As things stand, the AfD, Trump and Musk can look forward to a federal government playing into their hands
By Ingo Schmidt*
March 22, 2025
It was the budget, stupid. Last November, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his Finance Minister, Christian Lindner. Scholz had demanded the relaxation of fiscal rules, known as the “debt-brake,” to boost the private economy after two years of recession. Lindner refused and proposed tax and spending cuts instead. To that Scholz could not agree. The severe cuts to social spending approved by the last Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, cost Schröder his job. Scholz didn’t want to follow him down that road.
However, if Scholz thought that he could save his job by avoiding social spending cuts, he was wrong. In fact, even without imposing working class austerity, Scholz was more unpopular than Schröder was after doing so.
What really happened was this: Lindner’s firing led to a non-confidence vote, which Scholz lost. In the federal elections that took place on February 23, social democratic hopes for a last-minute comeback were bitterly disappointed. Conservative leader Friedrich Merz is bound to form a coalition government, presumably with the Social Democrats as junior partner. However, the real winners of the election are the hard-right leader Alice Weidel and her White House friends, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump. Whatever Merz’s plans are, he must expect barrage fire from the Weidel-White House-connection. Looking back at the election campaign, it looks like he’s actually inviting it.
The election campaign: a case of gaslighting
Liberals, spread out across old-school conservative, liberal, green and social democratic parties, often charge their critics from the left and the right with gaslighting, that is, making false claims to distort peoples’ sense of reality and abandon a politics of reason for a politics of fear and hate. Without a doubt, gaslighting, paired with scapegoating, has contributed to the emergence of a new age of uncertainty and irrationalism. What is remarkable about the recent federal election campaign in Germany is that all parties, except for the Left Party (Die Linke) engaged in gaslighting. A series of attacks on people in public places in Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and München, all committed by immigrants, prompted politicians and many journalists to stir immigration hysteria that pushed actual problems and uncertainties that people were coping with into the background or blamed immigrants for them. The increase in such attacks during the election campaign had some journalists wondering whether they were orchestrated. Secret service personnel felt compelled to declare they had no evidence for that.
Rising costs of living (notably food and housing), uncertainties about jobs, pensions, war and peace, and climate change—none of that mattered as much as the alleged security threat represented by immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants. The political divisions that brought down Scholz’s coalition government with the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the Liberals (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP), and are likely to weigh on any future government, were forgotten in the face of the ‘immigrant threat.’ All parties except the Left Party agreed that tough migration policies, including deportations, were in order. The question was just how tough these policies should be. Even employer demands to keep immigration, preferably of skilled workers, going to avoid labour shortages were overshadowed by tough-on-immigration rhetoric, along with other employer demands that politicians were quite happy to keep in the background until after the election.
The Conservative Christian Democrats (the Christlich-Demokratische Union or CDU) had a tradition of anti-immigration attitudes and policies, which some in the party, including Merz, felt Angela Merkel had betrayed when, as chancellor, she opened the borders to Syrian refugees in 2015. The FDP and even the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD) had also sometimes strayed in that direction. By and large, the Greens had abstained from an anti-immigration stand until this last election campaign. At that point, Weidel’s Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland or AfD) could claim to be the most consistent and radical proponent of anti-immigration politics. Arguably, the AfD was built on a model that was adopted by almost the entire political spectrum during the campaign: Produce so much anti-immigration noise that nobody notices the anti-working class policies your party advocates or, as in the case of the SPD, is willing to support despite nominal commitments to defending what is left of the welfare state.
Any serious examination of the policies the AfD proposes reveals that the party is not only the most anti-immigrant party but also the most pro-neoliberal party in Germany, which is why Trump’s Republicans love the AfD so much. Government-cutter Musk spoke via video at the AfD’s opening campaign rally. After chastising other German parties for not cooperating with the AfD at the Munich Security Conference, ‘hillbilly’-turned-Vice-president Vance met with AfD-leader Weidel and assured her of his support. After the election, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Looks like the Conservative Party in Germany has won the very big and highly anticipated election. Much like the USA, the people of Germany got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration, that has prevailed for so many years. This is a great day for Germany.”
As is clear from Musk’s and Vance’s support for the AfD, the CDU is not Team Trump’s favourite party, but Trump probably sensed the influence the AfD has on German politics and that it is working in his favour. If ever there was a case of foreign interference in an election, this was it. And it played out during the election campaign.
Left up, Wagenknecht down
Although they left the role of agenda-setting to the AfD, the CDU, FDP, Greens and SPD claimed that they were fundamentally different from the far-right party. And even though the CDU had committed itself to the so-called firewall between democratic parties and the authoritarian AfD, the CDU voted with the AfD in support of a bill meant to limit immigration. The bill ultimately failed, but the damage was done. The SPD and the Greens expressed outrage, which, as it turned out, many people didn’t find very convincing since both parties pursued their own, somewhat lighter, anti-immigration policies. Either way, the final weeks of the election campaign were marked by massive demonstrations against the AfD and any kind of collaboration with it.
The anti-AfD sentiment expressed at these demonstrations threw the Left Party a lifeline. Ever since the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht or BSW) broke away from the Left Party in January 2024, the latter had been hovering at around three percent in the polls. This isn’t enough to obtain parliamentary seats under the mixed-member proportional electoral system, which requires parties to win at least five percent of the popular vote or three of the country’s ridings. This three-riding clause saved the Left Party’s contingent in the federal parliament in the 2021 election.
In its 2025 campaign, the Left Party focused entirely on social issues; foreign policy, from Ukraine to Gaza, was considered too divisive for a campaign topic. At that point there was still no hint of Trump’s tariff threats and his demands to increase defence spending, which would add more layers to Germany’s already existing economic problems. The Left Party didn’t campaign on immigration either. But, having consistently advocated for open borders, the party became the natural go-to for anyone opposing the anti-immigration consensus formed by all the other parties. Just in time for the election, the Left Party emerged from its trough and rose in the polls.
In the past, the Left Party wasn’t altogether consistent on immigration. Some in the party viewed the demand for open borders as utterly naïve. This was one of the reasons they formed the BSW; another was the more pragmatic notion that catering to anti-immigration sentiment, which had been growing in tandem with the AfD for years, would persuade some voters to opt for an otherwise left-wing party rather than the AfD. That certainly didn’t work. People who thought immigration policy was important had plenty of options, ranging from the hardcore AfD to anti-immigration-light proffered by the SPD and the Greens.
But it was opposition to NATO support for Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza that distinguished the BSW from all the other parties and was also a key reason that Wagenknecht and her followers split from the Left Party. Pointing to 1970s détente policy, the BSW wants international conflict resolved by diplomacy, not war. This position implied opposition to the demand, which had been growing ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for Germans to give up butter for guns. It was difficult to maintain this minority position against the pro-NATO consensus forged after Russia’s invasion, although polls showed that the public was much less excited about rearmament and military support for Ukraine than the political parties, from the CDU to the Greens, with the AfD and the Left Party vacillating with no clear position. Yet, the election campaign was so completely dominated by anti-immigration hysteria that the BSW’s unique selling point, opposition to war and rearmament, went unheard.
Results: a jump to the right
Had Trump begun his peace-with-Russia-and-resources-from-Ukraine-talks before the elections, Wagenknecht’s quest for diplomacy might have found a larger audience. But that didn’t happen. With 4.972 percent of the popular vote, the BSW was, according to official results, 13,435 votes shy of making it into the federal parliament. Compared to three state elections in eastern Germany last year, in which the party scored between 12 and 15 percent, this was quite a setback. Considering that the party was founded just a year before, going from zero to nearly five percent is not too bad. The Left Party rebounded from its 2021 nadir of 3.9 percent of the popular vote, emerging from this election with 8.8 percent and 64 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag. As expected, all three parties in Scholz’s outgoing coalition government lost vote share compared to 2021—most drastically, the SPD, whose share declined by 9.3 percent, leaving the party with 16.4 percent of the popular vote. The Greens lost only 3.1 percent and ended up with 11.6 percent of the vote. Declining by 7.1 percent, Christian Lindner’s FDP was knocked down to 4.3 percent of the vote—not enough for seats in the federal parliament. From the start, the FDP’s insistence on keeping a foot on the debt-brake was at odds with the aims of the SPD and the Greens to loosen fiscal rules and invest in public infrastructure and a green transition. Declaring emergencies, first due to the COVID-19 recession and then to the Ukraine war, and spending beyond the debt-brake’s deficit limits, left voters of all three parties dissatisfied. To fiscal purists, it was betrayal. To green new dealers it meant not doing enough. Sanctions against Russia, which ended the flow of relatively cheap Russian gas to Germany, fuelled inflation that had already picked up during the post-COVID recovery. The SPD, which had tried so hard to build up its business credentials under Schröder, found itself in a position that had cost it its governing majority back in the 1970s, the last time inflation peaked at around eight percent. In this election, it was again widely portrayed and perceived as an inflation-maker.
With a very unpopular centre-left government and two different parties running from the political left (and one of them, the BSW, insisting that it wasn’t left, but failing to clarify what it stood for), gains for the centre-right parties were guaranteed. With a total of 28.5 percent of the popular vote the CDU emerged the strongest party. Yet, the real winner was the AfD: it gained 10.4 percent over 2021 for a new total of 20.8 percent. If there is anything surprising about this result, it is that the anti-immigration hysteria that dominated the election campaign didn’t boost AfD gains even more.
Selling the unsellable
The stirring of anti-immigration hysteria and Merz’s flirtations with the AfD in parliament during the election campaign testified to the influence of the hard right on German politics even before votes were cast on February 23. Though Merz back-pedalled to a ‘never-with-the-AfD’ position after his Conservatives voted with Weidel and company during the campaign, the message was very clear: To pursue his agenda, he can threaten to vote with the AfD if the SPD, his probable coalition partner, finds Merz’s agenda too extreme.
While the general public was still distracted by anti-immigration hysteria, business leaders wrote up Merz’s agenda. Their aim: make Germany competitive again. Their demands: cut red tape and taxes, and make labour and energy affordable again. They also added to the usual neoliberal policy menu by calling for expenditures on public infrastructure. Military spending isn’t a must for all business, but it’s certainly a favourite of the arms industry. Here the call was to boost arms spending permanently beyond the levels it had already reached during the Ukraine war. One neoliberal classic, and the badly defeated FDP’s favourite, fell off the agenda: the debt-brake. Some back-of-an-envelope calculations presumably led business leaders to the conclusion that their demands require higher deficits, no matter how much austerity they want to impose on the working classes.
Even before Scholz had fired Lindner, the SPD claimed that it would be possible to stimulate private businesses, build a larger army and avoid social spending cuts. By how much deficits needed to increase to pay for businesses, guns and butter, the social democrats didn’t say, although they probably knew that it would be way beyond business leaders’ tolerance level. The question now is how much butter the SPD is willing to give up to form, and maintain, a coalition with Merz who, as former Blackrock manager, is an ideal representative of business interests at the head of the federal government. The ever-present conservative threat to collaborate with the AfD, if only on certain bills, will certainly boost the SPD’s willingness to shift its spending priorities considerably from butter to guns and businesses.
And then there are the demands and threats coming from the White House. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, former President Joe Biden dropped all diplomatic restraints and opted for a full-on confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism. This included sanctions that hurt Germany’s economy more than Russia’s or, for that matter, the US economy. In a rare case of putting politics before profits—profits made in Germany, that is—the Scholz government followed Biden’s lead. Chancellor Scholz was repeatedly criticized as being too hesitant. In the SPD, it was Defence Minister Boris Pistorius who aggressively pushed for more arms spending and greater military support for Ukraine. Pistorius demanded an increase in the share of arms spending beyond the NATO-benchmark of two percent of GDP, long before Trump made such demands.
In other respects, however, the wind from Washington has shifted drastically with Trump re-entering the White House. While Trump wants to cut a peace deal with Russia and secure access to Ukrainian resources, most EU governments, including the one Merz is about to form, follow Biden’s conception of Western democracies, including Ukraine, lining up against Russian authoritarianism. This puts the Europeans in an untenable position. On the one hand, they see Trump as a Putin-placating authoritarian and pose as the last defenders of a rules-based international order. On the other hand, they seek to appease Trump whichever way they can—and for good reason. After all, picking up the bill for supporting Ukraine that the US is no longer willing to pay adds a hefty financial burden to EU governments already grappling with high deficits and weak tax revenues. The last thing they want is to ruin their trade relations with the US entirely. This is particularly true for Germany, which, as its business leaders tirelessly intone, is facing its third year in recession. As Europe’s major exporter, Germany is more vulnerable to tariffs than any other European country, which is reason enough to play by Trump’s rule book, while calling him out publicly as an authoritarian (sometimes).
The conditions under which the CDU and the SPD are negotiating a coalition government are straightforward. The crucial foreign policy goals are to appease Trump to avoid a trade war or at least avoid escalating it, and to keep the EU together under the banner of liberal democracy. Domestically, the agenda revolves around catering to business demands and keeping the AfD at a distance. But Merz wants to use the AfD as leverage to wring austerity concessions from the SPD. As for the SPD, it aims to keep austerity at a level that doesn’t further erode support for the party. What is clear from the contradictions inherent in these conditions is that the next government will be as weak and unpopular as the previous one. As things stand, Weidel and the White House can look forward to a federal government playing into their hands, whatever intentions, good or bad, members of that government may harbour. But, of course, there is also a slight chance that the Left Party, the BSW and, more importantly, social movements, get their act together and rally the popular discontent the new government is sure to produce around an agenda of peace and social justice. Whatever it is that the CDU and the SPD agree on, it will be unsellable to many—if not most—voters. This will create political openings. It is up to the left, in the broadest sense, to seize them.
* Ingo Schmidt is an economist and works as the coordinator of the Labour Studies Program at Athabasca University.
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