“This Is Why People Vote for the AfD”

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In Germany, as in many Western world countries, there has been increased interest in parties on the right. As governments in the West fail to protect their people from unchecked immigration (or even encourage it), and harass small businesses and farmers for ever more inane emissions violations, people have become frustrated and have begun to search for alternatives. In Germany, the party offering a different course is Alternative for Germany, or AfD. In The Spectator, Leon Mangasarian explains the appeal many Germans find in the party’s message. He writes:

Eastern German political frustration, however, is often more concrete than crude racial hatred or antisemitism. Chancellor Scholz’s unpopular government fuels a view in the east that normal citizens have no power over what the government does. A staggering 77 percent say this, according to the Leipzig poll. Given the high-handed style of the Scholz government to passing laws, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

A draft energy bill by Green Party economics and climate protection minister Robert Habeck would have fast-tracked a ban on new gas and oil heating systems in new homes. It could also have affected those using wood for fuel in some situations. Among many Germans, this sparked both fear of freezing in the winter and fury over the cost of up to €30,000 ($33,000) for installing electric heat pumps demanded by the government. The law was subsequently changed but the damage was done. After all, Germany has some of the highest electricity costs in the world, so this is a perfect recipe to tip more people into poverty.

Most people in Bärenklau, population 300, still heat with wood and the planned crackdown on new wood heating systems in certain cases (which was later watered down) sparked not merely disbelief but a sense that Scholz’s cabinet is deranged. The government revamped the legislation but the political damage is massive. Completing the debacle, Germany’s constitutional court halted the bill by ruling that Scholz’s government was trying to ram the law through parliament without giving members time to even study it. The legislation now faces a vote in the autumn after politically festering all summer.

“This is why people vote for the AfD,” said Thomas Fiedler, the Bärenklau village superintendent, who is a non-party independent. “They’re fed up with Green policies that force them to spend money on things they don’t want.’

You may not believe it, but wolves are another reason rural Germans are turning to the AfD. After being eradicated in the nineteenth century, the wolf returned to Germany over the past two decades. The population has exploded and is now estimated at around 2,000. They kill thousands of sheep, calves and other domestic animals each year.

Despite this, successive German leaders, now loudly led by Green-controlled ministries in Scholz’s government, insist on strict protection for wolves and maintaining a ban on hunting them. Kill a wolf and you can go to prison for up to five years in Germany. That the presence of wolves collides with another of the Greens’ priority of fighting industrial farming by keeping livestock grazing in open pastures seems lost on the party.

The AfD has seized on the wolf and crusades for hunting to cut the population. This resonates with rural voters like Bärenklau superintendent Fiedler, who keeps sheep in a fenced pasture 300 yards from my home.

“The wolves have broken in five times since 2016 and killed thirty-six of my sheep,” said Fiedler. Farmers are supposed to be paid state compensation for dead livestock but Fiedler says he’s never received a penny.

“One time they told me I couldn’t prove it was wolves that killed my animals and the next time they said my fence was built wrong,” he said. “There are too many wolves and they have to be reduced – but the parties with their city voters don’t care about us.”

Read more here.