Apparently in the latest German election the “far-right AfD” came second, in vote and seat count. It seems an odd name for a party, but news stories consistently use it. OK, The Times went with “hard-right AfD” but maybe it’s a translation issue. Now if only we knew what it stood for.
Clearly, “far right” means “boo-hiss.” But as a longtime news consumer I cannot help thinking there must be some reason why it appeals to a rapidly growing number of voters and we should know what it is even if we’re against it. Instead, you can read these stories until your eyes ache, or your stomach, without getting much sense of what the party claims to believe or to want to do.
Frankly, rather a grab bag. But clearly a popular one. As The Times eventually concedes, “The AfD was dominant not only in its traditional east German heartlands but also among working-class voters across the country, winning 38 per cent of their votes. It also performed strongly among the under-45s, coming first in the 25-34 age bracket.”
So something in its platform is attracting constituencies progressives thought they owned. But if it’s not a desire to re-fight Stalingrad but win this time, whatever can it be? And what makes it “far right”?
The famous libertarian “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” asks respondents about both economic and social freedom, claiming conservatives like the former but not the latter, liberals the reverse, “statists” or sometimes “authoritarians” like neither, and libertarians like both. Which is useful, though many who favour “social freedom” seem authoritarian about it, and I’d add a third axis, lawful-lawless, because an outfit like Antifa holds many beliefs liberals share while rampaging in ways many of them deplore.
I also commend Thomas Sowell’s division of the public policy world into just two fundamental camps: a “constrained” vision that believes in trade-offs and the lessons of history, and an “unconstrained” one that believes in a pure heart and a fresh start. But the key thing is to ask first what people think, and propose, and only later pass moral judgment, instead of using “far right” as a rhetorical bludgeon that stuns you and not the target.
If we did so with the AfD, we’d see an odd mix of left and right policies, not some consistent Calvin Coolidge philosophy. And that, like many other populist insurgent parties, its core appeal seems to be to people who think Western civilization is a good thing, so deliberately flooding your country with newcomers who neither share nor admire its traditions is a ghastly, even sinister error.
If it were put on the ballot in that form, it might turn out to be hugely popular. As it has anyway, with some rough edges made dangerously rougher by the Establishment’s tone-deaf, baffling sneering. As when soon-to-be-chancellor-maybe Merz called the AfD surge “really the last warning sign to the political parties of the democratic centre in Germany to find common solutions,” meaning his “conservative” Christian Democrats would ally with the just-drubbed “Social Democrats,” who being socialist are either unlabelled by the press or flagged with an unthreatening “left-leaning,” to make sure the public gets what it should want and not what it does want.
This political equivalent of a conspiracy in restraint of trade might be the key reason the AfD is gaining traction. Not because it’s “far right” or even consistent, but because it wants to put the self-government back in self-government, and mainstream parties and media are openly, crudely appalled.
