Interview with Robert Vehrkamp: “For populists, almost everything is an intrigue of the political elite”

Interview with Robert Vehrkamp
“For populists, almost everything is an intrigue of the political elite”

6/8/2023 5:04 p.m

In current polls, the AfD is 17 to 19 percent, CDU leader Friedrich Merz sees the responsibility for this primarily in the traffic light coalition. Is this analysis correct? Can AfD voters be reached at all by the other parties? And how dangerous is the AfD for democracy in Germany? Questions for populism expert Robert Vehrkamp.

ntv.de: Before the federal election in 2021 you have examinedhow widespread right-wing extremist attitudes are in Germany. They came to the conclusion that the AfD is “a party predominantly oriented towards right-wing extremist attitudes” not only on the supply side, but also on the demand side, i.e. among voters. Would you say that is still the case?

Robert Vehrkamp: The study of the 2021 federal election showed that almost 8 percent of all those eligible to vote have a unified right-wing extremist world view. Among the AfD supporters, however, it was almost four times as many, 29 percent, i.e. almost one in three. In addition, there is the group of those who at least latently agree with right-wing extremist positions – 16 percent of the general population, but 27 percent of the AfD.

More than half of AfD voters, 56 percent, fully or at least partially agree with right-wing extremist attitudes.

In the population, this proportion is almost a quarter. Various studies, some of which are more recent, confirm this picture. But other issues also play a role, of course, and right-wing populism basically follows a simple pattern: every problem prone to resentment, every crisis and every public uproar is put through the mill of its right-wing populist figures of argument. Populism research therefore speaks very aptly of the “thin” ideology of populism, whose simple arguments can be transferred to almost any topic. Even the obvious climate crisis is then distorted into the intrigue and fabrication of a political elite. And that works for a lot of topics, from gender to vaccination, from asylum and migration to Europe, the Ukraine war and heat pumps.

One result of your study was that the statement “In the national interest, under certain circumstances, a dictatorship is the better form of government” was answered by every second AfD voter with “completely agree”, with “predominantly agree” or with “partly/partly ” was answered. Can these voters be reached by other parties?

Your hard core doesn’t. But in the concentric circles around it, many voters are and remain accessible to other parties. The prerequisite for this, however, is the clear demarcation and programmatic discussion. Anyone who believes that adopting populist rhetoric and issues can bring voters back is greatly mistaken. Whoever talks like a populist is basically running their business. The voters would then prefer the right-wing populist original to its copy. The other parties should not make the same mistake again. If right-wing populist positions become part of the mainstream, then right-wing populist parties will also become part of the mainstream. Anyone who doesn’t want that shouldn’t shy away from the hard substantive debate with their voters and poll sympathizers.

Does that also apply in Thuringia and Saxony, where the AfD is the strongest party in the polls? Or is the political climate there different?

In principle, it is the same milieus and attitudes in West and East Germany that lead to the AfD. But there are some special features that make it a little easier for the AfD in East Germany. This includes the significantly lower party identification of East German voters. Significantly fewer voters feel tied to a party as members or by tradition. This is also declining in western Germany, but has not really grown in eastern Germany since reunification. In addition, the taboo on right-wing populist and right-wing extremist attitudes is less pronounced in East Germany. That makes it easier for the AfD in East Germany to mobilize in these patterns. But the AfD is therefore not an East German phenomenon, but remains a pan-German phenomenon.

In your opinion, how dangerous is the AfD for the continued existence of democracy in Germany?

We are a strong, well-fortified democracy, and the clearly right-wing extremist parts of the AfD are being observed accordingly by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. We are not defenseless against you. Everything else should follow the rules of the game of a liberal democracy in political discourse. In addition, good poll numbers for the opposition in the middle of a legislative period are completely normal. What is worrying is how little of it ends up in the Union, the democratic center of the opposition. So we should remain vigilant. Democracy can never be taken for granted and must always be secured and defended against its false friends and real enemies.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz says, a “weak and perpetually quarreling government sparks backlash”. Is it plausible that the traffic light bears a special responsibility for the success of the AfD in the polls?

I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated. The government is trying to push through many far-reaching reforms at high speed, and there is massive resistance to parts of them. Not only against concrete solution concepts, but also much more fundamentally against the values ​​and goals behind them. You can see that in the example of climate policy. Many populists are not mobilizing against specific details of the energy transition, but rather question climate change as such. In their right-wing populist narrative, the heat transition then becomes another rip-off by the political class against the little people who are supposed to foot the bill again – something like that. And the fatal thing about the dispute between the government and the democratic opposition is that it uses and fuels precisely these narratives far too often and too carelessly in terms of form, rhetoric and content. “Gender madness” and “Energy-Stasi” is the language of populists, and anyone who conducts political debate in this language runs their business and then also bears the political responsibility for it.

In Italy, post-fascists rule, in Sweden the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats support the government, in Austria the FPÖ is the strongest party in the polls, in France Marine Le Pen got more than 41 percent in the runoff election last year – is it perhaps quite normal that the AfD in Germany reaches up to 17 or 18 percent in the polls?

Reducing the new government in Italy to the label of post-fascism does not do justice to the national specificity and complexity of the social forces and dynamics behind it. Nor are the Sweden Democrats identical to Le Pen in France, and the FPÖ does not have to determine the development pattern of the AfD in Germany. Democracies and their party systems are still very much national growths. This also applies to their populisms and the appropriate strategies to counter them. But it is also true that the party-politically organized right-wing populism in Germany is a late and lagging phenomenon compared to Western democracies. In any case, it is not a new German special path, but rather a catch-up development that we have to deal with, but we can also deal with it.

Hubertus Volmer spoke to Robert Vehrkamp