Successes of the AfD: Revolt of hopelessness

G eorg Seeßlen recently published a column entitled “AfD voting as a drive away” that was widely popular among parts of the left. His core thesis: People do not vote for the right-wing party for a specific political program, but rather against everything that exists. The shift to the right is therefore an expression of a longing for the general collapse of the hated established order - without a clear idea of ​​what should take its place.

Accordingly, the rise of the AfD cannot be counteracted much by criticism of the content of its program or by the inconsistencies and failures of its policies, since its base is not interested in the implementation of certain program points or even whether their implementation is compatible with their own economic interests. As the title says: AfD voting as an irrational rejection of instincts that is not open to argumentation.

Fabian Lehr is a communist podcaster, studied philosophy in Vienna and writes for various left-wing media on current political and historical topics.

If this were true for the mass of AfD voters, the consequence for leftists would have to be complete resignation and abandonment of the political fight against the AfD. Political means cannot be used to combat a psychopathological phenomenon, a kind of contagious mass psychosis. Fortunately, I find the assumption that this is the case and that it is impossible to change the minds of AfD voters to be very doubtful.

The taz is an independent, left-wing and opinionated daily newspaper. We have been arguing in our comments, essays and debate texts since the taz was founded in 1979. We often cannot and do not want to agree on an opinion. That's why you'll find some completely opposing positions here - all part of the very broad left-wing spectrum of opinions.

Workers and the poor who vote for the AfD, which advocates the destruction of the welfare state and a worsening of the position of workers, are acting massively against their well-understood self-interest, as Seeßlen correctly points out. However, it seems unconvincing to me to conclude from this that they clearly recognize and accept this objective damage to their self-interest as such, provided that, on the other hand, only the old order falls into ruins.

Rather, it is the case that typical AfD sympathizers represent a wrong pseudo-rationality, at the center of which is racism and hostility to migration: either THEM (primarily migrants, but also the “lazy unemployed”, leftists, social fringe groups) or WE (the honest, hard-working, decent Germans).

In AfD comment columns you constantly see a kind of naive calculation on all sorts of topics: If Germany didn't feed and pamper millions of work-shy migrants, then old-age poverty would no longer be an issue for German grandmas and no one would have to fish for deposit bottles in old age. If the German state didn't throw apartments at the hands of hordes of refugees, then there would no longer be a housing shortage for German families in metropolitan areas. If half the German national budget wasn't wasted on development aid on the other side of the world, then yes, the potholes here could be filled and the rail network made usable again.

The idea that an end to further immigration and mass deportations would suddenly improve the lives of German workers and the poor is extremely strong among the AfD base. Seeßlen writes that the AfD's anti-worker economic program, which hardly suggests that the lives of any workers would be better under an AfD government, even if there are no longer a single migrant in the whole of Germany, is obvious. But is it so obvious to the AfD base itself?

The AfD is quite reluctant to talk about its economic and social policy program rather than about self-chosen culture war issues, and how many AfD voters have actually read and understood its economic program? The fictitious AfD voter Uncle Ernst wants THEM to have a bad time - but hardly at the price of his own standard of living falling.

Another point where AfD voters have clear political ideas is foreign policy: The AfD is particularly attractive in East Germany because it is perceived as a peace party that promises an isolationist foreign policy.

The exposure of the AfD's real policy, which envisages a massive increase in armament and a continued commitment to NATO, could significantly undermine this attractiveness. Just like in the USA, the MAGA movement is currently cracking at the seams because Trump is offending the isolationist expectations of his base with his seemingly absurd Iran war. Obviously, those caught up in right-wing populism also have concrete political wishes that can be disappointed and addressed with arguments.

The rise of right-wing populism is a kind of revolt of hopelessness: those who no longer have any hope for a fundamentally different and better world want to at least assert their own position by trampling those below them in this social Darwinist jungle that is perceived as having no alternative. The most powerful antidote to this is a left-wing politics that makes credible the hope that a completely different order of society can be achieved in which, through the solidarity struggle of all workers and the poor, all of their lives will be better through joint effort.

If you want to make Uncle Ernst think, then you have to do some convincing that this completely different social order based on solidarity can actually be fought for and not a daydream - but you won't get there if you think Uncle Ernst's resentment is eternal, static and insurmountable anyway.