(LifeSiteNews) — The result of the German federal elections Sunday was announced the same day they were held, delivering first place to the “conservative” Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) on 28 percent of the vote, and second place to the populist and MAGA-allied Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 21 percent.
Despite more than doubling its vote share since 2020, taking almost a quarter of the 630 parliamentary seats, the populist party is unlikely to enter government.
All other German parties have agreed to a “firewall” – forbidding any of them from ever cooperating with AfD to form a government. The most obvious partner, the winning CDU/CSU, has 208 seats – far short of the 316 it requires for a governing majority.
AfD leader Alice Weidel warned yesterday evening that “if the CDU commits electoral fraud by entering coalition with the left, the next election will come sooner than you think. Then we will overtake the CDU as the strongest force. This is our goal.”
Even the victorious CDU leader Friedrich Merz said the AfD’s strong showing was a “real alarm bell” for the liberal globalist consensus – as he insisted no talks would take place to govern with AfD.
Though the AfD is reported to have won over 150 seats, a coalition with them has been ruled out under an anti-populist arrangement known as the “Brandmauer,” or “firewall.”
The result in Germany shows the crisis in European liberal democracy: it can only continue if it bans parties with popular politics.
Germany divided – with the AfD taking almost all of the former East Germany. (Source: X)
The German parliament discussed banning the AfD weeks before the election, placing it under state surveillance four years ago. Violently suppressed, AfD members have suffered a surge of violent attacks for almost 10 years. Regional party chairman Frank Magnitz was “beaten unconscious” in 2019, and a councilor stabbed last June following a rising number of assaults on party officials.
Marine Le Pen’s similarly right-populist National Assembly (RN) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) are also “firewalled” from governing. The French government which emerged from elections last summer collapsed in December, with new elections expected in July this year. The “far-right” FPO of Austria came first in the elections, but five months later Austrian parties are still struggling to form a government without them.
This means that in Europe democracy must be suspended to save democracy, much as how European Union (EU) leader Ursula von der Leyen has moved to limit free speech. Her Orwellian “European Democracy Shield” was announced in May 2024 – presenting Europe-wide censorship as a vital defense against the freedom of speech.
The lesson from Europe is that free speech is a danger to democracy, as are parties with increasingly popular policies. This is neither very liberal nor democratic, of course. Can these measures succeed in preventing populism from replacing liberal globalism?
The anti-war, pro-remigration AfD could rule alongside the CDU with an absolute and solid majority providing Germany with a stable government. Yet the pact against democracy forbids this.
Instead, a range of options is presented. Perhaps the CDU will form a coalition with the globalist SPD, described as “center-left,” whose disastrous tenure under Olaf Scholz in the outgoing coalition has seen Germany rapidly deindustrialize whilst migrant stabbings and terror attacks have punctuated national life.
A deal with the 120-seat SPD would require further partners for a majority.
The Greens could return here, whose party provided the pro-war Annalena Baerbock as former foreign minister, and an economy minister in Robert Habeck who steered Germany into a national debt crisis.
It was under this coalition that the Nord Stream pipeline mysteriously exploded, cutting Germany off from the cheap Russian gas which powered its formerly thriving industrial sector.
Should the CDU govern with these parties it would be unlikely to produce any real change. The “conservative” and globalist CDU promised a five-point migration reduction plan and also offered to retire the Green Party mandate on the replacement of domestic heating with “green” alternatives.
These promises are unlikely to be kept if power is shared with the parties who promoted these policies.
The CDU governed Germany for 16 years under the East German-born Angela Merkel, once known as “Mutti” or “mama” for her familiar stewardship of the German state. She famously shrugged off the arrival of over a million migrants in 2015 with the phrase “We can handle that” – speaking of a crisis which is said to have driven the AfD from nowhere in 2013 to command a fifth of the national vote.
Ten years on from the migrant crisis, many political commentators are saying that Sunday’s election results saw the AfD as the “clear winners” – presaging a future in which Germans flock to them, as “neither the center-left nor the center-right can fix Germany’s problems,” as Stuart Jones from the Atlantic Council’s Europe center says.
These problems are caused, of course, by the pursuit of globalist liberal policies by parties of the so-called left and right. Given this is the case, it is obvious why many Germans, French, and Austrians are voting against these parties – whose strategy for survival is the suspension of democracy.
This may explain the concern expressed by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who told EU leaders last week that their censorship and suppression of democracy was no way for a friend of America to behave.
READ: JD Vance exposed European elites’ anti-democratic hypocrisy in his bombshell Munich speech
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” Vance added. “Nor, for that matter, is there anything you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.”
As The Hill reported, Vance also extended his criticism to the British government: “Vance attacked European Union ‘commissars’ for censoring ‘hateful content.’ He called out the United Kingdom for a ‘backslide away from conscience rights.’”
Last summer, a popular German comedian called for the killing of AfD and FPO politicians. The German state prosecutor did not think there was a case to answer.
With the AfD condemned by German and European media and leaders as “far right” for seeking to end migrant crime and reverse uncontrolled mass migration, Vance said concern over the issue was one he understood, and whose significance also showed the serious problems with European and British liberal democracy.
“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” Vance said. “More and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out of control migration. I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns. You don’t have to agree with me, I just think that people care.”
President Donald Trump echoed Vance’s concerns over the state of democracy in Europe, which both men agreed was not threatened by Russia or China – but a “threat from within,” as Vance said on February 14.
Trump added that Vance’s concerns over “freedom of speech” are “true in Europe … they’re losing their wonderful right of freedom of speech.”
“Europe has to be careful,” Trump concluded.
With a “stubbornly pro-EU” party coming first in the German elections, it would seem the problem of forming a stable government in Germany is complicated by an obvious collision course with the pro-democracy, pro-populist, and pro-free speech Trump administration, whose members such as Elon Musk have famously celebrated the AfD as the “only hope” for the future of Germany.
The firewall preventing popular politics from exercising power has held for now. Its existence threatens the survival of democracy and free speech in Europe, as well as perhaps the future of European nations themselves.
The last time a wall fell in Germany it heralded the end of a stagnant, godless empire seen as the enemy of America. It seems that Europe will have to wait a little while longer for their liberation from another. How long is anyone’s guess, but it is likely to be sooner than later.
