Hamburg after Bologna, or glimmers of hope when prospects are dire

With the far right dominant in so many countries, we need to take what pleasure we can from the glimmers of hope that show up every now and again in certain places.

I wrote recently about the surprising but heartwarming achievement of a popular movement called the ‘Sardines’ in keeping the hard populist right out of power in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. That’s the area that includes Bologna and Parma, and I’d learned to respect it already as the home of Bolognese sauce, Parmesan cheese and Parma ham.

“Also the best mortadella,” my wife Danielle admonished me, when I made the mistake of buying some of the Spanish variety in our local supermarket.

Emilia-Romagna doesn’t have a coastline, so I wouldn’t have expected sardines from there. The human variety, however, so-called because their rallies are so well attended they have to squeeze into public squares, have proved even more appealing than the mortadella.

Their impact? Matteo Salvini, homophobic and xenophobic leader of the far right League movement, was denied a much anticipated victory in the region despite having personally devoted significant time and prestige to the campaign. A rare upset to a rampant right, still in the ascendancy across a world where even someone who has done as much as Donald Trump to torpedo his own prospects, nonetheless stands a good chance of re-election.

This week produced another glimmer of hope to set alongside Reggio Emilia. Another regional election, this time in the great German city and federal state of Hamburg, on 23 February.

SPD members celebrating the Hamburg results

Curiously, the standard party of the centre left, the Social Democrats or SPD, lost four seats. They were left with 54 out of 123 seats in the state chamber, eight short of a majority.

That, however, was more than made up for by the Greens gaining an extraordinary 18 seats, more than doubling their representation to 33.

The party of the far left, simply called ‘The Left’ (Die Linke) also increased its presence by two seats to 13.

If you’ve been adding up these numbers as we go, you’ll have seen that the three parties of the Left between them accumulated 100 seats, a huge majority of the Chamber. So what happened to the Right?

The traditional conservative party, the Christian Democrats or CDU, lost five seats to emerge with just 15. That was the CDU’s worst-ever result in the city. It was probably being punished for having flirted with the far-right Alternative for Germany party or AfD in another State recently. 

The party that likes to present itself as liberal, the Free Democrats or FDP, was reduced to a single seat. 

But the best result of all was what happened to the hard-right AfD itself.

Far from making any advance, it lost a seat to just seven and its vote share fell to 5.3%. The threshold for a party list to win any representation is 5%, so it is teetering on the brink of exclusion from the State Parliament. That was the price of having maintained unremitting anti-immigrant rhetoric which was rightly seen to having contributed to a right-wing terrorist attack in Hanau a few days earlier. 

Mourning the ten victims of right-wing terrorism in Hanau

That made the slap in the AfD’s face all the more deserved. And all the more welcome. Couldn’t have happened to a better bunch.

Two such results so far this year. It’s not much. Straws in the wind and no more. But they’re encouraging straws in a wind blowing in the right direction.

They show it can be done. Which means we can do it again.

Germany learned how to deal with the far right. Time the rest of us did.

The xenophobic European Right, in attacking the European Union, often criticises the dominant role of Germany. Which is interesting, because one of Germany’s most striking characteristics is its political maturity. It’s often said that if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re condemned to repeating them; Germany made the most catastrophic of political errors when it let its extreme right into power, but it has learned the lesson, and is now perhaps the nation least likely to fall into that trap.

No wonder organisations like UKIP in Britain distrust Germany so profoundly.

Some years ago, I read a study based on an American academic’s doctoral thesis, The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. The author, David Art, contrasted German attitudes towards its past with the behaviour of Austria, which likes to present itself as the Nazis’ first victims. Austrians were incorporated into the Third Reich by force when German troops came across the border, but no one’s fooled: the majority of the population greeted the invaders with cries of joy.

The Germans by contrast have gone through an intense period of introspection and examination of a repellent period of their history. There is a widespread consensus to regard it as shameful. The result? Where in Austria the rise of the extreme right “Freedom Party” seemed irresistible, culminating in its leader becoming deputy Chancellor, in Germany the corresponding party, the Republicans (REP), had only a flash in the pan: it enjoyed a brief rise, even winning a few seats in parliament, and then faded into obscurity again.

Why did it vanish so quickly? Because no one would give them the time of day. Specifically, the Conservative CDU decided have nothing to do with them. They adopted a policy of “marginalisation” (Ausgrenzung). David Art explains that it:

…prohibited personal contact with REP politicians, reliance on REP votes to pass legislation, and support for any REP candidate or proposal. This occurred at every political level. Party members in communal parliaments were instructed to vote against even the most mundane proposals of the REPs, such as installation of traffic lights, on principle. Members of the CDU and FDP [their Liberal allies] who violated the policy of Ausgrenzung were immediately kicked out of their parties.

The CDU in several parts of Germany also officially classified the REPs as threats to the Constitution, which brought them under observation by the Verfassungschutz, the “Constitution Protection” police.

What this meant is that supporters of the REPs were liable to police surveillance, while voters began to understand that no elected REP member, at local or national level, would ever be able to realise any concrete measure: no one would allow him into a coalition, even if that was the only way of securing power for themselves, or pass any proposal he put forward, even if they agreed with it. Quickly voters learned that lesson too, and stopped backing REP candidates. The party vanished into the obscurity it so richly deserved.

Which makes what happened at the weekend in Britain particularly instructive. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was twice asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, whether he would ever consider a coalition with UKIP. Twice he refused to rule it out.

Two Conservative politicians
But Cameron doesn't know how to resist the far right – while Merkel does

So it looks as though our Conservative party, unlike its sister party in Germany, has opted for the Austrian approach rather than the German one. Austria gave the extreme right the oxygen it needed to flourish, and that opened the road to nearly the highest office in the land. In Germany by contrast, they cold shouldered the corresponding toxic movement – and drove it back to where it belonged.

All this has become topical again because a new far right movement, similar to UKIP, has recently emerged in Germany. PEGIDA has much in common with UKIP, in its xenophobia and Islamophobia. But Angela Merkel has denounced them publicly, and today the Bild tabloid paper, usually similar to Britain’s Sun with its xeonophobic inclinations, publishes a call from fifty leading figures, including a former Social Democrat Chancellors and a former national football team captain, calling for opposition to PEGIDA and appealing for tolerance.

No wonder UKIP supporters dislike Germany so much. It has shown it won’t again fall prey to the far right, and is mobilising to make sure it doesn’t happen. In the UK, with an ambivalent Conservative Party, and a general environment that guiltily collaborates with xenophobia and Islamophobia, it sees an opportunity.

My own feeling? If the Germans can marginalise the far right and uphold tolerance, so can other nations. And we should. With no further delay.