Angela Merkel played a key role in the rise of the AfD (2024)

To no one’s great surprise, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) romped to victory in Sunday’s election in the eastern state of Thuringia. The party, classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s security authorities, also came a close second to the centre-right CDU in Saxony’s election. The result is being described as the first for a far-right party in a German state parliament election since the Second World War.

In response to the AfD’s triumph, German chancellor Olaf Scholz urged other German parties to exclude ‘right-wing extremists’ from power, saying: ‘The AfD is damaging Germany.’

If so, Angela Merkel must share the blame. It is the former chancellor, in power from 2005 to 2021, who surely facilitated the rise of the AfD.

In the 2013 federal elections, the AfD received just over two million votes and no seats in theBundestag. Four years later, nearly six million Germans backed the party and they secured 94 seats in parliament. Now they have won their first state election.

Much of the AfD’s support comes from Germans who are opposed to mass immigration. It was Merkel who, almost nine years ago to the day, implemented this policy when she opened Europe’s doors to an unknown number of refugees and migrants. ‘Germany is a strong country,’ she announced in a press conference on 31 August 2015. ‘The motive with which we approach these things must be: We have achieved so much – we can do it!’

It was a declaration at odds with what Merkel had admitted five years earlier. In a much-publicised speech in October 2010, she said that ‘the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed.’

Her remarks were made a few days after a member of her ruling coalition, Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria, had demanded an end to immigration from Turkey and Arab countries because, in his opinion, they did not integrate well into German society.

More than one million migrants and refugees accepted Merkel’s invitation in 2015 (five times the number of 2014) but the chancellor repeated her ‘we can do it!’ boast in her address to the nation on New Year’s Eve 2015.

Asking Germans to regard the arrivals as ‘an opportunity for tomorrow’, Merkel told her people that ‘countries have always benefited from successful immigration, both economically and socially’.

Hours after her address, hundreds of young women celebrating the New Year in Cologne and other German cities were sexually assaulted. The Guardian reported on 5 January 2016 that ‘authorities and media were accused of a cover-up linked to initial indications that, according to the police, those allegedly responsible for the sex attacks and numerous robberies were of Arab and north African origin.’ In many cases, those responsible were never brought to justice, but Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that a considerable number of the suspects were said to be from North Africa. A police report later concluded that 1,200 women were assaulted, mostly in Cologne and Hamburg, by as many as 2,000 men.

The events rather made a mockery of Time magazine’s decision in December 2015 to anoint Merkel its Person of the Year. It lauded her ‘humanity, generosity, tolerance’ and praised her for welcoming ‘refugees as casualties of radical Islamist savagery, not carriers of it’.

Time’s acclamation of Merkel noted that not everyone agreed with her migrant policy. US president Donald Trump was sceptical, and so were the German intelligence services who warned in a leaked briefing note: ‘We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other people as well as a different understanding of society and law.’

Islamic extremism became a feature of European life in 2016 and 2017: scores were massacred in London, Brussels, Barcelona, Nice, Berlin, Wurzburg, Manchester, Stockholm and Paris.

The terrorist attacks have, in recent years, diminished in scale, if not in regularity, but the anti-Semitism that Merkel’s intelligence chiefs warned her about has taken root in the continent.

Since Hamas’ assault on Israel last October, Jews no longer feel safe in Europe; they and their places of worship have been targeted on a scale not seen since the Second World War. In Berlin, acts of anti-Semitism have reached record levels and Germany’s anti-semitism commissioner has warned that the country is in danger of returning to its ‘most horrific times’.

When Merkel stepped down as chancellor in 2021, much of the world’s media hailed her as Europe’s most successful leader of the century. Her biggest cheerleader remained Time magazine, which declared: ‘Angela Merkel helped save the European Union. That’s an accomplishment that deserves lasting respect.’

An alternative point of view is that Merkel has done more than any other politician to weaken the EU. By throwing open Europe’s borders, she has destabilised German – and the continent’s – politics. Above all, she is responsible for the resurgence of right wing and nationalist parties across Europe. The AfD – as well as Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Giorgia Meloni – all owe a debt of gratitude to Angela Merkel.

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