Germany’s Greens face a crisis as support plummets, particularly among young voters, amid rising competition from the AfD and new leftist parties.
Things just keep getting worse for the Greens in Germany. After two terrible performances in recent state elections the Party “crashed out of the state parliament” in the Brandenburg region of Germany (which surrounds Berlin). [emphasis, links added]
Results were so awful, the two current leaders of the German Greens have jointly stepped down.
The Greens won a mere 4% of the vote in the region, not even reaching the minimum 5% required to win a parliamentary seat in the State election.
About 70% of their voter base had abandoned them in the last five years. In Thuringia, the entire traffic light ruling coalition of three parties barely amassed 10% of the vote collectively.
The right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party “keeps rising despite efforts to stop the party” says Nette Nöstlinger at Politico, slightly baffled. The establishment used the nastiest names they could think of, and it didn’t work:
The AfD keeps rising despite efforts to stop the party
Germany’s mainstream leaders have made a concerted effort to stop the rise of the AfD by warning voters of the party’s growing extremism, with some leaders even calling it a Nazi party.
We’ve heard this before:
State-level domestic intelligence authorities have classified the local branches of the party in both Saxony and Thuringia as extremist organizations aiming to undermine German democracy.
The nasty names are backfiring, because no one is listening anymore:
That points to a core problem that won’t be easy for centrist parties to grapple with — a growing mistrust of the centrists and the country’s institutions that has fomented anti-establishment fervor across a large swath of the country.
In other words, even as many centrist leaders and institutions in Germany warn of the AfD’s extremism, many voters have simply stopped listening. In fact, the approach may be backfiring by alienating AfD voters.
When the TV commentators called the AfD “extremist”, the leader in Thuringia said, “Please stop stigmatizing me … We are the number one people’s party in Thuringia. You don’t want to classify one-third of Thuringian voters as right-wing extremists, do you?” But of course, the TV commentariat probably did want to do exactly that…
Bullying is brittle. When it fails, it crumbles into anti-matter, because there was nothing but nastiness to fall back on.
Even The Guardian has noticed that the Greens have a crisis:
In the recent election campaigns, it [The Greens] often appeared to be the punchbag for parties across the spectrum. Accusations were rife that the party was trying to “dictate” the lives of ordinary Germans – from which type of heating system to use, to which car to drive – with the BSW and AfD going so far as to compare the Greens to the Communist regime of the former German Democratic Republic.
There is hope. Young voters are abandoning the party faster than any other age bracket:
The party has also lost a larger proportion of its younger voters at recent elections than any other party. In Sunday’s Brandenburg poll, for instance, it saw its support in the 16-to-24 age bracket drop by 24 percentage points, a bigger fall than in any other age range. —
The Crisis of the Greens and the Future of the Left
I have been thinking a lot about the Greens since their drubbing in the recent German elections. Something strange and unexpected is happening to them – something that even two years ago I wouldn’t have predicted. They are bleeding support; they are on the defensive and suddenly everybody hates them. In East Germany you could even say that they are in outright collapse. The party of the future, the party of the youth, the party at the cutting edge of progressivism, is now withering on the vine. And I suspect that this is not just happening in Germany. It may be happening here faster than it is in other countries, but the Greens are an international phenomenon, and Green politics are in trouble in many places beyond the Federal Republic.
(Paywalled)
Votes for the Greens have been stolen from both sides
The collapse in popularity is about the climate, the heat pumps, the cars, the energy prices — but it’s also about immigration and the war. A new leftist force has appeared from nowhere in the last few months, run by a former communist, but wanting to curb immigration:
In some ways, the biggest winner of the night was the populist-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which is led by a former member of East Germany’s communist party. The BSW finished third in both states, a notable result for a party that only formed several months ago.
The party, which merges traditional right-wing stances on immigration and other social issues, has repeatedly called for an end to German military aid for Ukraine and negotiations with Putin — a view for which there is much sympathy in Germany’s formerly communist East. — Politico
It’s part of the Great Realignment of politics. The new force on the left attacks the Greens for being arrogant and out of touch with the workers:
Is Germany’s rising superstar so far left she’s far right?
James Angelos, Politico, August 26, 2024
Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of “left conservatism” is upending German politics ahead of critical elections in the east.
Listening to Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s hard-left icon, you could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that the greatest threat to democracy is “lifestyle leftists” nursing lattes in reusable cups while shopping for organic kale at a Berlin farmers’ market.
Such well-off, eco-friendly urban bohemians hold what they deem to be “morally impeccable” views about everything from Ukraine to climate change, she says, and then impose those beliefs over regular people with draconian zeal.
Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of “left conservatism” is very tailored to East Germany, but some of it will translate widely. Uncontrolled immigration is a hot button everywhere.
She attacks the influx of asylum seekers as a threat to the welfare state, which, she says, requires a “certain degree of homogeneity to function”.
She attacks the gender-bender transformations as something that benefits the big pharmaceutical companies. All of this will resonate across the political divide. At one point last year, the leader of the AfD in Thuringia was so impressed with her that he invited her to join the party in a speech.
The pure environmental Greens are a luxury bubble that no one can afford anymore. Those days are over.
Top photo shows a German climate protest. By Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
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