Fear of a social decline has caused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to soar in the polls, giving them a nearly unprecedented 20% of the vote in the most recent election, German journalist Nicholas Potter told Sarah Ben-Nun on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.
Potter broke down who voted for AfD based on demographics.
"The AfD has done very strongly in East Germany," he explained. "It does slightly better with men, slightly better with low [income] earners, and people with slightly lower status of education - for example, not with master's degrees or... bachelor's degrees. But they're still able to, across the board, gain support. So I think it's a mistake to say that it's just poorer people or people with less access to higher education who are voting for them."
He continued, "even if you look at some of the wealthier West German states, there are people like lawyers, people with PhDs, voting for the AfD. So I don't want to shift it purely onto that."
As for what sparked such a rise in votes for AfD, a big part of that was a perceived fear of a decline in standards of living.
"If you look at the voter breakdown... what comes up time and time again is this fear of social decline. There's this fear that you are sort of losing your place or what you're entitled to, this idea that you feel as though your standard of living is dropping and you're scared of losing more," Potter explained.
He further noted that the situation in Germany hasn't helped matters, noting the ongoing cost of living crisis and housing crisis, among others.
"This sort of makes fertile soil... for a party like the AfD to tap into these fears by using very emotional language and then shift the blame, for example, onto migrants, onto asylum seekers, onto refugees," Potter said. "Because, I mean, where the AfD support is highest are typically some of the least multicultural areas."
What is making people vote for AfD?
Experts have also noted that anti-democratic sentiments and latent racism were still present in Germany. But that has always been the case.
"It's not like people have suddenly become right wing or racist. They were always there. But the AfD is able to tap into this and makes this more visible," Potter noted.
He further elaborated on what the party itself is like, noting that it is particularly extreme even compared to the many other far-right parties in Europe who have been rising in polls amid a global shift to the Right.
"It has a very ethnonationalist concept of who is a German and who isn't. Their links to the militant organized far right, including neo-Nazis. They even have staffers in the Bundestag who are Neo Nazis. I think we're dealing here with a very abnormal party, and it would be a mistake to compare them to even with some other far right populist parties in other countries, and especially given Germany's history, I think that there rightly should be an extra sensitivity when it comes to this issue," he explained. He further added that Germany's firewall policy preventing the far Right from ever governing again prevents AfD from ever actually taking power has ended up working in its favor.
"The AfD is never in a position to govern, and it is very much as a result, it's an anti-establishment party. I mean, usually, when you finally get some power and you're not able to keep all your promises, you can be part. Finished at the polling stations again, and this isn't the case with the AfD, where they seem to just get stronger and stronger, because they never, actually, they never have any responsibility, so that people realize they're not actually able to deliver on a lot of these emotional promises."