like the National Democratic Party (NPD) emerged but remained irrelevant.18

After the founding of West Germany, CDU chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his finance minister, Ludwig Erhard, initiated shrewd reforms and pacified Germany’s notoriously vocal trade unions to allow for the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) in the early 1950s, laying the groundwork for greater European integration through membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) and for a generous welfare system.19 The ensuing economic system is known as “ordoliberalism,” where “the state provides overall stability . . . and a clear legal framework for competition.” Today, Germany remains among the EU’s economic leaders, with Frankfurt hosting the European Central Bank.20

In the 1960s, the West German government began recruiting guest workers to address labor shortages. Eight million (10 percent of the German population in 1973), mostly from Turkey, arrived between 1960 and 1973, when SPD chancellor Willy Brandt canceled the

17 Williams, The Impact, 123-124.

18 Richard Merritt, "Federal Republic of Germany: Political Radicalism and Neo-Nazism," in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture : 1871-1990: A - K, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998), 311.

19 Phillip J. Bryson, "Federal Republic of Germany: Economy," in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture : 1871-1990: A - K, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998), 304305.

20 Simon Green, Dan Hough, and Alister Miskimmon, The Politics of the New Germany, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012), 139-141.

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program in response to the 1970s oil crisis. However, many guest worker families were reluctant to leave, and as of 1992, 7 percent of united Germany’s population was foreign consisting of guest workers, their families, asylum seekers, and refugees.21 The guest worker saga exposed the issue at the crux of populist sentiment from parties like REP: the struggle to maintain German identity, reinforced by ethnic citizenship laws amid growing diversity, reinforced by Germany’s broad asylum provisions.22 Political scientists Simon Green, Dan Hough, and Alister Miskimmon describe postwar reforms of citizenship law as “reactive” and intended to reinforce the idea that “Germany was not a country of immigration” to the point that the CDU of the early 1980s believed passing any law that might appear to support immigration would “send out the wrong signals.” Laws enacted after the end of the guest worker program created significant barriers to naturalization in a paradoxical attempt to simultaneously integrate the existing population of foreigners but also discourage any further immigration.23 Citizenship policy was a complex issue that German governments tried to avoid addressing, while REP proposed answering it in an extreme yet decisive way.

In the postwar era, the stigma of Nazism had rendered German nationalism taboo, but vestiges of old sentiments remained. Some Germans lamented the loss of the country’s eastern territories, and in the 1950s, 33 percent of Germans agreed with the statement “Nazism was a good idea but carried out badly.”24 However, nationalism resurged around the time of the end of

21 Christiane Lemke, "Citizenship and Foreigners," in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture : 1871-1990: A - K, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998), 184-186.

22 Mary Fulbrook, "Federal Republic of Germany," in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture : 1871-1990: A - K, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998), 302.

23 Green, Hough, and Miskimmon, The Politics, 128-129.

24 Helmut Walter Smith., Germany: A Nation in Its Time : Before, During, and after Nationalism, 1500-2000 (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W Norton & Company, 2020), 427-429.

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the guest worker program, which Vanderbilt University professor Helmut Walter Smith attributes in part to the “vagaries and anxieties of a postwar world.”25 Fear grew of the loss of German identity that became a central component of far-right discourse, including that of Franz Schönhuber and REP.26 For example, in the late 1980s, Schönhuber promoted a book with the inflammatory title of The Final Solution to the German Question (a perversion of the Nazis’ euphemism for the Holocaust), which warned of a future in which German identity would be lost amid rising diversity and immigration.27 Nationalism only becomes more significant in the context of citizenship law. While most of the Basic Law seemed to, for the most part, sufficiently repair the flaws in the Weimar constitution, in postwar Germany, citizenship was still determined on an ethnic basis, with the law dating back to 1913 or the imperial period.28 Oliver Schmidtke, an expert on immigration and integration at the University of Melbourne, notes that German society understood German-ness on the basis of “cultural homogeneity.”29 A dangerous combination emerged as right-wingers began to revive nationalist ideas in a nation that had been encouraged to shun its national identity yet some of whose people still harbored xenophobia. In this volatile environment, the right message could have unpredictable and dangerous consequences.

Reunification and Consequences

25 Smith, Germany: A Nation, 451.

26 Smith, 453.

27 Smith, 453-455.

28 Oliver Schmidtke, "Reinventing the Nation: Germany's Post-Unification Drive towards Becoming a 'Country of Immigration,'" German Politics 26, no. 4 (October 2, 2017): 501, accessed September 8, 2022, Academic Search Complete.

29 Schmidtke, 501.

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In addition to the challenge of immigration, West Germany faced a new crisis towards the end of the 1980s as the collapse of the East seemed imminent. Reunification and its consequences unfolded rapidly. Repressive and economically weak, East Germany could do little to stop its citizens from fleeing for the West in droves, and reunification took place on the West’s terms. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was followed by the first free elections to the East German parliament (Volkskammer) in March 1990. Less than a year after the fall of the Wall, Germany was officially reunified on October 3, 1990.30

The SPD and CDU had radically different approaches to reunification. The SPD advocated for a gradual approach, fearing “dangerous nationalism” among the East German population, while the CDU preferred rapid reunification with a currency union.31 REP attempted to capitalize on the issue, also calling for rapid reunification; however, Betz argues that the results of the Volkskammer elections in 1990, which the CDU won, “confirmed the center-right as the champions of unification.” CDU-led resolution of the issue of reunification eliminated a primary plank of REP’s platform, presenting a new campaign challenge moving forward.32 Having successfully managed the issue of reunification, the CDU cruised to victory in the 1990 federal election, the first held in a unified Germany.33

West Germans were not expecting the economic consequences of reunification. High unemployment after the initial transition away from communism resulted in Berlin levying a

30 Jost Duellfer, "Reunification," in Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture : 18711990: A - K, ed. Dieter K. Buse and Juergen C. Doerr (New York: Garland, 1998), 839-841.

31 Tom Heneghan, Unchained Eagle: Germany after the Wall (Edinburgh: Pearson Education, 2000), 35-38.

32 Betz, "Politics of Resentment," 52-53.

33 Duellfer, “Reunification,” 841.

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“solidarity surcharge” tax in the now former West.34 Adding to the existing population of guest workers, immigrants taking advantage of German asylum laws as well as ethnic Germans from the former East (Ausslieder) began entering the country. The Ausslieder complicated the asylum issue as xenophobic language could not be used to attack ethnic Germans for taking West German jobs.35 In the case of the Ausslieder, journalist Tom Heneghan, who experienced much of reunification firsthand, remarks that “many of the Western protest voters who had inflated the Republicans’ results in 1989 lost sympathy for the ‘brothers and sisters in the east’ when they realized how much they would cost them.”36 Overall, in the first years after reunification, Germans faced a challenging new order with the end of the Cold War. Heneghan contends that the attitudes of the period consisted of disappointment with the trajectory of the nation since reunification and with politicians’ abilities to make changes.37

Issue Ownership and Success

The political and economic uncertainty that accompanied reunification created new challenges for the mainstream and an opportunity for outsiders. Issues of identity and nationalism in a rapidly changing post-Cold War world remained unresolved, a basis for the rise of a far-right populist like the Republicans. Yet amid this context, REP did not become a lasting force in German politics and instead quickly rose and fell over the course of slightly more than a decade, with most of the party’s notable showings occurring at both the state and federal level between 1990 and 1994. Key to explaining success and failure at various points in time is the

34 Heneghan, Unchained Eagle, 71.

35 Smith, Germany: A Nation, 456.

36 Heneghan, Unchained Eagle, 91-92.

37 Heneghan, 89-90.

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idea of issue ownership: that parties win through having comparatively stronger positions on a critical issue compared to their opponents.

Many of the intuitive explanations for far-right success lack evidence. While it may seem logical that a region with more immigrants would have greater support for far-right parties or attempt to pass more anti-immigrant legislation, no such relationship exists. Political science professor Michelle Hale Williams describes immigration as a “funnel issue” because far-right parties often broadly blame foreigners for socioeconomic issues, and voters embrace these positions even if they live somewhere with a small immigrant population.38 At the same time, Hunter College professor Robert Karapin’s analysis finds that Germany’s southern states have relatively high levels of far-right voting despite low levels of crime and unemployment. He remarks: “Real economic problems do not seem to translate directly into far-right voting.”

39 Instead, he believes that the salience of immigration-related issues such as asylum are the primary driver of far-right success in Germany. Populism expert Cas Mudde from the University of Georgia names the concept at play: issue ownership. When parties present themselves as more competent in solving an issue than any alternative, they can “run away with the topic.”

40 In Germany, the SPD and CDU positions on immigration were less concrete than those of REP.

Anti-immigration CDU state campaigns in the 1980s inadvertently pushed discourse to the right, paving the way for the success of a party like REP. Once the CDU was forced to juggle its right and centrist wings, REP appeared more competent. On the other hand, the SPD failed to provide

38 Williams, The Impact, 77.

39 Roger Karapin, "Explaining Far-Right Electoral Successes in Germany: The Politicization of Immigration-Related Issues," German Politics and Society 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 36, accessed September 8, 2022, JSTOR.

40 Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, repr. ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 242.

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an alternative to the CDU because the center-left lacked clear policy positions about immigration, failing on the CDU’s lost votes to the far-right. Williams contends that the SPD and CDU positions on immigration were virtually indistinguishable by the end of the 1980s.41 REP seized upon or took ownership of the asylum issue, which had risen to even greater prominence amid the crises accompanying reunification.

Schmidtke describes the late 1980s to early 1990s in Germany as a “perfect storm” over both asylum and citizenship, while Williams highlights the continued presence of Germans’ “latent xenophobia.”42 At the same time, the CDU government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl promoted a Wende or turning point where Germans could feel prouder of their national identity. Ensuing policy inevitably targeted immigrants, especially as the number of annual asylum applicants continued to climb throughout the 1980s.43 Wende policies that were insufficiently conservative or failed to materialize created the perception of government inaction on immigration.44 The fall of the Wall initiated a wave of asylum-seekers that included Ausslieder in addition to refugees of a different ethnic background, while the economic challenges of reunification led to growing attention on existing guest worker communities. The issue of integrating foreigners remained fundamentally unresolved. When Michael Minkenberg from European University Viadrina tracked opinion polls of German voters about immigration, he noticed that far-right parties did not radicalize voters’ views; instead, “a shift to the right

41 Williams, The Impact, 133-134.

42 Schmidtke, “Reinventing,” 501; Williams, 5.

43 Williams, 132-133.

44 Williams, 148.

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preceded, then coincided with” the appearance of extremists.45 In the long term, the CDU maintained ownership of the immigration issue by introducing the issue and reacting to the response from extremists.

Elections in Hesse illustrate the way issue ownership was linked to the fortunes of other far-right parties such as REP. The CDU mayor of Frankfurt, Walter Wallman, was elected and re-elected in 1980 and 1985 on an anti-immigrant message. In Hesse’s 1989 municipal elections, which came not long after REP’s 7.5 percent in West Berlin, the neo-Nazi NPD posted 6 percent in Frankfurt 1989. Even though CDU politicians like Wallman had a “tradition of anti-foreigner politics,” the “peak” of attention toward immigration in 1989 saw the far-right siphon off votes. However, in the state legislative elections conducted in 1987 and 1991, the far-right fared poorly. Karapin characterizes 1987 as a “lull in the national asylum debate” compared to the “peak” of 1989, while in 1991 the Gulf War was a more pressing issue.46

Not all CDU national leaders endorsed the “Foreigners Out” strategy: in March 1989, Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s most popular news magazines known for its investigative work, reported that the CDU General Secretary Heiner Geissler considered the use of nationalist rhetoric in that year’s Hesse state elections “fundamentally wrong,” and he believed that “a large [big-tent party] shouldn’t even get involved in chasing after the right-wing extremists and taking over their issues.”47 Geissler, who had a more centrist vision of the party, claimed anti-immigrant

45 Michael Minkenberg, "Context and Consequence: The Impact of the New Radical Right on the Political Process in France and Germany," German Politics and Society 16, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 8, accessed December 25, 2022, JSTOR.

46 Karapin, “Explaining Far-Right,” 41-42.

47 “'Sie mit ihrer Arroganz da oben'" ["You up There with Your Arrogance"], Der Spiegel, March 19, 1989, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/sie-mit-ihrer-arroganz-da-oben-a-45031b9a-0002-0001-0000000013507077?context=issue.

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positions discouraged moderates from voting for the CDU.48 The notion of “chasing after” REP issues suggests that CDU rhetoric after the emergence of REP could have been calculated to capitalize on immigration, albeit unsuccessfully, because the issue was now at the forefront of voters’ minds due to growing far-right attention. Williams believes “Foreigners Out” campaigns were intended to contain the far-right by demonstrating the CDU ability to act on immigration. The strategy successfully earned the party votes until “the failure to follow through…provided an opening for the third wave of the far right.” However, Williams contends that the CDU attempts to address immigration ultimately weakened REP by rendering the far right a protest vote rather than a true electoral threat.

49 Minkenberg also notices this trend, arguing that the CDU’s use of anti-immigrant messaging in the 1986 federal election campaign drew public attention to the issue, but also ultimately weakened REP, which now found itself “caught in a narrow political space between the moderate right and the extremists.” The CDU also addressed right-wing grievances through policies that focused on “national interests” such as the tightening of immigration laws.50 However, Karapin believes that in the absence of policy outcomes to accompany CDU antiimmigrant language, the mere increased publicity of the issue benefited the far-right instead. Broader dissatisfaction with both parties may have also played a role, because increased attention on immigration cannot as readily explain SPD government losses to the far-right.51 A quote from a woman who voted for the NPD in the 1989 local elections in Hesse supports the

48 Clay Clemens, "Helmut Kohl's CDU and German Unification: The Price of Success," German Politics and Society 22 (Spring 1991): 35-36, accessed February 14, 2023,JSTOR.

49 Williams, The Impact, 148-149.

50 Karapin, “Explaining Far-Right,” 49.

51 Karapin, 25-26.

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disillusionment thesis: “I don’t believe in any of their Nazi stuff…but I wanted to teach Bonn a lesson.”52

Meanwhile, the SPD held vacillating positions on immigration throughout the 80s and 1990s. For example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the SPD advocated for the rights of nonGerman immigrants but not the ethnic German Ausslieder and would agree to a compromise to tighten citizenship laws in 1992. Despite their professed support for guest workers around reunification, the government of SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt had ended the program in the 1970s, blaming the Turks for taking German jobs amid the oil crisis.53 Extremist party expert William Downs contends that a rightward shift of the electorate poses a particular dilemma for center-left parties like the SPD, who anger their left flank in trying to satisfy their right flank and vice versa.54 In addition, instead of the far-right only bleeding CDU votes, Downs cites a 1992 survey that discovered one fifth of REP voters in 1992 voted for the SPD in the previous election.55 The need to maintain those voters creates the dilemma Downs describes. Williams also describes the positions of the SPD government of the 1980s toward foreigners as “inconsistent.”56 When the SPD attempted to use REP-style rhetoric to win back voters such as in the 1990 Saarland elections, the REP capitalized on the SPD’s “confusing variety of

52 Serge Schmemann, "German State Vote Seen as Anti-Bonn Protest," New York Times, last modified March 14, 1989, accessed February 13, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/14/world/german-state-vote-seen-as-antibonn-protest.html.

53 Oliver Schmidtke, "The 'Party for Immigrants'? Social Democrats' Struggle with an Inconvenient Electoral Issue," German Politics 25, no. 3 (June 3, 2016): 401, accessed September 9, 2022, Academic Search Complete.

54 William M. Downs, Political Extremism in Democracies: Combating Intolerance (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 149.

55 Downs, Political Extremism, 153.

56 Williams, The Impact, 132-133.

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immigration issues” for a 3.3 percent showing. The effect was the same when the CDU tried to emphasize immigration in Bavaria’s elections that same year.57 These two elections encapsulate the SPD’s and CDU’s struggles with issue ownership. The CDU introduced the issue of immigration to emphasize positions in line with many Germans’ underlying fears but found that the far-right was a greater threat when the issue was national. Meanwhile, the SPD already had unclear positions on immigration and was unable to capitalize on the CDU’s stoking of xenophobic views, creating more potential REP voters. At the core of this issue was the fact that the positions of the SPD and CDU towards immigration had become increasingly similar. Already big-tent Volkspartei, SPD and CDU move to the middle regarding immigration made REP and other extremist positions appear clearer. Downs describes the mainstream as having “vacated their traditional policy space.”58 As already discussed, SPD positions on immigration were vague and constantly changing, and while the CDU pushed its messaging to the right to stoke the far-right in the first place, REP had the advantage of being a single-issue party that did not need to corral a spectrum of ideologies.59 Ultimately, according to Williams, the SPD and CDU both “converged in the center-right.”60 More conservative or disillusioned voters could choose the alternative REP Handlos and Voigt had once promised. In a 1989 interview with Der Spiegel, Schönhuber, speaking as REP party leader, expressed his belief that a truly right-wing party did not exist in Germany: “We clearly see our point of view to the right

57 Karapin, “Explaining Far-Right,” 43.

58 Downs, Political Extremism, 44.

59 Matthias Kortmann and Christian Stecker, "Party Competition and Immigration and Integration Policies: A Comparative Analysis," Comparative European Politics 17, no. 1 (October 10, 2017): 76, accessed December 19, 2022, ProQuest.

60 Williams, The Impact, 134.

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of center. It is unacceptable that only the center and the left exist on the parliamentary spectrum.”61 Because Schönhuber refers to the CDU as the center and lumps it with SPD approaches to immigration, his statement can support Williams’s convergence thesis.

Issue ownership of immigration, or having clearer stances than their mainstream opponents, drove the relative success of REP in the late 1980s. The pro-immigration SPD could not chart a clear course for itself, while the CDU’s use of nativist language drew attention to and helped nationalize the issue, allowing REP to emphasize its competence regarding foreigners and to create a scapegoat for people’s feelings of marginalization. But the REP platform was twofold, with reunification the other tenet. When reunification did occur, it temporarily superseded all other issues, and Kohl’s CDU firmly owned the issue.

Failure

1989 proved to be the height of REP success. Despite experts’ concerns over the party’s performances so far, in the 1990 federal election, just months after reunification, REP only won 2 percent of the vote, nowhere close to the 5 percent minimum. In 1992, REP scored an impressive 10.9 percent of the vote in Baden-Württemberg but could not achieve representation in any other states. Karapin attributes the 1992 result to a surge in CDU nativist rhetoric and national attention on asylum, like Hesse in 1989.62 Issue ownership catapulted REP to relevance in 1989, and the CDU’s ownership of more pressing issues in the early 1990s, namely reunification and its discontents, rendered Schönhuber’s party an afterthought. The mainstream parties also took decisive action on immigration, tightening the qualifications for asylum applications in 1993, thus weakening the REP portrayal of the CDU as weak on the issue.

Chung 19
61 Koch, “Unser Endziel.” 62 Karapin, “Explaining Far-Right,” 39.

Germany’s militant democracy further helped dampen far-right performances, while REP itself was too wracked by infighting to govern in the limited cases when they held power. Nevertheless, a number of experts believe that REP had lasting effects such as moving the German mainstream to the right.

“An Electoral Godsend”

College of William and Mary professor Clay Clemens believes reunification helped the CDU by providing a pressing issue that united moderate and conservative wings who disagreed over which direction the party should move regarding immigration.63 Reunification eliminated a key part of the REP platform, superseded all other issues, and complicated the extremists’ ability to scapegoat immigrants for housing or job shortages because of the new wave of East Germans. Significant disagreement about immigration existed in the CDU, but reunification was an opportunity to express their competence and unity. According to political science professor Thomas Koelble, reunification was “an electoral godsend” for the CDU and its otherwise subpar performances in state elections throughout the 1980s. He argues that “unification became the banner under which the CDU/CSU…rode back into political dominance.”64 CDU ownership of reunification contributed to their convincing victory in 1990. The opposition SPD’s preference for a more gradual process did not reflect the national mood that, as University of Hamburg professor Klaus von Beyme quips, “Kohl’s reunification policy was doomed to success.”

65 Williams contends that the CDU’s successful handling of reunification led to an “existential

63 Clemens, “Helmut Kohl’s CDU,” 38.

64 Thomas Koelble, "After the Deluge: Unification and the Political Parties in Germany," German Politics and Society 22 (Spring 1991): 46-47, accessed December 23, 2022, JSTOR.

65 Klaus von Beyme, "Electoral Unification: The First German Elections in 1990," Government and Opposition 26, no. 2 (Spring 1991): accessed October 13, 2022, JSTOR.

Chung 20

crisis” for REP.66 In March 1990, the months before the election, The New York Times highlighted the way Kohl and the CDU as the face of reunification hurt REP’s chances. The language of the article suggests the CDU took ownership of reunification. Norbert Lepszy, a political scientist interviewed in the article, commented that, “It was Chancellor Helmut Kohl who presented the German question to the German public, not the Republicans.”67 Lepszy’s notion of the CDU presenting an issue evokes issue ownership and reflects a trend for Kohl and his party after reunification, taking advantage of holding power to make policy changes and portray themselves as the most competent leaders in a period of upheaval. Clemens also explains that by addressing red-meat nationalist issues through “token votes” against recognizing Germany’s eastern border with Poland, the CDU in 1990 “secured the right flank” and converted REP voters. Kohl turned the tables on REP by using reunification to emphasize the CDU’s patriotic bona fides.68

Subsequent Policy Changes

Individuals within the CDU/CSU, such as Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann, had unsuccessfully attempted to restrict citizenship laws throughout the 1980s. However, the time was ripe for a party to seize action on the issue; as Williams writes “the future on [immigration] would be shaped by those who took on the issue and shaped it their way at this opportune

66 Williams, The Impact, 123.

67 Serge Schmemann, "Upheaval in the East; Bonn Far Right Loses Steam as Germans Focus on Unity," New York Times, March 30, 1990, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/30/world/upheaval-in-theeast-bonn-far-right-loses-steam-as-germans-focus-on-unity.html.

68 Craig R. Whitney, "Germany's Top Rightist Looks Ahead," New York Times, December 28, 1993, 39, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/28/world/germany-s-top-rightist-looks-ahead.html.

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time.”69 Amid concern about the far right and episodes of anti-foreigner violence, in late 1992, the SPD agreed to CDU asylum reforms to automatically deny applications from “safe third countries,” which included most European countries, as well as to make naturalization requirements slightly lighter.70 The SPD conceded to the “asylum compromise” law as the CDU charged that the “soft” positions of the left were responsible for the violence.71 The passage of the law defended against criticism that the parties in power had made no efforts to plug the flow of asylum seekers, weakening the REP boast that only they had conclusive plans for immigration, unfettered by the mainstream need to address other issues and to accommodate more diverse ideologies. Nevertheless, while crafting legislation, in an interview with Williams, CDU legislator Hartmut Koschyk explains the aim to exclude extremists and demonstrate the government’s ability to tackle issues: “If we solve the problem in parliament, then the people say we don’t need the NPD and others. Instead, the parties in government get the job done just fine.”72 In 1990, the CDU exemplified its acknowledgment of identity-based issues through a few members who expressed their opposition to recognizing Germany’s eastern border. In 1992, the CDU could continue to demonstrate this commitment as the party lined up behind the new law.

Some experts do believe that the presence of REP resulted in a stricter asylum law or even that the party moved the German issue space to the right. In December 1993, Schönhuber told the New York Times that the new asylum law was “precisely what our program called for.”73

69 Williams, The Impact, 149.

70 Green, Hough, and Miskimmon, The Politics, 130.

71 Schmidtke, “The ‘Party’,” 402.

72 Williams, The Impact, 131.

73 Whitney, “Germany’s Top Rightist.”

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This comment was an attempt by Schönhuber to take credit for the asylum compromise and not lose voters who believed the mainstream had now adequately addressed their immigration concerns. Nevertheless, the threat of the far-right may have led the mainstream to enact a sufficiently conservative policy that Schönhuber officially supported. From an analysis of immigration initiatives since the 1970s, Williams believes policy on the issue would have still been enacted, but the presence of the far-right resulted in “harsher language” for the laws.74 Minkenberg believes that by forcing the CDU to address “national interests,” REP was able to “co-govern” despite a lack of national success.75 While it is impossible to conclusively say that REP was responsible for the passage or strictness of the asylum statute, a third expert, Downs, uses REP as an example of a party changing discourse without being in power.76

In the 1994 general election campaign, the economic consequences of reunification led to concerns that the mood of discontent could fuel REP, sentiment reflected in a New York Times report from December 1993.77 Additionally, the CDU carefully needed to stake positions amid challenges from the SPD on the left and REP on the right. Christopher Anderson and Karsten Zelle, scholars of German elections, explain that because the CDU owned the issue of the economy while the SPD owned the issue of unemployment, the 1994 campaign portrayed jobs as the outcome of an economic recovery. In addition, the party rallied behind on Kohl’s track record and image.78 Although the REP performance in Baden-Württemberg suggested to the

74 Williams, The Impact, 151.

75 Minkenberg, “Context and Consequence,” 17.

76 Downs, Political Extremism, 171.

77 Whitney, “Germany’s Top Rightist.”

78 Christopher Anderson and Carsten Zelle, "Helmut Kohl and the CDU Victory," German Politics and Society 13, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 16-17, accessed December 20, 2022, JSTOR.

Chung 23

CDU that the far-right had not completely vanished after the poor showing in 1990, the economy remained front and center for most voters.79 By spearheading the asylum reform, the CDU, according to Anderson and Zelle, “stole much of the political thunder” from REP and was able to focus on the left as its opponent.80 The results of the election suggest that the CDU’s focus on issues about which they held the strongest positions and attention to the asylum issue helped further dull REP chances. REP was all but irrelevant by 1994, scoring close to 1 percent in the federal election and not even winning 5 percent in their home state of Bavaria.81

Structural and Internal Factors

The design of the German political system also helped limit the success of REP. Cas Mudde rejects this explanation, arguing instead that the actions of other parties and politicians determine the success of a party aiming to gain power.82 On the other hand, Williams considers the German system a “rare case” of structural factors helping sink the fortunes of budding extremists particularly because of the 5 percent minimum for representation.83 Williams posits that features of German democracy combined with the general incompetence of far-right parties themselves “preclude them from operating as professional political parties.”84 The primary hurdle for REP to overcome was the 5 percent threshold, a barrier so large that Downs questions

79 Anderson and Zelle, “Helmut Kohl and,” 14.

80 Anderson and Zelle, 20.

81 Mudde, “Die Republikaner,” 35-36.

82 Mudde, Populist Radical Right, 237.

83 Williams, The Impact, 45-46.

84 Williams, 128.

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how plausible the far-right achieving representation in the Bundestag even was.85 Germany’s federal system also adversely affected REP prospects. Matthias Kortmann and Christian Stecker’s analysis of German parties’ attitudes about immigration implicitly links issue ownership and federalism. State governments had already begun developing integration policies in the 1980s, long before the federal government, which Kortmann and Stecker attribute to the fact that each Land was “directly confronted with challenges following immigration.”86 Even though many REP scares came at the state level, the precedent of addressing immigration may have helped stave off prolonged stretches of extremist success. Votes for the far-right may have become protest votes rather than policy alternatives. Klaus von Beyme believes that most REP voters aimed to send the extremists to the European Parliament (EP) rather than the Bundestag because the EP is more of a realm for “experimentation” and protest voting.87 Germany’s militant democracy also played a role. Minkenberg describes how bans of neo-Nazi parties by the BfV not only eliminated threats but also warned comparatively self-described right-wingers of the fate they would suffer if their positions became too extreme.88 Moreover, Minkenberg bluntly states the “stigma of National Socialism” precludes many if not all would-be radical rightists from legitimacy.89 In 1995, a column in The Economist explained that by being upgraded from “radical” to “enemies of the constitution” status by the BfV, REP needed to

85 Downs, Political Extremism, 162.

86 Kortmann and Stecker, “Party Competition,” 74.

87 Klaus von Beyme, "A United Germany Preparing for the 1994 Elections," Government and Opposition 29, no. 4 (Autumn 1994): 453-454, accessed December 20, 2022, JSTOR.

88 Minkenberg, “Context and Consequence,” 15.

89 Minkenberg, 19.

Chung 25

prepare itself to be “infiltrated and investigated.”90 Greater BfV scrutiny also hampered REP prospects moving forward, as the government now considered the self-described moderates relatives of true neo-Nazis.

REP failed to address voters’ more pressing concerns and found itself wracked by internal disarray. Betz and Williams both note that the party remained focused on grievances and nationalist slogans but not addressing the needs of their target demographic, the “socially and economically disadvantaged.” The party supported ethnic German Ausslieder returning to the united Germany, but this position became more difficult to maintain when public opinion among REP voters turned against the resettlers.91

Instead of trying to maintain its image as a comparatively “moderate” right-wing party, REP shifted further right throughout the 1990s.92 Cas Mudde also has observed a phenomenon where a party attempting to cultivate a “less extreme” profile instead attracts genuine extremists who prefer to be associated with a more “moderate” organization, paradoxically moving the party further to the right in the process. He notes that “Marginally successful parties like…REP were unterwandert (flooded) by activists from the extreme right.”93 When REP attempted to portray themselves as moderate, they attracted and lost votes to neo-Nazis, while taking more extreme stances would have alienated the disillusioned CSU voters they were targeting.

Schönhuber, in his interview with The New York Times, repeatedly stressed the differences between REP and neo-Nazis, a fact which columnist Craig Whitney believed “cost the party

90 "The German Way of Democracy," The Economist, April 29, 1995, accessed February 9, 2023, Gale General OneFile.

91 Betz, ”Politics of Resentment,” 55; Williams, The Impact, 120.

92 Williams, 123.

93 Mudde, Populist Radical Right, 247.

Chung 26

success” in a 1993 city election in Hamburg where far-right votes were split among the two extremists.94 In an examination of the 1994 elections, von Beyme also supports Whitney’s interpretation, noting that southern Germany-based REP faced northern Germany-based neoNazis. Von Beyme also describes the lack of REP appeal in the East.95 Further emphasizing the challenges of garnering support from both halves of Germany, in his seminal survey of German history, A Mighty Fortress, historian Steven Ozment characterizes the differences between the former West and East as “oppositional politics and culture.”96 A more successful populist party in the East was the left-wing Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of East Germany, which Beyme distinguishes by its “stable basis of voters among the losers of reunification.”97 Even in the cases where REP achieved limited representation, the party proved incapable of governing. Without an organization comparable to the mainstream parties, when trying to actually legislate, Mudde labels right-wingers “victims of their own success.”98 Party leaders lacked government experience, charisma, or professionalism, to the point that Williams questions if some far-right German parties can even be called populist for their failure to understand popular concerns.99 REP infighting was rampant, culminating in Schönhuber’s ouster as party leader in 1994.100

94 Whitney, “Germany’s Top Rightist.”

95 von Beyme, “A United Germany,” 453

96 Ozment, A Mighty Fortress, 313.

97 Green, Hough, and Miskimmon, The Politics, 95; von Beyme, “A United Germany,” 448.

98 Mudde, Populist Radical, 266.

99 Williams, The Impact, 134-135.

100 Mudde, “Die Republikaner,” 36.

Chung 27

The 5 percent rule, federalism, militant democracy, and the party’s own disorganization contributed to the inability of REP and the far-right to experience consistent results at any level of German elections. Issue ownership best explains the party’s fortune by providing a framework for the way in which the mainstream engaged with and responded to threats from the far-right. Structural and internal factors comprised the board on which the CDU challenged REP, but the individual players’ actions in the form of addressing the immigration issue more conclusively determined outcomes.

The principal factor that determined the fortunes of REP was issue ownership, or how effectively political parties can convey their competence at addressing an issue. In the unsettled environment of Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, the CDU’s use of anti-immigrant language, when not followed up with concrete action, unwittingly paved the way for the success of REP and other far-right parties. The SPD continued to have difficulty portraying itself as a proimmigration alternative to the CDU. Voters also viewed the broader lack of action on immigration despite a rise in asylum-seekers throughout the period a failure of establishment politicians, and the far-right became a reservoir of protest votes. Despite scattered successes across state parliaments that turned heads nationwide, the far-right failed to achieve representation in the national parliament through the mainstream’s issue ownership of immigration and another suddenly more pressing issue, reunification. While stoking antiimmigrant sentiment at first backfired on the center-right, introducing these issues paid off when the government did act on immigration in the form of a major change to asylum laws in 1992.

The CDU government pushed its success quickly, reunifying Germany in the 1994 election, leaning on its record and the image of Chancellor Kohl to encourage voters to stand with the party in the face of reunification’s economic consequences. REP ran on both reunification and

Chung 28

immigration, but the CDU proved itself to be a more decisive actor on both issues. By engaging REP with policy instead of rhetoric, the doomsday scenario of a resurgent far-right taking root across Germany seemed to have been avoided. Furthermore, Germany’s postwar dedication to democracy and electoral system designed to hamper smaller extremist parties, as well as REP’s internal disarray and inability to govern contributed to the party’s failure The story of REP ended with a victory for Germany’s militant democracy, but thirty years later, a new challenger leads a suddenly resurgent far-right.

In the 2017 federal election, an upstart far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won a shocking 94 seats in the German Bundestag, easily the best performance by a far-right party in Germany’s postwar history. The party also gained entry to most of Germany’s state legislatures, winning about a quarter of the vote in some of the eastern states.101 Like REP, AfD radicalized in response to an influx of immigrants: in 2015, amid her own party’s opposition,

CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War.102 Vehemently anti-immigrant and Islamophobic, AfD has gained notoriety for its use of language like “völkisch,” a Nazi term used to refer to the German ethnic community.103 Penny Bochum, a political researcher who worked as an SPD aide in the German Bundestag, explains in her study of AfD that the party has found particular support in “unification losers” from the East and generally with voters who feel that globalization has negatively impacted their lives.104

Like REP, AfD accuses immigrants of leaching off of the German welfare system, as an AfD

101 Penny Bochum, 'We Are the People': The Rise of the AfD in Germany (London: Haus Publishing, 2020), 9.

102 Schmidtke, “Reinventing,” 499.

103 Bochum, ‘We Are the People,’ 15.

104 Bochum, 45-47.

Chung 29

deputy in the Berlin Landtag exclaimed in 2018: “Open borders and welfare state don’t go together.”105 In many ways, AfD seems reminiscent of REP in ideology, and if anything, the newcomers are more dangerous, having experienced greater and wider success than Schönhuber's AfD’s performance declined in the 2021 federal election, winning 10.2 percent as opposed to 12.6 percent of the national vote, in part because according to Politico columnist Emily Schultheis, voters considered the COVID-19 pandemic a far more prominent issue than immigration.106

But 2017 is not 1990. Schmidtke’s examination of German parties’ citizenship attitudes throughout history explains that compared to 1990, the CDU and center-right have become more open to immigration such as by viewing it to mitigate falling birthrates. He also notes that the CDU “has taken political ownership” of immigration-related issues that the party can competently address. Despite this more welcoming attitude, the CDU, according to Schmidtke, still at times uses “identity-based strategies for political mobilization,” in other words, the same strategies that provided an opening for REP in the 1980s.107 For example, in Bavaria, a 2018 article in The Economist reported that the ruling CSU effectively oversaw the refugee crisis. Unfortunately, the potency of immigration as an AfD attack led the center-right to begin using nativist attacks, alienating churchgoers (the Christian in “Christian Social Union”) and continuing to bleed support as “centrists think the turnaround is too drastic to be credible.”108

105 Katrin Bennhold, "Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right," New York Times, last modified February 5, 2018, accessed February 16, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/world/europe/afdunions-social-democrats.html.

106 Emily Schultheis, "Germany's Far-Right AfD Loses Nationally, but Wins in the East," Politico, last modified September 28, 2021, accessed December 31, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/german-election-far-right-afdloses-nationally-but-wins-in-east/

107 Schmidtke, “Reinventing,” 510.

108 "Conservative Conundrums; Bavarian Elections," The Economist, October 13, 2018, Gale General OneFile.

Chung 30

On the other hand, the SPD continues to struggle to define its positions on immigration, and it also lost half of its union vote from 1998 to AfD in 2017.109 At the same time, Schmidtke contends that his analysis of the manner in which both the SPD and CDU frame citizenship reflects “a persistent move away from the ethno-cultural framing of identity and belonging.”110 Finally, German asylum and citizenship laws have undergone further reform since the “asylum compromise” of 1992. Laws enacted under SPD-led governments in 2000 and 2005, eased the naturalization process and made it easier for companies to hire foreign workers.111

Despite differing contexts, the story of REP offers insights into the ways Germany can contain the AfD threat. The tradition of “militant democracy” has already played a key role.

Mainstream parties refuse to work with AfD members of the Bundestag.112 In 2021, the party was placed under surveillance by the BfV, whose head considered the far-right “the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.”113 This stands in stark contrast with the early 1990s, when the BfV was preoccupied with disrupting the decreasing threat of far-left extremists.114 In addition, COVID-19 dampened immigration as the issue of popular discontent, and the Russian war in Ukraine likely currently is of greater importance to the German public than relatively more established communities of Syrian refugees or Turkish guest workers.

109 Bochum, ‘We Are the People,’ 54.

110 Schmidtke, “Reinventing,” 506.

111 Green, Hough, and Miskimmon, German Politics, 131.

112 Bochum, ‘We Are the People,’ 65.

113 Katrin Bennhold, "Germany Places Far-Right AfD Party under Surveillance for Extremism," New York Times, last modified March 3, 2021, accessed February 16, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/europe/germany-afd-surveillance-extremism.html.

114 Heneghan, Unchained Eagle, 95.

Chung 31

The mainstream’s strongest weapon against the far-right is not surveillance or marginalization, but the ability to deliver for the people. Bochum asserts: “While the AfD provides the anger, the center must provide the answer.”

115 Government can take and has taken action to address the challenges that lead voters to become disillusioned with the mainstream and seek the temptations of populism. A party in government can take issue ownership of any subject because it can act on any subject. Populists, particularly in Germany where the mainstream marginalizes them in state and national parliaments, can incite voters but do little to address underlying problems. The challenge for leaders in Germany, Europe, and around the world is not only to tackle pressing, complex issues, but also to retain the trust of their electorate, to demonstrate that government can deliver and has delivered for voters.

Chung 32
115 Bochum, ‘We Are the People,’ 58.

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