The New Populism by Marco Revelli

Author:Marco Revelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Warning signs

The AfD’s successful result in autumn 2017 was hardly unexpected. The result had been anticipated by a relatively long process that saw the laying of the bases for its rise. The first ‘emergency’ had in fact been sounded exactly two years previously, in the September of 2016 – that annus horribilis of populism in the West – when the symbolically key Land of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania went to the polls. Angela Merkel had defined this election a Schicksalwahl, a ‘fateful vote’; it was also one particularly close to her own heart, in a state she herself represents. The term Schicksalwahl highlighted a contest of particular importance: indeed, the reference to ‘fate’ conjugated with the word ‘vote’ is a recurrent theme of German political discourse. It was widely used in June 2012 during the Greek general election, when the Germans – alarmed by the words of Alexis Tsipras, who at that time said that ‘for us the euro is not a fetish’ – made heavy interventions in support of the (corrupt) centrists of New Democracy. They again used it in September 2014 when Scots were asked to vote in a referendum on whether or not they should break from the United Kingdom (and the Germans supported them staying in). And the term returned in June 2016, with the referendum on Brexit.

If the Pomeranian vote was indeed a matter of fate, then fate dealt a real slap to the Kanzlerin, fewer than three months after the blow suffered in the British vote. The Rechtspopulisten of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) knocked her own CDU party back into third place by a near two-point margin (20.8 per cent to 19 per cent); it now stood right behind the Social Democratic Party (SPD), still in first place on 30.6 per cent but after having lost over five points.

That spring, other warning signs had come from three other Länder. The fact that these were three such different contexts made them all the more significant as a sample (indeed, one in which almost 15 million Germans headed to the polls). First was the Baden-Württemberg region, one of Europe’s biggest economic powerhouses – the Land that is home to Mercedes and Porsche. Here the CDU, which had come first in the previous elections (though a deal between the SPD and the Greens meant that it did not govern) slumped twelve points to 27 per cent and finished behind the Grünen (who leapt to 30 per cent). The SPD also lost votes, indeed suffering a genuine debacle, as their vote halved to a paltry 12.5 per cent (together, the two main parties were reduced from 65 per cent of the vote to under 40 per cent). Conversely, the AfD made a triumphant leap from zero to 15 per cent. In Sachsen-Anhalt – unlike Baden-Württemberg, a poor Land in the former GDR – the AfD did even better, coming in second place with 24.2 per cent, immediately behind the CDU (which had lost almost 3 per cent) and doubling the

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