In the German democratic, pro-European juste milieu, a common explanation for the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the idea that their voters are like uneducated children: holding little-to-no political agency, falling for the most basic rhetoric, and voting on the basis of irrational emotions. If one accepts this view, then the logical solution is to simply explain one’s own policies more clearly. In practice, this has produced an even more basic rhetoric than they accuse their opponents of having.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), once representative of the working class, is now at the avant-garde of this trend. While he was the Finance Minister in 2020, Olaf Scholz announced an unlimited credit programme as “the bazooka we are using to do what is necessary now”. This was not a one-time occurrence. Further curious linguistic choices followed: “Doppelwumms” (“double whammy”), “Wachstumsturbo” (“growth turbo”), and now the Housing Minister Varena Hubertz’s mutated version, “Bauturbo” (“construction turbo”).
The traditional party of government, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has not failed to get in on the act either, with their party leader Friedrich Merz announcing on the night of his greatest political success that “now, Rambo Zambo can be at the Adenauer House too”. Whatever this actually means, it is not exactly the rhetoric one would expect of a prospective Chancellor. While the idea behind it is for politicians to show more emotions, this dumbing down of political rhetoric is both insincere and widely perceived as being childish.
The Effectiveness of Provocation
In contrast, the AfD delivers their constant rhetorical provocation with an air of sincerity that mainstream politicians lack. Their comments are outrageous: Alice Weidel described Adolf Hitler as left-wing, Alexander Gauland referred to the Nazi dictatorship as “bird droppings” in history, and Björn Höcke gives pseudoscientific lectures about high black birth rates. As extreme and incorrect as their statements are, they speak in a way that allows their audience to feel heard and taken seriously, opening them up to a supposed set of alternative facts.
Unlike what many democratic and pro-European observers across the continent believe, the rhetoric of radical right parties like the AfD is not stupid. On the contrary, it is often much more sophisticated than the language used by those who wish to maintain the status quo and constructive dialogue. It gives people who are dismissed as voting based upon hatred and fear the feeling that they are, in fact, much more intelligent than those political classes which make unpopular compromises and concessions to their opponents while speaking down to voters.c
This dynamic helps to explain why AfD voters are often far less impressed by the poor performance of their inexperienced politicians, who sometimes fail to understand even the most basic of parliamentary procedure. For the politicians in question, it is simply unnecessary to understand the rules of a game if one has already decided not to play by them. This is why it is unhelpful for the CDU and the SPD to adopt parts of their political agenda, which their coalition has done on border controls, following the example of other governments such as Denmark’s. The goal of the AfD is not to become accepted within the parliamentary system, but to undermine and discredit it from within.
The Importance of Playing Our Own Game
Those who aspire to fight the radical right must not try to play the existing game better, but to start a different one altogether. By pushing for European unity at a time where the Trump Administration and the Putin regime are attacking it from different angles, mainstream politicians can benefit from a renewed interest in pan-Europeanism from younger voters who are more active online. What is seen as a democratic crisis could be seen for the opportunity it is to build a different reality. After all, crisis comes from the Ancient Greek word for decision.
The greatest obstacle to European unity is that, too often, it is presented as a mere necessity, as opposed to the opportunity it is. People who work in the EU, and even many supporters of a federal Europe, too often focus on technocratic minutiae instead of presenting their ideas as a genuine alternative to the status quo which can instill a real sense of hope among the mass populace.
The self-referential nature of European institutions, exacerbated by the confusing overlap between the European Council, the Council of the European Union, and the unrelated Council of Europe, obscures the fact that the movement for European unity has had a remarkable past as a peace project and still maintains the potential to shape a bright, democratic future in an increasingly authoritarian global landscape.
Today, everyone who is knowledgeable about European politics knows that our goal is just one treaty change away. Yet, it will not be achieved if deeper integration towards a truly federal EU is not made into a plausible, real possibility in the minds of the wider public. In modern democracies, this kind of transformation is achieved by the means of communication above all else, so it is incumbent on pro-European forces to develop new and better forms of communication. If this happens, then maybe people will see that European unity is not a utopia - it is an inevitability.
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