Germany’s firewall against the far right has crumbled – the consequences are immeasurable

It was Monday, February 10, two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, sat for a televised debate, posturing, parrying, each trying to claim ground neither had quite earned. Germany’s snap election is set for February 23, under the shadow of a surging far-right – its march less a creep than a charge.

The Alternative für Deutschland is no longer a spectre on the margins. It is here – shaping the conversation, forcing hands, shifting lines once thought uncrossable.

In the university cafeteria, I met Frederik, 23, a philosophy student at Leipzig University. I asked him about the debate. “I think Scholz did well,” he said, “but his party is moving too close to far-right rhetoric on migration. Scholz is proud of the deportations his government has carried out. That is the kind of statement we expect from the CDU or AfD, with their talk of ‘remigration’. He’s helped make migration the issue of this election – even though, in reality, it isn’t.”

During the debate, Merz had seized Scholz’s record on migration and torn it apart with the blunt force of certainty.

Frederik’s friend Jessi, a law student, nodded. “Apparently, they talked about climate for one minute,” she said. “And that’s considered a long time.”

Priorities have shifted, not by accident but by design....

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