It is clearly bad for any country when its government strays into the realms of delusion. But Germany’s unique past adds even more gravitas to the resulting risk of its government being asleep on watch during perilous times.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz keeps banging on about Germany needing more immigrants, all the while the populist opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is stridently rising in the polls.
Given current tensions around contemporary migration in Germany, it’s hard not to wonder what the German government are on (as well as its advisors – the chair of the Council of Economic Experts, an institution that advises Germany’s federal government, announced that Germany needs 1.5 new immigrants per year).
They appear delusional about the impact their messaging on migrants could have on German voters, and about AfD’s momentum, which they keep playing down. Admittedly those who try to speak out about political realities are usually quickly shot down.
“We have the phenomenon of right-wing populist parties in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany,” Scholz said at the end of June in reaction to the AfD for the first time winning control of a county administration (it has since notched up another first by gaining a mayoral office). “They also exist elsewhere in the world but that doesn’t mean they have to become relevant or dominant.”
Well, yes, Herr Chancellor, but those countries do not have Germany’s history. Germany should not be continually pilloried or held to account for what happened leading up to and during World War II. Germany and the world have moved on. At the same time, though, you can’t ignore the past and contend that it has absolutely no bearing on current events. It’s also advisable not to bury your head in the sand regarding those current events.
“A new taboo seems to have been erected around even discussions of the AfD’s popularity, whereby attempting to understand their rise is seen as some kind of endorsement,” Lily Lynch writes for UnHerd. “There is ample discontent with the [ruling] coalition’s immigration policies, energy and climate approach, economic policy and foreign policy, especially with respect to the war in Ukraine.”
Delusion is a theme throughout many governments around the European Union and especially in its Brussels headquarters where grand utopian-esque policy ideas spring into life despite being at odds with what ordinary people want or how they actually live.
“It is the middle class that is shifting towards the AfD,” Ralph Schoellhammer previously noted for Brussels Signal. “Apparently nobody is willing to ask the only question that matters: Could it be possible that a party advocating tighter borders and positioning itself as an opponent of failed energy and climate policy has genuine appeal?”
In Greece it was middle-class voters that forgave the conservative government its scandals during its recent re-election, and it was they too who threw their weight behind Georgia Meloni in Italy. Spain’s middle class made the level of its dissatisfaction with the current Left-wing government very clear during May’s local elections. That hasn’t been repeated in Spain’s national elections, but it got close to the Left being all done in.
Overall, a shift to the Right is occurring across much of Europe due to people becoming fed up with what they perceive as governments too hastily pushing reactionary policies that don’t serve the average citizen. It’s also a pushback against what I read described as “a cerebrally atrophied polity”.
“The situation right now is disastrous,” a Parisian shopkeeper tells Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in her Brussels Signal article about how France’s riots could hand power to nationalist politician Mariane Le Pen. “I don’t think she’s racist, really. She can’t do worse, and she might do better. She’s said nothing but reasonable things.”
This sort of reaction could affect European Parliament elections in 2024. Conservative politicians are starting to sound particularly bullish about the pendulum swinging back their way.
“The political parties that once pursued classic conservative politics, but shifted in the liberal direction in Western Europe no longer offer answers to the problems European people face,” Judit Varga told Hungarian media Magyar Nemzet about her plan to resign as Hungary’s Justice Minister to focus on the 2024 European elections.
“We can see a conservative movement unfolding across Europe.” She adds how the “the successes achieved by Vox in Spain or Fratelli in Italy” demonstrate that “more and more citizens want to return to the core values” represented by those parties. It’s a theme and message she has also taken to the US.
Ironically, one of the places unlikely to shift to the Right is post-Brexit UK, where the Labour Party’s chances of victory in next year’s general election look stronger all the time.
“As Brexit Britain veers to the Left…the EU appears to be heading in the opposite direction,” Tim Stanley writes for the UK’s Daily Telegraph. “Those on the European Right are cutting taxes, talking about national identity, boosting the family and—a million miles from Britain’s position—questioning the wisdom of net zero.”
The UK’s direction of political travel has less to do with a shift to the Left — a governing Labour Party would need to be more centrist — and more to do with sheer exhaustion and fatigue at the failure of a supposedly conservative government to actually serve even basic conservative principles.
But it means that despite leaving the European Union, the UK shares a similar existential problem with the EU: the threat of disintegration. To avoid that, both also share the need to move away from delusional politics and to find a solution.
“Honesty, a clear definition of the national interest and mutual respect are needed to keep the Union together,” Varga says. “Then we will return to what the European fathers came up with seventy years ago, that the objective is not suppressing the states, but giving them a greater scope for action, enabling all of us to succeed and feel pleased at each other’s success.”
Spain’s Left could implode as Greece’s did: That might please conservatives but loss of effective opposition doesn’t help anyone