European conservatives reclaimed lost ground Sunday in Germany’s elections. Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and Alice Weidel’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) together garnered almost half of the country’s vote. CDU and AfD voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Berlin’s left-wing ruling coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens. Both the CDU and AfD reject Berlin’s globalist agenda of mass immigration and de-industrializing green energy policies.  

Many AfD voters separate from the CDU in also raising sharp criticisms about Germany’s place in the European Union and NATO, the Russia-Ukraine war strategy, and the wisdom of American-style multiculturalism. The election map reveals that the AfD won almost all of the voting districts in the old East Germany (except for Berlin), while the CDU prevailed in the former West German territory.  The CDU tallied more votes (about 29 percent) than the AfD (about 21), but it still needs a partner to form a government. 

For the panicky Berlin establishment, the CDU is acceptable, while the AfD must be cordoned off with a Brandmauer (firewall). Germany’s political elite hardly pauses to consider how fundamentally anti-democratic their efforts are to isolate an incredible 21 percent of the country’s voters. Their lame arguments that democracy must “protect itself”—ominously harkening back to the Weimar republic—do not adequately camouflage their left-wing agenda to cancel conservatives. Berlin desperately fears German voters peeking behind the curtain. 

The official cancelling is a smoke-and-mirrors operation designed to demonize the “far-right” AfD as a “dangerous new authoritarianism” and permanent pariah. The smear campaign consists of hardball Teutonic lawfare (mainly state security services spying as well as prosecution of the AfD’s outlawed speech) and a constant negative drumbeat by the state-run and woke German media establishment. The German political class hopes voters will draw a clear inference: If the AfD is “under investigation,” it must be dangerous. 

Above all, the Berlin establishment fears an honest debate over the AfD’s top issues, so they simply declare the party beyond the pale (“nicht salonfähig” as elite Germans would say). But Sunday’s election results show the strategy is not working. The bogus stigmatization campaign collapses after any honest analysis of the party’s conservative principles and a fair reading of the party platform. The AfD’s conservatism—deeply grounded in constitutionalism, strong families, and secure borders—channels Russell Kirk, not Rudolf Hess. 

Because Merz is part of the establishment, and for tactical political advantage, the CDU is part of the official anti-AfD campaign. He has ruled out forming any coalition government with Weidel. While the CDU leader is opposed to open borders (he is a late-comer), Merz’s vision for his country is rooted in an outdated 1980s transatlantic approach: a U.S.-led NATO that guarantees Germany’s security while the European Union, run by the Brussels bureaucracy, secures the continent’s political future. Both the AfD and President Donald Trump directly challenge the longevity of that old European order.

Trump’s return to the White House has discombobulated Merz and the entire Berlin establishment. After Vice President J.D. Vance’s blistering speech at the Munich security conference two weeks ago, in which he criticized the firewall and the anti-democratic mindset behind it, Merz closed ranks with the Social Democrats and Greens to denounce his remarks. Merz lambasted Vance for “meddling” in German politics and took up the Berlin establishment’s newest talking point: The “unpredictable” Trump administration’s agenda must be distinguished from what the American people actually want.

In responding to Merz, Weidel argues that if the CDU forms a ruling coalition with the far-left Social Democrats or Greens, the only two real options other than the AfD, the new government will be ideologically incoherent and just as unstable as its predecessor. She has a good point, and one that underscores just how precarious coalition-building actually is in Germany. Merz is allowing himself an incredible two months to find a partner and hammer out a deal on governing. The Berlin establishment’s lack of urgency is as unserious as its approach to modernizing Germany’s national security policies.  

Only in rejecting mass immigration does Merz reluctantly find common cause with the AfD. In January, Merz flirted with abandoning the firewall, at least for a vote on a CDU border-control bill in the Bundestag. Merz’s draft legislation, however, raised the ire of former Chancellor and CDU leader Angela Merkel, who intervened. Now retired from politics, Merkel is a scorched-earth, never-AfD hardliner because in her heart she is not really a conservative. Merkel maneuvered behind the scenes to peel off some CDU lawmakers, ensuring the Merz bill wouldn’t pass.  

Merkel’s intervention was just another example of her career campaign to destroy authentic German conservatism. Chancellor for 15 years, Merkel embraced a vision for our era that was identical to Barack Obama’s. She tried to bend the CDU along Obama’s arc of history and in so doing opened a vast empty space on the political right in Germany. Under Merkel’s leadership, the CDU embraced the SPD-Green globalist agenda, particularly on key issues: climate-change alarmism, de-industrializing energy policies, and mass (often illegal) immigration. Thus, the real story of the AfD’s rise is not the inexplicable return of “far-right authoritarianism.” Rather, it has everything to do with filling the ideological vacuum opened up by a Merkel-led CDU. 

Subscribe Today

Get daily emails in your inbox

Email Address:

The Bavarian politician Franz Josef Strauss (1915–88) was not only modern Germany’s best example of an Edmund Burke conservative, he was also a shrewd political strategist who famously warned the CDU (and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU) that it should represent the interests of conservative voters—or risk the rise of a viable party to its right. Given his country’s Nazi past, Strauss understood the risky, destabilizing consequences to post-war Germany’s political order in opening up such a space. Frau Merkel ignored Strauss’s warning, jettisoning classic and common-sense values that have united modern European conservatives from Konrad Adenauer to Margaret Thatcher. 

While the AfD is to the right of the CDU, it represents legitimate conservative values: protecting a country’s national identity, rejecting unsustainable mass immigration, and promoting industrial enterprise. Berlin’s far-left globalist elite, however, does not want anyone filling that space, and they have ruthlessly played the “Nazi” card to keep it empty. Merz is wrong to cooperate and isolate the AfD, and it is doubtful he will ever change his approach. But it is also doubtful that the firewall will hold up in the long term. 

Realignment in German politics is coming. The international movement of conservatives, from the Americas to Europe to Australia, needs to find common ground with like-minded colleagues in the AfD. At CPAC meetings and National Conservatism conferences—U.S. gatherings that increasingly bring together right-populists from around the world—conservatives should embrace Alice Weidel and other responsible AfD leaders. To fix Europe, conservatives need to fix Germany. Weidel can help bring that about.