The alternative to German parties ranked second in the federal election on Sunday, doubling the share of votes four years ago, the strongest performance of German far-right parties since World War II. Some parts of the party, known as AFD, have been classified as extremism by German intelligence.
In Germany, is this a country in history a painful lesson about the dangers of right-wing extremism?
Many experts point to the role of immigration, especially the surge in Muslim refugees from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in the mid-2010s, which has convinced many to abandon the long-term advantages of the central and center-right. .
But the new study proposes an additional factor. The U.S. Department of Defense issued its biggest victory in former East Germany, where young people are looking for opportunities in cities away from former industrial areas and rural areas.
These poorer areas have entered a doomsday cycle: a self-enhancing cycle of population shrinking and aging, a collapse in government services and slow economic growth, which has created a fertile foundation for the AFD. And because far-right parties are strongly anti-immigrants, their rise has created pressure to reduce immigration levels, which further exacerbates the aging problem of population aging.
Similar trends are likely to play a role in most developed countries.
The area on the left
There has been a very close correlation between migration levels and AFD support levels over the years, especially in the eastern part of the country, where the party first appeared in most constituencies on Sunday.
(The figure below shows the 2021 figure, but Sunday’s results largely follow the same trend.)
In the decades after the country’s unification in 1990, many of the population in eastern Germany began to travel to cities that brought better opportunities and wealthy western regions. Many from East Germany also expect a post-unification peaceful dividend that has never been achieved.
“I studied in eastern Germany, so I’ve seen this firsthand,” said Thiamo Fetzer, professor of economics at Warwick University in England and professor of economics at Bonn University in Germany. For the far-right populist parties.
He said that along with other Eastern European economies, such as other Eastern European economies, had several years before joining the EU in 2004, and eastern Germany also received “impact therapy.” “The person who has human capital will leave, and the person who stays behind will be literally.”
People leaving these areas tend to be younger and female, and are more likely to earn advanced degrees – all traits also make it less likely to vote for the highest right. The remaining people come from demographic information that is most likely to support AFD.
If this sorting effect is all ongoing, it may not actually be very different in a political system like Germany, which aims to be strongly proportional: according to the percentage of the nation, The party is a vote of representatives in the German parliament, so it is irrelevant to the voters of the parties whether gathered in cities or evenly distributed across the country.
But that’s not all happening. A new paper found that as immigration reduces the quality of life in the “left” areas of Europe, the local population tends to blame the decline of the National Government and mainstream parties and will shift more to the far right.
“In many leftists, the government is not taking care of them,” said Hans Lueders, a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
He found that mainstream parties had less movement in the left-hand area, where fewer candidates were recruited, further reducing the sense of connection between local issues and national politics.
“It involves mainstream parties abandoning the entire far-right populist narrative in these regions,” Lueders said. The far-right parties tend to position themselves as populists, stand up for ordinary people, and oppose corruption or colleagues’ elites, which can be very good,” Lueders said. Good at attracting people who have lost confidence in the status quo.
“Doom Cycle” kicks higher equipment
Like other far-right parties, AFP explicitly blames immigration on Germany’s problems. It demands restrictions on new immigrants and calls for “return” and “repayment” of immigrants.
Recommendations have been put forward to improve the quality of life and economic quality in the left region. But most experts say immigration is one of the few solutions to aging and population shrinking – not only in Germany, but throughout developed countries. Therefore, the success of the AFD and other far-right parties may create a cycle of self-continuation, in which political responses to problems in the left-handed area ultimately make these problems worse.
In the long run, this may make Germany as a whole start to look more like the region to the left: aging, shrinking population, striving to sustain public services and economic growth. Immigration restrictions make it difficult to find workers needed to provide health care and other essential services to reduce and age.
“It’s where immigrants benefit the most — in getting help for elderly care, child care,” Lueders said.
Although the gap between the former East and West is particularly in Stark, Germany, a similar process has occurred in many developed countries.
“This is true in Europe, the United States and many other developed economies. In these surrounding areas of these countries, workers-age people are leaving. Just like in Germany, this trend is driving the rise of the far right and leading to the mainstream Political parties take an anti-immigration stance (usually unsuccessful) to win those dissatisfied voters.
“The cycle of doom continues,” she said.
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