Over the past few days, the political landscape in Germany has shifted once again. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party, which had been making waves following the state elections to the Landtags of Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, has quite definitively been split into two separate political entities: the newly formed Alliance for Progress and Renewal (ALFA) party, which was officially created following a July 19 founders’ meeting; and the remnants of the Alternative for Germany party under the joint leadership of Frauke Petry and Alexander Gauland.
Over the past few days, the political landscape in Germany has shifted once again. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party, which had been making waves following the state elections to the Landtags of Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, has quite definitively been split into two separate political entities: the newly formed Alliance for Progress and Renewal (ALFA) party, which was officially created following a July 19 founders’ meeting; and the remnants of the Alternative for Germany party under the joint leadership of Frauke Petry and Alexander Gauland.
It was clear that former AfD leader Bernd Lucke was seeking to create a new political party when he founded the Weckruf 2015 association earlier in the year. The party was established by was Lucke’s supporters from that splinter faction, as well as those close to the party’s main sponsor Henkel.
The final straw came at an extraordinary AfD party convention, when Lucke was forced to resign his post as Chairman. It should be noted that the split of the fledgling political force, which many hoped would usher in a new era of politics in Germany, was entirely predictable. Lucke and his followers were already under considerable public and political pressure from both the political establishment and the agenda-driven media, which was relentless in its criticism of the AfD.
Bernd Lucke’s attempts to build a people’s party that was free of radical elements (banning all those with even the most tenuous of links to such political pariahs as the National Democratic Party, the German People’s Union, etc., from becoming members) were either ignored by the media and politicians alike, or were misinterpreted as an attempt to mask the party’s right-wing radicalism with more palatable and respectable forms (arguments often used in anti-AfD rhetoric by the Green Party and the Left). The press regularly published (clearly biased) materials that were intended to discredit the AfD. The very real conflicts and contradictions within the party itself on the most sensitive political issues — immigration policy, Islamophobia, and the party’s relationship with the Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) movement — only added fuel to the fire. In the end, Lucke decided that the lesser of two evils would be to lead the more moderate elements of his party in the creation of a new political organization, thus hoping to salvage a grain of respectability as a politician reasonably and justifiably criticising the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
In the context of the emergence of a new political power it is reasonable to ask the question: What will be the major differences between the AfD and its new rival? Bernd Lucke himself stated at ALFA’s founding conference that the new party would follow the same programme that was laid out at the AfD’s founding congress in 2013. This means that the new party will continue the line of criticizing Euro integration, the single European currency and the programme of bailing out failed Eurozone economies at the expense of the German taxpayer. We can expect to see a softening of anti-immigration and anti-Islamic rhetoric. The AfD will have to push these issues if it does not want to become a mirror image of Lucke’s party. In any case, the two parties will for a time at least be vying for the same voters. Only when the Bundestag elections draw closer will we see them diverge in terms of their ideologies (some political observers have predicted that the AfD will win seats at the elections).
In what direction will these two political forces drift? Given the fact that the political separation of the AfD into two parties was fraught with scandals and hot tempers (Petry and Gauland demanded that all defectors to ALFA give up their seats, while Lucke announced that he would never welcome former AfD members with right-wing populist views into his party), it would be fair to say that we will not see an alliance between the two any time soon. It is more likely that ALFA’s positions will draw closer to those of the Free Democratic Party — a political bloc in the future is not out of the question. At the same time, we shouldn’t expect the public pressure on Lucke and his party to die down just yet. The remaining AfD members have room for manoeuvre here. Moving closer to the National Democrats would mean political death, even though the fact of the matter is that anti-immigration sentiment is growing in Germany. Many Germans are just as unwelcoming of attempts to rehabilitate nationalism, while immigrants continue to flow into the country. The AfD will thus serve as a kind of yardstick for gauging public discontent with the immigration and demographic policies of the Angela Merkel administration.
