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President Trump departing Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Saturday for a campaign rally in Clarksville, Tenn.
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Celebrations in the streets of Kabul during the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power on Aug. 15.
Recent historic election victories appear to be putting wind in the sails of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which continues to widen its lead over the establishment and expand its support base.
The post AfD Becomes Most Popular Party in Germany’s Largest State for First Time appeared first on Breitbart.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany at a party meeting in Berlin on Tuesday. One of his biggest problems is explaining to voters, especially younger ones, the need for difficult measures.
The State Parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in eastern Germany where the AfD could soon take power.
AfD’s seemingly unstoppable rise has Friedrich Merz on the ropes.
Recent state elections have been disastrous for Friedrich Merz, who now holds the title of least popular federal chancellor in German history. His Christian Democrat Union (CDU) has suffered catastrophic defeats, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) continues to gain strength. Merz and the political establishment he leads have been left struggling to adapt to a seismic shift in the country’s political landscape.
Two weeks ago, in an election in Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU’s vote share more than halved, falling to just 17 percent, while AfD, under the charismatic Ulrich Siegmund, won a stunning 44 percent of the vote. Saxony-Anhalt may thus become the first state with an AfD government, a prospect that has sent shockwaves through Germany’s “legacy” political parties—the center-right CDU as well as the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP)—and prompted hysteria among the liberal media.
This past Sunday, elections in two more German states dealt further blows to the CDU.
In the north-east state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Merz’s party suffered near-total humiliation: With slightly less than 5 percent—a result that even the chancellor described as “disastrous”—the Christian Democrats failed to clear the threshold necessary to enter parliament. For the first time since 1949, there will be a German state legislature without a single CDU member. Meanwhile, the AfD won 38 percent of the vote, more than doubling its last result and running slightly ahead of the ruling Social Democrats.
And in Berlin, the post-communist Die Linke (“The Left”), led by its top candidate, Elif Eralp, came in first with 26 percent of the vote. Die Linke campaigned on a stridently left-wing agenda, pledging to nationalize large housing companies and offering vociferous criticism of Israel. (At one party event, a rapper performed a song that included the lyrics “death to the IDF,” sparking another debate about antisemitism within the left.) Berlin, with its large and growing Arab population and traditions of political radicalism, has proven fertile ground for this kind of approach. One head of a notorious Arab clan, who has multiple convicted criminal offenders in his extended family, paid a visit to the party’s victory celebration. The CDU fell to a distant second place with less than 19 percent of the votes, and AfD came in third with 16 percent.
The national figures also tell a grim story for Merz and his party. Merz has the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a German sitting chancellor, making him even less popular than his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. He has become a lightning rod for voters’ frustrations. According to a recent survey by pollster Forsa, only 13 percent of respondents are satisfied with Merz’s performance. During appearances, particularly in eastern Germany, he is routinely booed, whistled at, and jeered.
That the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, are undergoing a historic decline is undeniable. Together, their favorability has dropped to roughly 20 percent, the lowest level of support in the postwar era. By contrast, AfD is riding high at nearly 30 percent in national polls (in the five states of the formerly communist East Germany, support is even higher). This, ironically enough, is exactly the opposite of what Merz claimed would happen in 2018, when he pledged to “halve AfD” as part of his bid for leadership of the CDU. That promise has come back to haunt him: In the nearly eight years since, support for AfD has more than doubled.
Part of this is due to Merz’s stumbles. The chancellor is a poor communicator who comes across as arrogant, bossy, and out of touch. He has committed numerous political blunders, including a botched cabinet reshuffle recently, and alienated many of his natural supporters. Those who hoped for a conservative turn under his leadership have been disappointed. His dysfunctional coalition with the Social Democrats is paralyzed and frozen in place, incapable of tackling the country’s fundamental problems.
But the problem is far bigger than Merz. Germany has been on a steeply downward path for quite some time, beginning with Angela Merkel’s 16 years in government. She left behind a catastrophic legacy of uncontrolled mass immigration, primarily from Muslim countries, resulting in enormous welfare costs, rising crime, social disintegration, and worsening conditions in schools and the housing market. And under her successors, Scholz and Merz, the economy has started to deteriorate rapidly as well.
For the past six years, Germany has either been in recession or stagnated. By comparison, real GDP in the United States has increased by more than 15 percent since 2020, while the economies of the United Kingdom, France, and Italy have grown by roughly 5 to 9 percent. Germany’s economy, by contrast, has grown by only 0.2 percent.
China was a profitable export market for German industrial products for more than two decades, but that relationship has now reversed. German companies are increasingly speaking of a “China shock” comparable to the one the United States experienced as a result of intense import competition in the 2000s.
But not all of the economic damage has come from Chinese competition. In a rash reaction to the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Merkel’s government decided to shut down the country’s nuclear power plants. To fill the gap, Germany imported more Russian natural gas. After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that has been stopped, and German energy costs have soared even higher. Thanks to failed green-energy policies, high taxes, and adverse geopolitical developments, Germany’s energy costs are now among the highest in Europe.
The combination of high energy costs, high taxes, welfare-state contributions, and bureaucratic red tape now places such a heavy burden on companies that Germany is experiencing record numbers of insolvencies. Core sectors of the German economy, such as the automotive and chemical industries, are now cutting thousands of jobs, shutting down plants, and even leaving the country altogether. Add to this the experience of mass migration and failed integration, declining public safety, and a political class that chose to ignore reality and silence its critics, and you are left with a picture of a country sleepwalking toward the abyss.
The old parties—particularly the CDU and the SPD—have sown the seeds of their own destruction. They are now much-diminished forces compared with what they were ten or twenty years ago. Faced with the rise of AfD, they are like so many deer caught in the headlights.
To fight AfD, they have tried a combination of repression and intimidation directed at its members and voters. As I’ve written before in these pages, such measures have included the domestic spy agency’s labelling of the party as “extremist”; massive public pressure and propaganda (including warnings about a supposed return of the Nazis); and the enlistment of public broadcasters and mainstream media, churches, publicly subsidized NGOs, and other organizations into a campaign of vilification. Yet these efforts have seemingly come to nothing.
Merz famously promised that “the left is over” when he campaigned to become chancellor in early 2025. But many German conservatives believe he has failed to deliver. It’s true that the Greens, who were the default hard-left option in public discourse and elite thinking for many years, are facing headwinds. But they remain a powerful force, and the CDU has not dared to fundamentally reverse course on major policy issues such as energy or migration. Merkel opened the borders to unlimited asylum migration in 2015. Under Merz, the number of new asylum seekers and refugees has been reduced, but the consequences of admitting something like 3 million migrants over the past decade remain.
The dysfunctional Merz government depends on a coalition with the Social Democrats that has achieved only limited reforms in areas such as welfare, taxation, and energy policy. A leading center-right CDU politician in the Bundestag, whom I spoke with last week, expressed deep frustration over the lack of progress. Some parts of the SPD would prefer to side with the post-communists. The coalition is holding together largely because both sides are bound by their fear of AfD.
The situation has triggered speculation that the Christian Democrats might seek to replace Merz. To shore up his position, last week the eight CDU minister-presidents who govern Germany’s federal states issued a statement seemingly signaling their support for Merz (though, interestingly, the document did not mention him by name, instead promising to “solve problems together with our chancellor”).
Although Merz is deeply unpopular and the CDU is reeling from recent electoral hammer blows, I don’t think he will be replaced anytime soon. The simple reason is that none of the CDU grandees in the states want his job under the current dire circumstances.
If Merz were to go, though, the most likely successor would be Hendrik Wüst, the telegenic and slick minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, who governs in coalition with the Greens. A federal government under Wüst’s leadership would probably move further to the left, in a bid to win over urban liberal voters. Wüst represents a tendency within the CDU that is willing to form a national government with the Greens. He has also called for a working group to consider initiating the process of banning AfD (a common rallying cry among the Left, the Greens, and the SPD).
It is an open question whether a Germany that bans its most popular political party would still be a democracy. That such a move is even under consideration speaks to the depth and intensity of the divisions currently roiling German politics.
And although AfD seems here to stay, it has heretofore only acted as an opposition force. So if the party succeeds in forming a government in Saxony-Anhalt, things could take yet another turn. Governing would compel the party to demonstrate its administrative capabilities, putting it in charge of a state in a rather dire fiscal situation. Not only would putting the state’s finances in order come as a reality check, but AfD would also be under significant pressure to make good on its promises to deport large numbers of illegal or criminal migrants. Given the legal constraints in the German system, that is far easier said than done.
But whatever happens at the state level, the grievances that have propelled AfD’s rise have remade the political landscape. To acknowledge this new reality, Germany’s so-called liberal elites should accept that the party is a legitimate political force with which they must reckon.
The post Will Germany’s Chancellor Go Down? appeared first on The American Conservative.
In Saxony-Anhalt, anti-Western agitators suffered a major setback.
Hide your kids, hide your wife. For the first time since the Nazis (cue woman screaming), a far-right party won a German election this week.
At least, that’s the mainstream media’s narrative about the stunning results of a state election held Sunday. In the eastern province of Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 44 percent of the vote, trouncing the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), which finished second with a measly 17 percent.
“This was the most significant election we’ve had in Germany since the fall of the Berlin wall,” Filip Gaspar, a political advisor and member of the AfD, told The American Conservative. “Something big is going on.”
Liberal elites find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. “Let’s be clear, this is not just a right-wing party that we call ‘far-right,’” explained Ben Rhodes, a former advisor to Barack Obama, on a podcast. “This is a far-right party.”
Maybe so, but as the shepherd boy learned when a wolf really did attack his flock, at some point the villagers stop believing you. To the dismay of liberals across the Western world, all the scary talk about the return of Nazism doesn’t intimidate voters nearly as much as it used to—even, gasp, in Germany.
From a right-wing perspective, of course, AfD is the shepherd, not a prowling predator, and it’s trying to protect Germany from the biggest and baddest wolf of all: mass migration.
Liberal analysts tend to pathologize right-wing views, treating them as outgrowths of economic anxieties and déclassé resentment, but opposition to mass migration is clearly the main driver of support for right-wing parties. Conservative voters never fully bought into the idea that their historic nations don’t or shouldn’t exist, that they are merely “civic” nations comprising a hodgepodge of disconnected strangers.
That’s certainly true of conservative voters in Germany, especially in the east, where Soviet domination during the Cold War habituated residents to rolling their eyes at state-imposed ideology. Flouting liberal orthodoxy, the AfD promises to halt and reverse mass migration lest ethnic Germans become an aging and despised minority in their own ancestral homeland. To you and me, that sounds like common sense. But to the blinkered technocrats in Berlin and Brussels, it sounds like Nazism.
That’s why the AfD’s ascendance is uniquely significant for right-wingers across the Western world. It proves that the official mythology of the Second World War is losing its power over political discourse. That mythology—which puts Nazi crimes at the center of Western history—underpins the hegemony of liberalism. Whenever any right-wing politician or party challenges liberal pieties, just evoke the mustached psychopath who tried to conquer Europe and voilà, the rising challenger will soon crash into a hard ceiling of support.
Breakdowns of ideological hegemony can be exhilarating—and also dangerous. In the 1920s, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci observed that Western states relied more on ideological consent than brute force, but that the latter came to the fore whenever the former failed to materialize. Gramsci ought to have known: The left-wing subversive developed his theory from inside a prison cell.
Thus, one sign of the collapse of liberal hegemony in Germany is that the government has been employing coercive means to preserve the establishment’s control. Last year, the domestic intelligence agency responsible for protecting the constitution—or Verfassungsschutz—labeled the AfD a right-wing extremist party. That designation, which remains under legal review, enables the agency to surveil the party’s communications and even dispatch informants to spy on its meetings.
There’s just one problem. Since then, the AfD has become the most popular party in Germany. More and more, the Berlin establishment appears to be thwarting the democratic will of the German people, not protecting the constitution from “extremists.” And more and more, opponents of the AfD sound like the actual extremists.
It’s a strange habit of many European liberals to dismiss their right-wing compatriots as a radical faction no matter how numerous they become. During an interview with The American Conservative this January, Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, recounted a strange conversation with one such European liberal:
I had a hostile reporter grilling me, and he said, “Can you name anyone in any of these countries who support you, who’s not in one of these right-wing parties?” And he listed these parties: Reform, National Rally, AfD. And I said, “If you look at the polls in these countries, Reform is the largest chunk of Brits; that’s the plurality of Brits. National Rally is the largest chunk of French; that’s the plurality of French. So, you’re basically accusing me of drawing most of my European support from people who are in the majority European opinion.”
Rogers can now add the AfD to that list, though the ruling class in Germany remains loath to acknowledge political reality. On the eve of this week’s election, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated that his CDU party would never form a coalition with the AfD. Many things, he said, were up for discussion, and many things were open to change, but one specific thing made the AfD verboten: “Germany has left nationalism behind and will never again allow ethnic nationalism in Germany.”
Merz said the rejection of ethnic nationalism (in German, Völkisch nationalism) was necessary to ensure that Germany remained a broadly European country. Yet it’s precisely non-European migration—and the refusal by politicians like Merz to stop it—that has fueled the backlash against liberalism. To my knowledge, Norwegians and Czechs haven’t been ramming their cars into revelers at Christmas markets in formerly quaint German towns.
German right-wingers detect a political calculation, rather than ideological conviction, in the CDU’s continued refusal to work with the AfD. “Some of them really believe that the AfD is a new Nazi party,” Gaspar conceded. “But for the more normal people, it’s just about power. If the CDU forms a coalition or government [with the AfD], they won’t be the ruling party in this coalition, they’ll be the little brother.”
Regardless of what actually motivates Merz, Sunday’s results didn’t seem to induce much critical reflection. Speaking after the election, the chancellor maligned the AfD’s policy of remigration as “ethnic cleansing,” though he didn’t consider the corollary: that mass migration has amounted to displacement and dispossession for ethnic Germans. Perhaps he thinks the Germans deserved it. “We know that Germany carries special responsibility because of its history,” he added.
But no people carries the responsibility to commit collective suicide, and anyway, the anti-Western agitators don’t distinguish between the land of Adolf Hitler and the nations that fought against him. This week in Saxony-Anhalt, the agitators and their masochistic ideology suffered a major defeat, and right-wingers across Europe and in America should thank the AfD for that.
The post AfD Just Shattered Liberal Mythology appeared first on The American Conservative.
German Chancellor Merz's meltdown continues, but respected historians warn claim AfD want to commit "ethnic cleansing" is factually wrong.
The post German Chancellor Claims Remigration Is ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Outburst After AfD Victory, then Gets Brutally Fact Checked appeared first on Breitbart.
Ulrich Siegmund, left, the lead Alternative for Germany candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, with the party’s co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, in Magdeburg, Germany, on Sunday.
Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor and the Christian Democratic Union party leader, at a press briefing in Berlin on Monday.
Ulrich Siegmund, an Alternative for Germany candidate, speaking in Magdeburg, Germany, after Saxony-Anhalt state elections on Sunday.
Tino Chrupalla, left, and Alice Weidel, right, co-leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, with Ulrich Siegmund, center, the party’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, in Berlin on Monday.
Ulrich Siegmund, center, the lead candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany, celebrating after polls closed on Sunday.
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Ulrich Siegmund, the Alternative for Germany party’s main candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. Surveys suggest the far-right party could be the first to win a German state election since World War II.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is the most unpopular leader on record in modern history as the nation's economy continues to struggle and immigration continues to dominate headlines.
The post Chancellor Merz Most Unpopular German Leader on Record in Modern History appeared first on Breitbart.
The Italian government is pushing back against Germany's efforts to resume sending back illegal migrants who entered E.U. territory through Italy in the past.
The post Reports: Rome Rejects Germany’s Plans to Send Migrants Back to Italy appeared first on Breitbart.
The insurgent Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's lead over the governing party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has grown to a record gap, as the Berlin establishment continues to suffer amid persistent economic woes.
The post Populist AfD Surges to Record Lead over German Chancellor’s Party appeared first on Breitbart.
Jens Spahn, parliamentary group leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party, in the plenary hall during a session at the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of Parliament, in December.
A prominent member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's centre-right party came under fire on Friday for having a child through a surrogate pregnancy in the United States, despite the practice being illegal in Germany.
The post German Lawmaker Sparks Criticism over Having Child Via US Surrogacy appeared first on Breitbart.
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and his coalition partners are trying to hold off far-right challengers.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, second from left, in Berlin with his governing partners on Thursday.
A building that was struck by a Russian attack drone in Galati, eastern Romania, in May. Reconnaissance drone flights in Western Europe are a different kind of problem that experts say reflects a systematic Russian campaign.
Europe is quickly learning that China has no interest in addressing unsustainable trade imbalances.
The post Breitbart Business Digest: China Pukes on Merz’s Plaza Accord Proposal appeared first on Breitbart.
President Donald Trump arrived at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Evian, France with a humorous summary of the geopolitical situation, telling the assembled reporters and world leaders: “I’m the boss.”
The post Trump Tells G7 and Ukraine’s Zelensky: ‘I’m the Boss’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Leaders meeting during the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, in France, on Tuesday.
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Shinjiro Koizumi, Japan’s defense minister, and his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, at a naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, in March. The countries have been building up their militaries.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius lamented the failure of the joint 100 billion euro France-Germany project to build a next-generation European fighter jet — noting his disappointment at an outcome that “hurts a lot.” Pistorius affirmed that Berlin is assessing alternate
The post German Defense Minister on Failed 100B Euro Fighter Jet Project: ‘Hurts a Lot’ appeared first on Breitbart.
France and Germany agreed to scrap their joint-yet-troubled 100 billion euro project to build a next-generation European fighter jet after stakeholders failed to agree on just which country would be in overall charge.
The post Europe Rearm Blunder: France and Germany Scrap Troubled 100B Euro Fighter Jet Project appeared first on Breitbart.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Sunday that Europe must play a key role in any negotiations to end the war with Russia as he arrived for talks in London with staunch European allies in the wake of a Russian drone strike that killed three people.
The post Starmer Hosts Zelensky, Merz, and Macron for Downing Street Ukraine Talks appeared first on Breitbart.
Germany, for the first time in its history, failed to secure a temporary seat in the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday in what Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described as a "bitter defeat" for the European nation.
The post ‘Bitter Defeat’ — Germany Fails to Secure U.N. Security Council Seat, Blames Russia appeared first on Breitbart.
Residents near a building that was struck by Russian drone in Galati, eastern Romania, on Friday.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed granting Ukraine an unprecedented "Associate Member" position within the European Union — which would bring Kyiv closer to the 27-country bloc as it continues its years-long pursuit towards attaining full membership status.
The post Germany’s Friedrich Merz Calls for ‘Associate’ E.U. Membership for Ukraine appeared first on Breitbart.
Big majority of Germans say they are "concerned" about the state of the government and say they see no political options for improvement.
The post Most Germans Worried About State of Their Country as Populist Right Rides High in the Polls appeared first on Breitbart.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz meeting with people in Würzburg, Germany, on Friday.
Merz keeps up his campaign of snide asides against President Trump with warning to avoid education or work in America.
The post Bad ‘Social Climate’: Chancellor Merz Warns Young Germans Against Moving to America appeared first on Breitbart.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany is one of several European leaders who has openly criticized President Trump.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and Alexander Dobrindt, the country’s interior minister, at a meeting in Berlin last week. They have cast Iranian threats linked to the war as largely hypothetical.
Chancellor Merz's bid to bolster his domestic image by appearing tough on President Trump appears to have gained him little traction, with the German leader enjoying rock-bottom approval domestically and the lowest approval of any major European leader.
The post Trump Critic German Chancellor Merz Plunges to Least Popular Leader in Europe appeared first on Breitbart.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has claimed that Europe has "gotten the message" from President Donald Trump, who has vowed consequences for the disloyalty displayed by supposed allies during the conflict with the Islamist Iranian regime.
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Soldiers at a U.S. training facility in Hohenfels, southern Germany, last month.
President Donald Trump has said that far more troop reductions are in the offing after the Pentagon announced on Friday that some 5,000 U.S. soldiers would be withdrawn from bases in Germany over the coming year.
The post Trump Says U.S. Will Withdraw ‘A Lot’ More Than 5,000 Troops From Germany appeared first on Breitbart.
The United States has announced that it intends to withdraw thousands of troops from bases in Germany over the next year as the Trump administration looks to reshape its forward deployment posture following the conflict in Iran
The post Trump Administration to Withdraw Thousands of Troops From NATO Ally Germany, Pentagon Says appeared first on Breitbart.
President Trump speaking with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany in March in the Oval Office.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on Monday. He told a group of German students that the Iranian government had “humiliated” America with its slow-walk approach to negotiating an end to the war.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, warning that “the whole World would be held hostage” if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon as he pushed back on the German leader’s criticism of the U.S. approach to the conflict.
The post Trump Blasts German Chancellor Merz over Iran: ‘Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About’ appeared first on Breitbart.
European leaders continued their talks on the Iran war on Friday, considering a peacekeeping mission to be launched after the war has ended.
The post Leading From The Rear: Macron and Starmer Announce Hormuz Mission After Trump Opens It appeared first on Breitbart.
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