Can the AfD organization come to power in Germany? What would this mean for German democracy and for Europe? Why does the present historical communicative of the national Republic of Germany become useless? What will be Germany's identity in the future? Leszek Jażdżewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Klaus Bachmann, prof. of political sciences at SWPS University in Warsaw, a polytologist and historian, specializing in issues of European integration, justice in times of transformation, the latest past of Central and east Europe, as well as totalitarian movements.
Leszek Jażdżewski (LJ): Is the emergence in the popularity of the far right a threat to German democracy?
Klaus Bachmann (KB): Yes, I think it poses a threat to German democracy for 2 reasons. Firstly, due to the fact that the alternate organization for Germany (AfD) does not respect the constitutional order in Germany and proposes to leave it if it has the power to do so. Secondly, it directs the full country in a little democratic direction.
There is now a broad debate in Germany on whether the activities of AfD should be eliminated or banned. According to the Constitution, this is possible. This has already happened twice in the 1950s in the case of the Communist organization and the reborn Socialist Reich Party. In both cases, this was rather effective due to the fact that no of these parties recovered the force it had had before the prohibition was imposed.
However, I have serious doubts whether this time it will be so simple, due to the fact that we live in a different planet and now politicians and political parties can scope their voters and supporters straight online, which was impossible at the time. Formerly politicians needed media (presses, tv and radio), which is now no longer necessary. In addition, life after the ban would be completely different from in the 1950s. However, the problem is that introducing or enforcing a ban on organization activities would require quite a few repression. This would make the German State much more repressive than it is now.
In this context, the full issue is not so apparent – 1 cannot simply say, “Oh, let us ban them!” and the problem will be solved. It is besides not so easy to say, "Well, let's leave everything as it is," due to the fact that in both cases German democracy will become little democratic – whether the party's activities are banned or not.
LJ: If the AfD organization continues its current policy and hypothetically enters the government in Germany in 10 years, will this pose a threat to safety in Europe? How will Germany change itself? Or what would gotta happen if the AfD organization hadn't become the ruling party?
KB: We are rather far from a script where AfD could take over at national level, simply due to the fact that Germany is heavy decentralised. A fewer years ago, I was at a gathering in the office of the Polish Ombudsman, where they tried to find what would have happened if something specified as taking over the justice strategy in Polce took place in Germany. It was then noted that this was impossible due to the fact that in order to do what happened in Poland, i.e. to take over the positions of Minister of Justice and President, it would be essential to win sixteen elections in Germany at local, regional and Bundestag elections – and it would should be done twice, due to the fact that in most regions elections are held all 5 years. This would mean that it would take 10 years to accomplish this, only in order to jump even the word of office of judges who hold according to the constitution.
All of this shows how complicated it is to take over real power in Germany. Here, in Poland, we tend to see Germany as the second Poland – a centralised unitary state in which the Chancellor is the toughest man in all area that actually governs the country, but that is not the case.
Policies in Germany trust mostly on compromise and maneuvering between legal, political and global constraints, which is not so simple. Nevertheless, I can imagine a situation where we will have an AfD government or coalition in which AfD will be a larger partner in any east regions specified as Thuringia, Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt. This is, of course, possible. However, their governments would be severely restricted by national law and national institutions due to the fact that in Germany, national law takes precedence over regional law. This is besides an obstacle that would be hard to overcome.
Imagine now that specified a government or specified a coalition is formed – for example between Christian Democrats and AfD at the national level. This would most likely lead to Germany becoming completely unpredictable in terms of abroad and European policy, as AfD is powerfully against the European Union and NATO. They are against any assistance to Ukraine. In this regard, they match any Republicans in the United States who now say: “Let us be isolated from this conflict. He has nothing to do with us. Russia will never attack us. If they take over Ukraine or Poland, that is not our problem. We will negociate with them." Of course, they are besides powerfully pro-Russian at the cultural and intellectual level.
This is something we do not usually observe in Poland. People here, even if they have pro-Russian sympathy, never praise Russia and alternatively criticize Ukraine. In Germany it can be done directly. You could say Putin's a large guy, he's being supported, and Russia should win the war. And it's not besides amazing for anyone in Germany. I hear that kind of opinion on the streets.
LJ: Does the AfD organization actually have a revisionist approach, or is it simply a populist party?
KB: Even if we treat AfD as any another right-wing populist party, specified as Fidesz in Hungary, we request to look at what they are actually doing. Like the Russians in Ukraine, they issue Hungarian passports to residents of Slovakia, Ukraine and Serbia to be able to recognise these territories and populations as their own. They spy on Ukraine's military positions in its own territory. I wonder why anyone outside Russia would request information about the deployment of Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine?
Hungary is simply a tiny country and they cannot afford it right now. However, in a situation where Ukraine is very unstable, the Russian army is marching towards Kiev, and Lavrow calls on his colleagues in the West to enter into an agreement, Western Europe is forced to establish any kind of protection region in Ukraine, which means, in principle, not legal division but geopolitical division of the country. In that case, I am absolutely certain that any Orban would come out of the bushes and request his part of Ukraine, and would be replaced by individual who would say, “First Germany!” and “Let’s divided it and choice up our part! Why would only others get something?’
LJ: Does Germany's past impose any restrictions on German political culture? Does the second change or evolve in any way?
KB: Yeah, the exact limitations AfD wants to get free of. This is besides very interesting due to the generational change, due to the fact that presently very fewer people remember war. I imagine that for apparent reasons certain feelings can besides evolve.
As for German political culture, I would anticipate a change here. Public narratives about history, about the past, about what in Germany is called Vergangenheitspolitik, are imposed from the top. The authoritative communicative we have present was created somewhere between the late 1960s and the 1980s. It was a time erstwhile Germany slow became a multicultural society, but it was assumed that Germany was a German country – cultural Germans, people who lived in Germany, were born in Germany, had ancestors in Germany – although possibly in the 1990s they had ancestors elsewhere, they always felt German. This mostly explains the focus on Nazi times, planet War II, relations with Israel, and later relations with another neighbouring countries and so on.
In the meantime, we became a society in which a 4th (or 25% to 30%) of people were either not born in Germany or whose parents were not born in Germany. This is simply a somewhat bizarre German definition of a individual of migratory origin. [What is more fun, according to this definition, I myself have no migration origin. My children, if they went to Germany and wanted to live there, would be Germans of migrant origin due to the fact that they were born abroad]. In addition, about 5–8% are foreigners, i.e. people surviving in Germany but not having German citizenship.
In general, it can be said that there is statistically no household in Germany that is not at least 1 individual with specified a migrant background, is there? For these people it does not substance whether the erstwhile generation felt "German" or not, due to the fact that everyone has their own stories, experiences and opinions about the past. For example, it is hard to require from individual whose ancestors spent their full life in the russian Union (so they never had the chance to vote for Hitler or to support him, although most likely they could do so), who were victims of communism and victims of the Nazi system. Their children were born after the war. Nevertheless, according to the authoritative communicative in Germany, we require them to commemorate planet War II and the Holocaust in the same way as it was established in the 1960s or 1970s.
This is only 1 example, and it is rather moderate, due to the fact that we can besides mention the experience of Latin America, Africa or another places. Take, for example, people from Turkey. They come to Germany and the first thing they encounter is the request to change their minds about Israel, due to the fact that they are now in Germany. So they gotta erase everything they know about him, everything we think in Germany is propaganda, anti-Semitism, and become the same. Germans like us. This means that they must take over the full communicative about the Holocaust, the Jews and being victims.
This communicative was useful after the war (in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s) due to the fact that it helped the Germans become an accepted partner in global affairs or enter the red carpet to be considered a state and no longer be isolated as a perpetrator of planet War II. In this respect, this communicative was absolutely perfect.
As a historian, I always say that this kind of historical policy has nothing to do with history. It's not about the fact or what truly happened. It's about whether it's useful. The problem is that in a situation or a society where about 30% of people do not share these experiences, and alternatively have completely different experiences, this is no longer useful. But we have nothing else at our disposal.
We have a historical narrative. We have a memory policy that is enshrined in rituals that haven't changed in the last 30 or forty years. And they're very heavy ritualized. Actually, the only country with a akin level of ritualization of memories or narratives about the past is Rwanda. For 1 week a year, everything closes there and commemorates genocide. And it's always done in the same way as in Germany.
Let us look at the rituals in the Bundestag during the celebration of the liberation of Auschwitz or the end of planet War II, with all these speeches, the content of which does not disagree much from year to year. At the same time there are many people who do not find in these rituals a reflection of their experiences. That's the problem. We're beginning to understand.
One of the first signs of something changing is most likely the fresh criticism of Israel's actions by Chancellor Merz. due to the fact that until late Germany (and especially Chadeci) could not do so.
LJ: Is it inevitable that Germany will become a more multicultural country? What future do you see for integration and identity models in Germany?
KB: If you look at the polls of the public, about 80% of the population believe that "German" is individual who has a German passport. There has already been quite a few discussion about who receives a German passport, who should receive German citizenship.
We already have respective administrative decisions confirmed by the lower instance court, according to which anti-Semites cannot get German citizenship. This is rather interesting due to the fact that it is clearly possible to hatred Muslims, Buddhists, Americans, Poles, Italians or Roma, but you can't hatred Jews if you want to become a German citizen – which is simply a comic thought construct. However, this is 1 consequence of the fact that this communicative does not adhere to social reality.
Therefore, in terms of identity, this is rather clear. The only organization that actually deviates from this is AfD. And this is 1 of the 3 fundamental points that find whether or not its activities are consistent with the Constitution and whether AfD can be banned or not. The strongest argument in favour of the ban is that they do not accept this definition of identity due to the fact that they talk about "biological Germans" and about the removal of citizenship to "persons who do not deserve them", which can mean in rule anyone.
With respect to the cultural identity of the Germans, even if individual wanted to exclude immigrants from it, this would mean a immense number of respective million people who came to Germany, claiming that they were Germans, but actually come from Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan or another countries. As such, it is impossible. And that's the AfD problem, not the Germans.
The problem is not that Germany disagrees on who is German and who is not, but on the fact that no government was flexible adequate to adapt the historical communicative of Germany to the current reality, to this identity. Instead, we have a historical communicative that our governments have been trying to impose on the public over the past decades, which besides assumes that all our ancestors were, in plain speaking, Nazis, and that anyone who lives in German territory should be ashamed of it.
This seems very inconsistent and unusable due to the fact that it fuels conflicts – what we are seeing on the streets in clashes with the police and between people who emigrated to Germany after the war from arabian countries, Russia, Poland, Belarus and even Israel.
LJ: Does Europe inactive offer a solution not only to the problem of identity but besides to Germany's position in the world, in Europe? Or must Germany first solve its interior problems and then become the driving force of the European Union?
KB: You can't separate it. After 1945, it was about building a state. It was not only the will of the Germans, but besides of the Western Allied powers, which powerfully interfered with the constitutional process. No 1 criticizes or even talks about it due to the fact that this constitution is widely accepted by all.
The consensus was so to build a state with various mechanisms that defend citizens from the state and our neighbours from us. The answer to both objectives was European integration. This means that a large part of the political and legal strategy is effectively controlled and restricted by European law, and to any degree besides by global law. In combination with interior control and balance mechanisms, this plan has led to a strong Europeanisation of German law, with any influence from Germany at European level.
This full structure provides both – protects us from abuse by the state, and protects others from abuse by our power, by ourselves. This was the philosophy, and to any degree it inactive stands. However, I have the impression that – especially among our political elites or in the German political establishment – more and more people see only limitations, but they do not see the benefits of these restrictions in protecting citizens.
Now everyone's talking about trying to halt migration. Meanwhile, we are talking about a country that needs migration very much and is incapable to organise it in an orderly manner to get the people it needs. The problem is that we don't get the people we need, and we don't want the people who come here. Needless to say, we cannot do what we want to halt immigration due to the fact that it is against global law, European law and the Constitution. In this light, these provisions are seen as something that binds our hands alternatively than provokes a discussion about the reasons for these limitations – this subject does not appear at all in the ongoing discussions. Nobody wonders what happens if we give the government the power to regulate migration – for example, in the way Donald Trump does. If that were the case, it could have the other effect and turn against us.
If there is no regulation of law with control mechanisms for each individual case, it is not only “that guy in the vicinity I hatred due to the fact that he is Muslim, Turkish or Arab” that can be deported, but I can besides be deported. This is something that is completely lacking in the German debate. All those restrictions that were introduced after the war to defend us from the state are now seen as something that protects only others and binds our hands.
This podcast was produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movieno Liberal Social and the Liberté Foundation!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are liable for the content of the podcast nor for any way of utilizing it.
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Dr. Olga Łabendowicz translated from English
Read English at 4liberty.eu
