The rise in support for the AfD poses grave dangers, but their alienated voters are not yet the organised fascist forces of the earlier twentieth century, argues Robert Dale 

The far-right AfD gained 21% in Germany’s recent parliamentary election. It almost doubled its vote and is now the second-largest group in parliament. In the former East Germany, it won 36% across the board. 

So is this 1933 again? Is AfD leader Alice Weidel about to seize power, like Hitler did? 

To answer that, we should first be clear about what defines fascism, what sets it apart. Historically, fascist parties have been alliances of an impoverished middle class with the mass of unemployed. Fascism is deeply reactionary, rabidly nationalist, and open to the use of violence. 

But what makes fascist parties different and particularly dangerous is their paramilitary formations. Organised, armed thugs were used to attack their opponents before taking power, and crush them after. That is what happened in Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1933. 

Germany in 1933 

So what did the German Nazi movement look like in 1932–3? In 1932, the Nazi Party had getting on for a million members. It had four fighting organisations: the mass-membership SA (the Brownshirts), the elite SS (the Blackshirts), the Hitler Youth and a student organisation. By summer 1932, the SA alone had 445,000 members. They were uniformed and armed with cudgels and knuckledusters, sometimes firearms. Many were former soldiers. The SA was three times the size of the German army at the time. In October 1932, 80,000 uniformed Hitler Youth marched for the Führer in Potsdam. 

The workers’ parties also had their own fighting organisations, the social-democratic Reichsbanner and the communist Red Front Fighters. Physical battles between left and right were commonplace. Many of the street fighters were unemployed. It was not uncommon for them to switch between far left and far right. 

The economic situation was dire, following the crash of 1929. Six million were unemployed. That was 30% of the workforce. Hunger and destitution were rife. 

A parliamentary election was held in July 1932. The Nazis held huge rallies, guarded by uniformed Brownshirts. They won 37% of the vote. Fighting during the campaign left 300 dead and 1,100 injured in the space of a month. This was the first purpose of the Brownshirts, the paramilitaries. To attack and intimidate opponents, principally the workers’ organisations. 

Hitler was not elected to power. In fact, the Nazi Party’s vote fell in the last free election. Their share in November 1932 was 32%. Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 by the right-wing President Hindenburg, with the consent of leading conservatives. 

And this is the second point where the party’s paramilitaries were crucial. The Nazis did not have to rely on the state’s police and officials. Instead their loyal SA and SS unleashed a reign of terror against the workers’ movement. Trade unionists, communists and social democrats were detained in informal prisons, beaten and killed. Party and trade-union offices were occupied and seized. Newspapers were closed down. In February 1933, 50,000 SA men were made into armed police auxiliaries. 

In case you were wondering, that’s not what Germany looks like today. The AfD is a nasty piece of work. But this is not 1933. We can learn much from history. But not by squeezing today’s events into a sketchy understanding of the past. 

The AfD and its supporters 

So how should we characterise the AfD? It has thoroughly reactionary policies: neoliberalism on steroids. It is vehemently anti-migrant. It has about 50,000 members. It has no open paramilitary wing. 

However, many of its leaders make no real secret of their admiration for Hitler-style fascism. ‘The friendly face of National Socialism’, one member of parliament called himself. But they do not generally trumpet this from the rooftops. Essentially, Hitler is not a vote-winner, to say the least. The party has to keep openly fascist views and ties to neo-Nazi gangs at least partly out of sight. 

This is fascism with a nudge and a wink. A fascist voter will understand the dog-whistles. Anti-fascist activists do too. But among the general public – and the party’s broader electorate – the picture is less clear. The image the party projects is not generally one of violent extremism. 

If fascist ideas are acceptable among the AfD’s leaders and members, what of the ten million who voted for the party? An exit survey gives us some pointers; 18% of AfD voters think that it would be good if only Germans lived in Germany. And 9% want all migrants to leave Germany, even those who are naturalised. That gives us an indication of the size of the hard core, the out-and-out racists. Those figures would represent an election result of 4% and 2% respectively. Which is roughly what open neo-Nazi parties got in the past. 

On the other hand, 42% of AfD voters think the party should distance itself more clearly from the extreme right. And 84% say the party is in the middle of the political spectrum, not on the right. As many as 85% say it is the only party they can vote for to protest against the established parties, and 39% said they voted AfD because they were disappointed with other parties. The figures are contradictory in places. That is no surprise. 

AfD voters worry about making ends meet, more than the supporters of any other party. Three-quarters of them fear they won’t be able to pay their bills or keep up their standard of living. 

The electoral geography backs up this picture. The AfD’s best results read as a map of the worst excesses of neoliberalism: the deindustrialised east (but not prospering Leipzig and Dresden), the poorest cities (Gelsenkirchen), the forgotten peripheries (the Bavarian Forest). The same applies within the cities too. There are few AfD votes in Berlin’s gentrified middle-class quarters, many in the crumbling high-rise estates on the periphery. The pattern even appears within boroughs. Swanky Prenzlauer Berg is green, but its neglected social housing is an island of AfD-blue. 

One figure stands out. The manual workers’ vote. Here the AfD took 38%, ahead of the Christian Democrats (22%) and the Social Democrats (just 12%). Overall more of them are men than women. Age-wise, the AfD is strongest in the age group 25-59, but weak among the retired. Alongside an ideological core, I would argue, the AfD is attracting the votes of very many workers who are deeply alienated from the established parties and from the political process as a whole. 

The danger is threefold. In the here and now, a strong vote for the AfD encourages the far-right hooligans. Attacks on migrants and the left are on the rise. Over time, the party hopes to turn voters into supporters, supporters into members. And if the circumstances allowed, it could establish a paramilitary wing. 

What the left must do 

In the past, we have crushed emerging fascist movements by keeping them off the streets, stopping them marching. This worked well enough against small organisations with marginal electoral support, such as the Republicans in the late 1980s or the NPD around 2010. Today, we are faced with a formation that is attracting very large numbers of votes, but not building on the streets. How strongly its voters are connected to the party is hard to say. 

The anti-fascist movement mobilised 10,000 to disrupt the AfD’s pre-election conference, delaying its start for several hours. And in February, more than a million attended demonstrations against the AfD across the country. Neither of these successful initiatives made a dent in the AfD’s vote. They did revive the Left Party’s fortunes, though. 

I think it would be useful to consider the AfD’s large vote as a symptom of underlying developments. On the one hand, large sections of the population are deeply alienated from all the established parties. These include significant parts of the ‘classical’ working class, not just manual workers. All those furthest from the credentialed professions. On the other hand, what currently passes for ‘the left’ revolves around the ‘better’ white-collar occupations (and to an extent even managerial). Geographically and socially, there is little contact between the two. And on the ‘left’, there is often little understanding that material issues are of genuine importance (pay, energy bills, food prices). 

Within the trade unions, support for the AfD is raising new and difficult questions. Although there is scant public discussion about them. There are now regions and sectors where union members voting AfD is nothing unusual. There are workplaces where AfD supporters are among the most bolshy. It is worth noting that these tend to be AfD voters but rarely members. And there are places where significant numbers of trade union members reject their union’s opposition to the party. The metalworkers’ union is reported to have lost members after its flags were seen at the blockade of the AfD’s national conference in January. And at the mass demonstrations against the AfD before the elections, led by the Greens and Left Party, the trade unions seemed to be downplaying their visible organised presence. That said, a large proportion of the participants will also have been union members.  

The established parties have become radioactive in many quarters, for good reason. Too often the left is seen as being in cahoots with with them. Too often it is. Most of those who call themselves left would like to fiddle with the system a little bit. Little of the visible left opposes the Ukraine misadventure with any energy. On the other hand, parts of the working class are frustrated, angry and ready to tear it all down. They do not see ‘the left’ as a partner. If anything they see ‘the left’ as the enemy: the Greens, the government, the comfortable and privileged (and the Left Party lumped in with them). To sum up a long and complicated story in a few words: It is a tragedy that the far-right, antimigrant AfD has been able to capitalise on the mood of frustration and anger. Ten, fifteen years ago that was the Left Party’s constituency. Those who pushed the Left Party towards respectable reformism bear a great responsibility for subsequent developments. Comfortable ‘lefties’ shouting ‘you’re all a bunch of Nazis’ from afar at anyone who voted for the AfD is not going to get us anywhere. 

The most important step would be for the left to take the alienated seriously. As long as there is so little movement on the ground, making those connections will be difficult. When there is, it will be crucial. 

Robert Dale lives in the Berlin region, where he has been active in socialist politics since the 1980s.