After the firewall: Three ways the center can stop the AfD

After his own people had successfully hidden the Chancellor in Saxony-Anhalt's state election campaign for weeks, Friedrich Merz intervened in the events this week. And he did it in a remarkable way: both of his appointments took place behind almost closed doors. And from there one sentence from the Chancellor in particular leaked out: “Saxony-Anhalt must not become an experimental field for angry citizens.” By which he meant the potential AfD voters in the country - and disqualified them.

The Chancellor has achieved what his Union still wants to prove after the election: He has built a hermetic wall between himself and the right-wing activities in Saxony-Anhalt; so hermetic that any spontaneous physical contact with anyone who did not already vote for the CDU was excluded. The Chancellor's personal firewall is standing.

So the message is clear. But is she also smart?

It is undoubtedly a requirement of political responsibility to keep all those political forces out of power that do not take the free, democratic basic order very seriously. And at the latest since the AfD became a rallying point for right-wing nationalist and ethnic mobs at the end of the 2010s from being an anti-Euro party of a few economics professors, it can be considered exactly that. That's why the parties in the political center, but especially the Union, came up with the firewall. All chairmen of the CDU and CSU in recent history have committed themselves to this, and Friedrich Merz even backed the concept with a numerical goal: he not only wanted to exclude the AfD from participating in government, but also halve it.

Measured against this, the strategy failed; The AfD has long since moved towards 30 percent in nationwide Union surveys. It could become the strongest parliamentary force in Saxony-Anhalt and possibly also two weeks later in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. And the second goal of keeping the AfD out of government offices by excluding them could also have failed on Sunday. If the surveys in Saxony-Anhalt are not completely wrong (which was of course the case before the last state election), the AfD could possibly get into government office without the support of other parties.

And then?

The political scientist Peter Graf von Kielmansegg recently reported in the “FAZ”: “On the one hand, German democracy has neglected almost nothing that was capable of producing strong right-wing populism. On the other hand, it has done everything imaginable to make a democratic taming of right-wing populism impossible.” Maybe that's why it's not a good idea to just carry on as before.

There is not a single case in which right-wing extremists de-radicalized after participating in government.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel said something clever during an appearance last weekend: She warned Germans not to focus all political debates of this time exclusively on the AfD. And in doing so she addressed a paradox: the democratic center does not want to give the AfD any space in the institutions - but gives it the entire debate space in the republic. And that's exactly what the firewall in its current form encourages.

It makes the AfD the constant topic of debate - but not the motives why up to 40 percent of the electorate consider a bunch of uncouth, Russia-loving and in some cases corrupt right-wing extremists to be a political alternative. And not only that: The AfD lives in a two-dimensional parallel world that divides every substantive question into “us or them”. The firewall supports this approach because it visually creates the spatial conditions for it. And in practical terms, it will only be possible to maintain it in many German parliaments with great contortions.

Now what does that mean? Let the AfD rule? Absolutely not. Their progressive radicalization, their rejection of the European unification process, their closeness to Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia, their unconstitutional nationalist view of humanity and the devastating consequences of their educational and economic policies, as announced in the election programs, speak against this.

The assumption that this would change through government participation and that the AfD could be tamed, so to speak, comes from a dream world. Anyone who stirs up this hope is either consciously lying - or has not paid any attention to the political empiricism of the past decades. There is not a single case in which right-wing extremists de-radicalized after participating in government.

And yet: The journalist and AfD expert Olaf Sundermeyer has written in a new book about the AfD: “The continued strengthening is not inevitable.” To do this, however, the conditions under which the party has so far grown stronger would have to be changed.

1. Three borders instead of one wall

The firewall has a flaw that you don't immediately notice: it answers three questions with a general answer. Can the AfD govern? Can your vote be the deciding factor on very simple factual issues? And do you talk to those who vote for them? Anyone who answers everything with no considers this to be true to principles, but confuses this with mental comfort.

Sundermeyer, who has been reporting on the East for years, separates the three questions. On the first, he is tougher than most of the firewall's defenders: "The firewall is the AfD's strongest opponent." Those calling for its dissolution admit that they are “giving in to the AfD and letting it move into the executive branch.” For the other two questions he demands the opposite: “no exclusion of voters or in factual decisions”.

Because it is actually the case, as can already be observed in East Germany: the stronger the AfD becomes, the more all other parties have to work together on content under the current firewall conditions if they want to decide anything at all. Since in many parliaments all other parties are now needed to organize majorities against the AfD, this creates a compulsion to always look for the same majorities even on the simplest factual issues - regardless of the actual election result. But elections come to nothing. The question is whether a vote on even small issues, such as property transfer tax, is worth this erosion of democracy.

The political scientist Christian Stecker therefore wants to move away from the rigid coalition corset and towards changing majorities for each issue: The party must be denied access to the executive branch - and at the same time deprive it of the privilege of never having to deliver in the permanent opposition.

If we think this through, we would have more graduated prevention mechanisms in the future: a thematic firewall prevents majorities against fundamental rights and political equality. That would be a clear difference to the previous hermetic firewall, which gives the AfD the opportunity to block even the smallest of issues.

But that requires a different term than “wall.” A wall squeezes the world into a two-dimensional concept: it stands or falls. But reality is rarely two-dimensional and almost always multi-dimensional.

2. Adopt topics instead of positions

Those who declare the firewall to be a failure usually already have an answer ready: Then we have to meet the AfD's demands ourselves. That sounds like realism - but it is an illusion. You can currently clearly see this in migration policy, where almost all of the AfD's positions from five years ago have been adopted. The result is that the problem is almost solved, but the AfD simply makes more and more extreme demands - and the voters do not reward the centrist parties for adopting the AfD positions.

Werner Krause, Denis Cohen and Tarik Abou-Chadi evaluated what established parties actually tried: over 350 strategies in 108 electoral contexts from twelve Western European countries, from 1976 to 2017. The finding: “We found no evidence that rapprochement strategies reduce support for the extreme right.” And further: If anything, more voters then switch to the radical right. Nothing less.

Addressing a topic means solving a problem. Taking over a position means letting the opponent set the standard.

The former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, who expressly considers the AfD to be a danger, has just written in a book article: The firewall must be replaced by “a substantive debate with the AfD” that “basically hasn’t really taken place so far.” Mere takeover or complete separation from the AfD are neither strategies to deal with the substantive concerns of their voters.

Journalist Rafael Seligmann uses an example to show what attack instead of adaptation looks like: The AfD presents itself as a peace party and rejects conscription. Seligmann's response: Anyone who does that in this threatening situation "is sabotaging Germany's security." And that can be conveyed to people instead of simply following the AfD. The popularity ratings of Defense Minister Boris Pistorius show that inconvenient security policy is capable of gaining a majority.

The difference is not a quibble: addressing a topic means solving a problem. Taking over a position means letting the opponent set the standard. One takes work, the other demonstrably takes votes.

3. Political debate instead of Lex AfD

The example of Rhineland-Palatinate shows where the current firewall is leading. Because the center parties did not give the AfD a chance of accidental successes and wanted to maintain the firewall in any case without making their parliament unable to act, they changed the constitution before the election and increased the hurdle for investigative committees from a fifth to a quarter of the MPs. In the Bundestag, the center also adjusted the rules with a view to the AfD, for example when electing the senior president. All of this is legal, but in the end it is also a gift to the AfD.

The Bonn political scientist Frank Decker, who rejects the AfD's participation in government, warns of a “Lex AfD”: You change the rules during the game and serve the party's portrayal of victims without necessity. And East expert Sundermeyer warns: Instead of leading a substantive and parliamentary debate, “the largest opposition party is being kept small with a 'Lex AfD', to the benefit of the state government.”

Anyone who tailors the rules against an opponent has to take two things into account: The rules remain the same if the opponent takes over anyway. And the opponent has a communicative advantage - which is even more devastating if he already has one.

Conclusion: What is missing behind the wall

But is this effort even worth it, especially in East Germany - or is the trend, like in many Western countries, heading inexorably towards the margins, at least initially?

Andreas Hövermann calculated for the Economic and Social Sciences Institute where the AfD most recently got its voters from. The numbers create hope – and dampen it at the same time. On the one hand, voters now come from almost all demographic groups, but the majority of them definitely have ties to the democratic center. Of the voters who recently joined the AfD, 22 percent voted for the FDP in 2021, 21 percent for the Union and 18 percent for the SPD. For the first time there is no surplus of men. West Germans and those aged 56 to 65 are represented above average. The drivers are fear of decline, fear of transformation and the feeling of being disadvantaged compared to others. This is not a closed milieu that cannot be overcome - but rather the former core voters of three parties who are afraid of losing.

This is not intended to be a plea for leniency. The social ethicist Thomas Schwartz counters the rhetoric of understanding: “Anyone who constantly excuses voters is treating them like an irresponsible child.” And political scientist Kielmansegg states: “The dramatic collapse in trust in the state, politics and politicians that is evident in voting behavior remains incomprehensible in its extent, especially when you take a closer look at the troops that it benefits.” But even if it is incomprehensible – it is there.

If you don't want to accept this idly, a firewall may also need something behind it: politics and administrations that advance something, not prevent it. Involve people, not exclude them. Work through the problems, not party conference programs. Top candidates from the political center who convince people like in Saxony or Brandenburg, not bore them like in Saxony-Anhalt.