Germany

It sounds like a scene from a dystopian TV drama: in a country hotel west of Berlin, far-right politicians met neo-Nazi activists and sympathetic businesspeople to discuss a ‘masterplan’ for Germany that involves the forced deportations of millions from the country. But this is no fiction. According to reports in the German media, such a meeting took place last November. These revelations will do little to calm the tumultuous political waters in Germany.

Around two dozen people met at the picturesque lakeside hotel in Potsdam, according to the news outlet Correctiv, which published a detailed report of its undercover investigation. Given the explosive content discussed in speeches between meals, secrecy was paramount for the organisers. Members were invited by a letter seen by Correctiv and the Guardian. The stated purpose of the meeting: the presentation of a ‘masterplan’, presented by ‘none other’ than Martin Sellner.

The German-nationalist political party has prospered from the recent inability of other parties to be trusted on issues of national sovereignty.

‘Liberalism is the death of nations” — a famous line from an infamous book. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the author, did not have American progressivism in mind. His critique was aimed at liberal democracy as a political regime. Moeller coined the term “Third Reich” in his 1923 book, where these words originate. He was not a National Socialist but part of the “conservative revolution,” a diverse group of writers in the Weimar Republic. Alongside the more radical Völkische Bewegung, an influential ethno-nationalist movement, the “conservative revolutionaries” shaped the social atmosphere that paved the way for National Socialism.

The interior minister of the eastern German state of Thuringia, social democrat (SPD) Georg Maier, is calling for an amendment to the state’s constitution to hinder—or prevent—right-wing anti-globalist party AfD from obtaining a high-ranking position in the state parliament.

Elections are to be held in three eastern states, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia next year, and AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) is on course to win in all three, possibly garnering a third of all votes, according to opinion polls.

The right-wing antiglobalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is poised to secure its second mayoral position. Residents of Pirna—a town of 37,000 situated in Saxony—brushed off the state intelligence agency’s recent ‘extremist’ classification of the party and voted AfD candidate Tim Lochner into office.

After finishing first by a nearly ten-point margin in the town’s initial round of voting late last month, Lochner, a 53-year-old master carpenter—who isn’t a member of AfD, but ran on its ticket—again bested his opponents from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Free Voters in the second round of voting on Sunday, December 17th, securing 38.5% of the vote according to the final tally.

Polls should always be taken with a grain of salt, but the numbers coming out of Germany suggest that the biggest Right-wing wave since the end of the Second World War could be emerging. What is brewing across the country is no longer the usual ebb and flow of electoral politics, but instead the prelude to a coming revolt at the voting booth.