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THE results of Sunday’s German elections reinforce the conviction that the Western imagination has lately been gripped by a toxic combination of alienation and false consciousness.
Opinion polls had accurately predicted the outcome. The fascist-leaning Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) may not have benefited much from the endorsements provided by Elon Musk or J.D. Vance, the US vice-president, but it nonetheless doubled its vote in four years. A party whose leader, Alice Weidel, described Adolf Hitler as a communist in an interview with Musk, attracted more than one-fifth of the electorate. She wasn’t asked to explain how her description might square with the fact that Hitler’s regime dispatched communists and socialists to concentration camps before Jews, Roma and homosexuals.
The US endorsement may not have mattered as much as Friedrich Merz’s willingness last month to accept the AfD’s support in passing a retrograde resolution against immigration. The reprimands he received included one from his predecessor as Christian Democratic Union leader, Angela Merkel. Following the election, Merz, whose party attracted fewer than 29 per cent of voters, has said that Germany and Europe must work out a defence strategy that excludes the US.
That would be unobjectionable. But Western Europe has to explain that if this realisation did not dawn in the immediate aftermath of World War II 80 years ago, why was European self-reliance not pursued once the Soviet empire started crumbling in 1989 and the USSR followed suit two years later? The US-led Nato rejected a membership application from Moscow in the 1940s, and repeated the error after the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR ceased to exist.
Germany once more boosts the European far right.
Perhaps Nato should have dissolved itself after its raison d’être as an anti-communist military alliance disappeared — or at least incorporated Russia. But Boris Yeltsin, a Western-sponsored dupe whose second term as president was guaranteed only by the Clinton administration’s help, was also dismissed as an applicant. The relevance of the alternative, a so-called Partnership for Peace, was short-lived. And verbal US and German guarantees to Moscow against Nato’s westward expansion were dishonoured.
In his intervals of sobriety, even Yeltsin was alarmed by Nato encroachment. His successor was initially seen as a potential Western ally notwithstanding evidence of his genocidal tendencies in Chechnya. George W. Bush claimed to like what he saw when he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, but nonetheless vowed that Georgia and Ukraine’s Nato applications would be fast-tracked. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. It was another six years before it surreptitiously invaded Ukrainian territories. Both instances of aggression were a travesty, but one that might not have occurred had Nato steered clear of Russia’s bigger neighbours.
The negotiations that the Trump administration has launched with Russia have been derided, and not without good cause. Seeking a solution without involving Ukraine three years after it was invaded is absurd. But it’s no more ridiculous than ignoring Moscow while throwing arms into Ukraine, which is effectively what the Biden administration was doing, with the help of its European dependencies. Talks with the Kremlin were always an obvious component of any path to peace. And diplomacy would have been ideal before Russia launched its ill-judged invasion.
It’s easy to make the case that Moscow ought to have kept its nose out of Kyiv once Ukraine became independent in 1991. But the same goes for Nato and the EU. Those who question Russia’s wrath at the idea of being surrounded by hostile neighbours might be asked to consider how the US might react to Mexico City or Ottawa seeking military alliances with Moscow or Beijing.
Empathy, though, remains anathema to many in Germany. The mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians can be condoned because they are being targeted by the children of Germany’s one-time victims. Germany’s disgraceful response to protests against the Gaza atrocities has been among the worst in Europe, including when the protesters were themselves Jewish. And although the AfD itself may be antisemitic, it has no quarrel with the votaries of Zionism. Anyone who fails to recognise certain similarities between the present and the attitudes that led towards the Judeocide of the 1930s-40s must be blinkered.
It could take a while to cobble together a new government in Berlin. The AfD is likely to be excluded, despite Merz’s affection for it. His coalition will likely be with the currently ruling Social Democrats, who have dwindled to their lowest vote count since the end of World War II, with the AfD as the main opposition. What might follow in 2029 is unpleasant to contemplate, but who can say where the rest of Europe might be four years hence?
Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2025
