#38: The AfD's war on culture
The party's plans to radically change Germany start in Saxony-Anhalt.
Dear reader,
In last week’s post, I mentioned Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD stands to win an absolute majority in the state election on September 6th and very likely form the next state government. It will be the first time that a party right of the CDU/CSU has controlled a state since WWII.
first a message from our sponsor
Are you too busy for apartment search?
“If you’re a busy professional and don’t always have time to check each online listing, this might be worth checking for you: Get The Flat finally got me a number of viewings and an apartment!”
One could say Saxony-Anhalt, a mostly rural place with just two million inhabitants doesn’t really matter in the big picture. It’s GDP per person is the lowest in the country. It’s kind of irrelevant. Don’t panic.
However, something historian Katja Hoyer said recently on the Ronzheimer podcast really stuck with me:
“I think the demands the AfD is making there go far beyond a change in policy; they really want to establish a new politics in the sense that they want to usher in a new epoch.”
To Hoyer, the AfD wants to “make history” in Saxony-Anhalt. Under AfD control, the state would take on a “pioneer position”. Policies implemented there could be tested then later rolled out throughout the country.
State governments don't have much power in Germany. Core far-right issues such as immigration and foreign policy are determined on the federal level.
So what could the AfD even achieve if they ran a state? The Bundesländer control education and culture policy. Here they could have an impact from day one.
Culture is integral to the party's mission to transform Germany. Take a look at the “Culture and Integration” section of the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt election manifesto:
“National masochism and a lack of self-confidence are rooted in cultural factors. The root causes of the current predicament are therefore cultural in nature and can thus only be remedied by targeted efforts to address these cultural factors.”
For them, “cultural factors” include the “wokeness” and “self-hatred” permeating schools and cultural institutions. The manifesto rants about the many evils that began in 1960s West Germany such as attempts to come to terms with the guilt associated with Hitler and the Holocaust — the process known as Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Germany has allegedly been subjected to “the perpetuation of a guilt complex”, “neurosis”, “identity destruction”, “rainbow ideology”, “identity disorder” and so on. The AfD says it will heal this disorder through a “new, patriotic cultural politics”.
To people who value the openness and diversity of modern Germany, this sounds like a nightmare, a rollback of everything achieved since the student revolution of 1968: expanded rights and recognition of women, LGBTQ people and ethnic and religious minorities; and a critical, open approach to examining the Third Reich.
It’s notable that this is happening in an eastern state. There was no 1968 revolution in communist East Germany. AfD firebrand Björn Höcke has even claimed that West Germans have been so stripped of their identity, that they’re “German-speaking Americans”. Meaning East Germans are the real Germans. Höcke himself is a Wessi. Who’s the neurotic?
Their war on culture doesn’t just target “non-German” or “multkulti” culture. It even aims at the ur-German Bauhaus, the world-renowned school of modernist architecture, arts and crafts that set up shop in Dessau, Saxony-Anahlt during the Weimar Republic.
For the AfD, Bauhaus are the baddies for creating an “inhumane” international style.
Here’s their manifesto again:
“Under the title ‘moderndenken’, the state government is running an image campaign which seeks to derive the identity of the state of Saxony-Anhalt from the Bauhaus. Yet the Bauhaus school of architecture, in particular, always strove to avoid any sign of national roots. The ‘moderndenken’ campaign thus takes the policy of identitylessness to the extreme.”
An AfD-led government would defund the Bauhaus and replace the #moderndenken slogan with #deutschdenken. I'm not kidding. By the way, Hitler also hated the Bauhaus and shut it down in 1933 for exactly the same reasons.
An alliance of cultural institutions in the state put out a joint statement warning of the party’s radical culture policies:
“In this context, culture appears as an expression of an ethnically homogeneous national community, whose alleged ‘identity crisis’ is to be overcome by a ‘self-assured German identity’. In this approach, elements of a völkisch-nationalist conception of culture are clearly evident.”
The AfD’s plans “threaten artistic freedom and Germany’s democratic remembrance culture.”
All this is a reminder that the AfD isn’t just any party. They want to create a very different version of Germany.
Their message seems to be getting through. The latest opinion poll has the AfD at 43% in Saxony-Anhalt, maybe enough to form a government without a coalition partner.
But why does this rejection of everything modern and progressive resonate with so many? A conservative English-language essayist put it likes this:
“Especially for people in the eastern part of Germany, these types of conflicts speak to another form of top-down imposed paternalism—not unlike the paternalism and ideology of the Stalinist system, which also demanded the ‘correct’ attitude from its citizens.”
This is the old story of “cultural elites” imposing their politically correct worldviews on the Volk. After all, populism only works with enemies to blame for every problem. It’s simple to peddle this sort of story to a population living in an era as unstable and precarious as ours.
It’s also an easy sell because there is a small grain of truth in there somewhere. Culture types and academics can sound elitist and use vocabulary that “regular folks” find alienating. It’s child’s play for the AfD and populists the world to ridicule the language of contemporary culture. And it provides a nice distraction from the corruption that has already infected the AfD and obscures the party’s intentions to cut welfare benefits and lower taxes for high earners.
One of the AfD’s antidotes to “elite”culture is reallocating €5 per person to local communities that can allocate the funds as they please to cultural activities (as long as its “patriotic”, I guess). It’s a clever move: it actually sounds like giving power back to the people. The centre and the left could do well to come up with some new ideas.
Things are looking pretty bleak.
I can’t imagine this shift to “patriotic culture” will do anything to attract skilled workers or investment to Saxony-Anhalt. Seems like a programme to plunge the region into cultural, economic and demographic stagnation. Nonetheless, the AfD is hellbent on building its prototype for a “German-thinking” Germany — which even includes making kids sing the national anthem under the German flag at every school.
Thanks for reading.
Maurice
What else happened this week?
🔍 Cabinet approves intelligence service reforms
🛩️ Germany beefing up anti-drone unit
🪖 Germany not ruling out deporting Ukrainian men of military age
💰 Money-Saving Tip of the Week from Smart Living in Germany
Schufa recently rolled out a new score that's much more transparent than the old one. Instead of a vague 0-100 percentage, it uses a points system based on 12 clearly defined criteria, so you can see exactly what goes into the number. For context, 709 points or more is considered good, 776 or higher excellent. A few habits that help your score: pay your bills on time, bundle credit inquiries within a 28-day window, keep old bank accounts open if they're free, and prefer fewer, larger loans over many small ones.
You can check your score for free with Schufa's official app or bonify, a Schufa subsidiary with a nicer interface. For more tips on managing money in Germany, subscribe to the Smart Living in Germany newsletter.
My other newsletters:
Friends: