The standard interpretation of the recent vote is that the entrance of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, into the Bavarian Landtag (legislature) is another example of Germany’s inability to deal with its nationalistic element. In fact, a closer look shows that the real issue is not how to deal with nationalism but how to define it. All sides in the election were propounding their own views about what German nationalism, and its peculiar Bavarian interpretation, is about.[...]
Their sense of nation included acceptance of change and growth, but only against the backdrop of an ethnic German supermajority and a Christian-influenced public morality. Feeling betrayed by the CSU, nearly one in eight Bavarians supported the radically anti-Islamic AfD in last year’s federal vote, with proportions rising in the CSU’s rural, Catholic heartland. [...]
The CSU therefore staved off catastrophic defeat, but only at a great cost. The AfD share of the vote dropped compared with the 2017 Bundestag election in rural regions and small towns, and some of those voters returned to the CSU. The FW, however, also gained some of these voters as they were a safe protest party for those who wanted to send the CSU a message.
In the cities, the CSU defined itself in a way that proved unacceptable to economically conservative but culturally liberal voters who want a Germany that is open to migrants and the world. The SPD’s collapse also showed that the old ways no longer hold; the two parties combined for less than a majority of the vote. The centre held, but just barely.[...]
Meanwhile, the AfD is now the largest party in the former communist East. Combined with the party descended from the former Communists, Die Linke, nearly half of East Germany’s voters support a party of either the far Left or far Right. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seems that East Germany’s politics have more in common with those of their former Warsaw Pact allies, where Right or Left-wing populism is also rising, than of the western part of the nation they now call home.
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