"Berlin -- In this city last week, I met a political pariah. Beatrix von Storch is deputy leader in the German Bundestag of the ultraconservative Alternative for Germany, or AfD. Although the AfD last month became the parliament's second-largest party, she says scarcely any German reporters have talked to her. I spoke to five prominent Berlin-based journalists, and not one had met her. A couple of them shuddered when I mentioned her name -- a memorable name, as she was born a duchess in the German House of Oldenburg and is related to Britain's King Charles III.
Germany's political and media elite treat her and her party like lepers. "They delegitimize us," Ms. von Storch says, "when they address us as far-right extremists." This can be the kiss of political death in Germany, "especially if you call someone a 'Nazi.' That means they don't have to talk with you. They don't have to debate you, or respect you. It means you're wrong in every way and can be ignored."
The AfD won 20.8% of the vote in the February elections, giving it 152 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag -- 69 more than it won in 2021. It won a plurality in every state in the former East Germany except the unified city-state of Berlin. The center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPD, which led the old coalition government, was trounced. The center-right Christian Democratic Union won 208 seats, less than one-third of the total, so it will need to form a coalition. The likely CDU chancellor, Friedrich Merz, rules out any pact with the AfD outcasts. Instead he's haggling with the rejected SPD to form a coalition of right and left, which would hold a precarious 12-seat majority in the Bundestag.
Germany is a country of two walls. The first, which divided this city for 28 years until its fall in 1989, exists only in a few fading urban scars that serve as tourist landmarks. The other is a firewall that shuts out the "far-right" AfD from "mainstream" German political parties. But only the CDU won more votes than the AfD in the Feb. 23 election. So what does "mainstream" mean?
The firewall excludes from power and polite society a party for which 1 in 5 Germans voted. That's the sort of elitist ostracism against which Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have spoken out, much to the consternation of "mainstream" Germany. Ms. von Storch credits Messrs. Vance and Musk with making it "more difficult to exclude us from public debate. You can dislike Vance, but when the administration of this very powerful country just accepts us, like they should, it makes it difficult for the rest of German society to ignore us."
Ms. von Storch points to an asymmetry. Germany has a "crazy left" -- Die Linke, a descendant of the East German communists. "But they don't have a firewall. I call them extremists, the elite don't." Extremism is an epithet "reserved in Germany for the right."
What does the AfD stand for? Ms. von Storch starts by describing its differences from the CDU. Her party, which began in 2013 as a Euroskeptic outfit, wants to end the dilution of national sovereignty that has occurred in the European Union in the past two decades. "We do not want to have a political union," she says. Hers is an earlier vision of "a huge, big common market. That's good. A free exchange of goods within the union, with free trade and free movement of people. The precondition of course is that the external border must be protected against illegals and criminals." Angela Merkel, the erstwhile CDU chancellor who admitted more than a million refugees in 2015, is the AfD's bete noire.
The AfD doesn't urge a German exit from the EU, but its goals are unclear. The party would replace the euro. But what with? Either a return to the deutschemark or "a new, shared currency involving countries who are comparable to ours, like Austria or Finland or the Netherlands," Ms. von Storch says. That seems like fantasy.
Another focus of disagreement with the established parties is Russia. "Sanctions against Russia do not serve German interests," she says. "We are harming ourselves more than the Russians." She insists that Russia was provoked by Ukraine and Western governments "who pushed to integrate Ukraine into NATO and the EU."
This position, anathema to the CDU and SPD, is akin to the view of the Trump administration. Ms. von Storch makes clear her contempt for Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, whom she describes as "corrupt." She adds: "I want to see where all the money went."
Critics say the AfD is anti-American, but Ms. von Storch insists it isn't. "We always make clear that there is not one America, but two, the woke one and the MAGA one. We were against the Biden and Harris administration, who were in favor of open borders. We were against everything they represented. But we're not against this antiwoke administration."
The AfD does, however, object to the manner in which the German government plans to comply with President Trump's demand that Germany increase defense spending -- by insulating the increase from a constitutional balanced-budget provision. Ms. von Storch calls this a "constitutional coup."
On the vexed question of Nazis in the AfD -- which prompted Marine Le Pen of France's National Rally to distance herself from the German party -- Ms. von Storch blames a particular AfD candidate, Maximilian Krah, "who made all kinds of silly comments. I do perfectly understand why Marine Le Pen was not happy." In May 2024, Mr. Krah said that the SS were "not all criminals."
But Ms. von Storch is adamant that "I've never met a Nazi in our party." She has, however, "met some idiots, who were making stupid remarks or tweets. We're a party of 60,000 members, and you will always find some idiots anywhere."
She says the AfD has tried to expel "idiots," but German law makes it hard for political parties to expel members. Proof of that can be seen in the SPD's inability to boot Gerhard Schroder (1998-2005), the former chancellor who went to work for Russian energy companies like Gazprom, Nord Stream and Rosneft after leaving office.
One has to wonder how hard the party has tried. Mr. Krah, for instance, is back in the Bundestag after having been given a place on the AfD's electoral list, as has Matthias Helferich, who has likened himself to Roland Freisler, a Nazi-era judge.
The likes of Mr. Krah notwithstanding, Ms. von Storch is confident that the CDU will have to work with the AfD "sooner rather than later." But she's pretty sure it won't happen under a Chancellor Merz: "They will have to get rid of him."
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Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at NYU Law School's Classical Liberal Institute." [1]
1. What Does the AfD Stand For? Varadarajan, Tunku. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 19 Mar 2025: A15.
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