A Modern Red Scare

If you live outside Germany and are not German, you may not have noticed what is currently happening in the German political discourse. But it is very important to understand, especially for people outside of Germany. The short version of the story is that in the recent regional elections in the capital, Berlin, the left party has won the most seats with ~25% of the votes. This is huge. In Germany’s political landscape, voter shares above 10% are already noted as high, since anything over 20% was traditionally reserved only for the conservatives or social democrats (the two “people’s parties”). Usually, in the days preceding the election, observers ask which parties may be able to even pass the 5% threshold (if your party receives less than 5% of the votes, it won’t get into the parliament at all).¹

So, it’s good, right? Some political shake up, a few different coalitions that aren’t possible in other parts of the republic (typically because it is very hard for the left party to gain any meaningful shares of the votes outside a few select regions), and something that we all should see as a sparkling symbol of the democracy we want to have in this country. Right?

…right?

Well.

The Origins of the Conservative Distaste for Left Politics

The left party has a somewhat loaded history. The German version of the left has been created in 2007 by the fusion of two small parties, the WASG (former members of the social democrats), and the PDS, which was a continuation party from the SED, the Socialist Unification Party of Germany, a.k.a. the communist government party in the German Democratic Republic. For thirty years, this meant that first the PDS, and then the left party have been seen critically due to these roots in the communist dictatorship in the East.

However, over the past thirty years, the parties have slowly but steadily shed this shadow from the past. People retire, die, or move to other parties. The left of today does not resemble anything like the former communist dictatorship, and you would be hard-pressed to find any member of the left that would tell you – or even think in private – that the former communist dictatorship was anything but despicable.

But only because the left has moved on doesn’t mean everyone else has moved on, too. Especially the conservative party has made it a defining feature of itself to eschew any “radical” parties. They traditionally argued that they would only ever work together with what they call “democratic parties in the center” — read: the social democrats, the liberals, and the greens. This means that they would not work together with what they define “radical,” namely the left and, more recently, the Alternative für Deutschland, the AfD. This is the official party line until today.

Except, this story has some holes in it. First, current chancellor Friedrich Merz has, on at least one occasion, worked together with the AfD on the federal level. This was in January 2025, and I have written about it here. Second, this absolute denial of any work relationship with the AfD only holds on the federal level. On the regional level — especially in East Germany, where the AfD has gained large vote shares in the past ten years, the conservatives have worked together with the AfD on multiple occasions. This has sometimes been explained with the argument that otherwise politics wouldn’t be possible (since the AfD holds a Sperrminorität, that is a vote share necessary to prevent legislation from passing). Sometimes, it has been explained with the fact that, on the regional level, AfD politicians typically are less radical than on the federal level. But third, and more importantly, the left is also very strong in East Germany, and the conservatives have thus far always managed to do politics without working with the left.

This should raise a lot of red flags. Why would you argue that you don’t work with “radical parties,” but then do work with the right-wing party on both federal and regional level, while managing to avoid working with the left-wing party very consistently? In short, we are well-advised not to believe the official explanations of conservative politicians trying to sanitize the fact that they have much less of an issue to work with the right-wing as they have with the left-wing.

Normalizing the Far-Right

But that is only the backdrop for what is happening. After the regional elections in Berlin, which saw the left party win the election, there has been an almost unprecedented witch-hunt against the left. Especially socio-economic, cultural, and political elites have flooded the opinion sections of various national newspapers with woes of a “communist government” in the capital. There are two primary arguments brought forth. First, that the left has some local chapters that are notorious for saying things bordering on or reaching into antisemitism. And second, that the left is dangerous because it would like to nationalize two large rental home corporations.² Both are true, but both are also not nearly as problematic for forming a governing coalition as the opinion pieces make it out to be. And it is really not that difficult to see that there is some form of organization behind this; many of the commentators likely know each other and are discussing politics in private.

The strategy behind this is transparent: even though the left won the election, they will need to form a coalition with other parties in order to gain the necessary majority of votes in the Berlin parliament. The strategy is to make it as unappealing as possible for both social democrats and greens to enter into a governing coalition with the left. The idea is to circle out the left, and brandish it as a pariah. And indeed, the coalition talks in Berlin seem (at least from the outside) a bit more endangered than after other elections.

Let me be clear: there are problematic elements in the left, and there is some work to be done to transform the left from a parliamentary opposition party to a party capable of governing a country. But that is not a question of “if,” but of “when.” So when the newspapers in the republic are flooded with alarmist pieces warning of the “dangers” of a left government in Berlin, this should raise suspicion.

There is more, however. I wouldn’t usually be writing on some conservatives decrying election wins for the left. This happens with the precision of a clockwork every time the left gains significant voter shares, and it is almost tradition that conservative parts of society really don’t like that. But there is more that makes this campaign especially devilish. Namely, just a few days before the fateful Berlin election, there were elections in some other German regions. In Saxony-Anhalt, the regional elections have provided the right-wing AfD with ~43% of the votes, almost double from the previous election. That is almost a majority — just for a single party. This means that in that region, the AfD doesn’t have to convince everybody to work with it, only enough to pass the 50% threshold. In a sick twist of fate, it appears that the dream candidate for this appears to be the BSW.³

Just as a reminder about how right-wing the AfD has become in the past 13 years: several courts have granted critics of the party the right to call some parts of it openly fascist. So when someone calls the AfD “fascist,” this is in many cases a legally correct description. And guess what the commentators did in the week between the victory of the AfD and the victory of the left? Correct: they wrote a few pieces here and there that it’s really unfortunate that the AfD now has a strong majority in an East German state. But when the left won the Berlin elections, all hell broke loose.

And this is what really stinks: We are not talking about conservatives not liking right-wingers and left-wingers. We are talking about conservatives explicitly not liking left-wingers, but having no big troubles with right-wing parties. And this is the scandal we need to talk about.

The entire cultural and political elites of the country are currently working through their almost Freudian distaste for a bunch of politicians you may or may not agree with, all the while an openly fascist party which stands in direct ideological ancestry to the Nazi party can pursue talks to form a government.

Speak Up Against the Normalization of Fascism

As a democratic society, we are well-advised not to fall for this obvious attempt to whitewash the fact that fascism has arrived in the center of society. There are already enough issues that require addressing, we do not need to watch as we are slowly drifting towards the same type of government that our neighbors, Poland and Hungary, have had to endure for the past decade. Yes, they did recover, but I would sincerely question whether it is necessary for one of the biggest economies of Europe to go through the same, awful period in which academic and societal freedom are curbed to a large extent, and in which the many ails of society are aggravated rather than ameliorated.

I am preparing to move back to my country of citizenship, and I watch with great concern as to what is happening there. I sincerely do believe that I will be able to do more against this rise of despicable ideologies of the past there than from where I am right now, but the entire situation has me worried. The first thing to do is just accept the electoral victory of a democratic party, even if you don’t like their politics, and focus more on the fact that a fascist party now as 1/16th of the power on the federal level. Because that is going to be of much greater concern in the future.

I doubt that the AfD would see any working relationship with the conservative party on eye level, especially if the conservatives are the junior partner in such a government. And it’s not that we have never tried this before.⁴