Does my country want me? Germany's historic far-right election gain worries me. | Opinion
Shunned by liberal Germans, anti-immigration AfD is now the second strongest party in Germany. This is the party endorsed by Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance.
BERLIN — After our federal election Sunday, I looked at a map of Germany, its tree-shaped silhouette colored according to the winners of each constituency, and I worried about our future.
The Western part was largely shaded in the black of the conservatives, whose 69-year old leader Friedrich Merz won the election with 28.5% of the vote by campaigning on more deportations, less taxes and a “spiritual and moral turnaround" to "German values” like punctuality, hard work and a mandatory year of social service for young people.
Eastern Germany, in contrast, was a sea blue, the color of the far-right Alternative for Germany. Except for Berlin, the leftist capital. Represented by Alice Weidel, a 46-year old gay woman married to a woman born in Sri Lanka, AfD has doubled its share to 20.8% by campaigning for a massive deportation offensive, the restoration of the Deutsche mark and, somewhat paradoxically, the ideal of the traditional family model of man, woman and children.
Shunned by liberal Germans, AfD has become the second strongest party in the country and, arguably, the driving force behind a national debate obsessed with immigration. This is the party favored by President Donald Trump's inner circle and endorsed by Vice President JD Vance and adviser Elon Musk.
Musk calls far-right AfD the 'last spark of hope' for Germany
Much like MAGA, the AfD counts white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers among its ranks. But neither scandals nor court convictions leave a dent on its popularity.
In an interview with Musk, who called the AfD the “last spark of hope" for Germany, Weidel claimed that Adolf Hitler was a “communist.”
Another time, she echoed the Trump administration's stance in saying that Russia has been blamed for the war in Ukraine “far too one-sidedly.”
To many Germans, the seemingly unstoppable rise of the AfD is an existential threat that is far from over. It seems to be only a matter of time until the blue parts spill over into the black ones. Weidel and her co-leader Tino Chrupalla are already eyeing Germany's next federal elections in four years, boasting that they will become the biggest party by then.
What kind of future does Germany have in store for my family?
Born in 1982 in West Berlin to Vietnamese parents, I grew up in the '90s, the period after German reunification. As collective euphoria gave way to national volatility, an ugly asylum debate swept the country, creating a climate of mistrust against anyone who looked or sounded different.
Back then, people called me an "Ausländer," a foreigner, even though I was born in this country. And even though I had a German passport and spoke German perfectly, I grew up with the sense of not really belonging here.
It was only much later that I read about the racist attacks that had taken place during those years. Mölln, 1992: three members of Turkish family dead. Solingen, 1993: five members of a Turkish family dead. Rostock, 1992, hundreds of neo-Nazis besieged and attacked a tower block housing mainly Vietnamese contract workers over several days.
Vance scolds German leaders for political 'firewall,' meets with AfD leader
Conservative leader Friedrich Merz, who first entered German parliament in 1994, is very much a man of that era. Will we return to the past as he moves into the chancellery and seeks to undo Angela Merkel's “welcome culture”?
According to Merz, it was a breach of law that the former chancellor let in a million refugees in 2015, most of them fleeing the war in Syria. In his vision, Germany's “leading culture” should replace multiculturalism: “This includes buying a Christmas tree before Christmas. It is part of our Western Christian-influenced identity.”
In his pursuit of overhauling Germany's stance toward immigration, Merz recently broke a political taboo by holding a symbolic parliamentary vote backed by the AfD. Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets to protest, fearing that a conservative-led government could open to the door to a power-sharing agreement with the far right.
The conservative leader argued that he had been driven to do so after a horrific knife attack in Bavaria last month: A former Afghan asylum seeker had killed a 2-year-old-boy and a man who tried to stop him.
Merz has since stressed repeatedly that he will never work with the AfD. But some of his colleagues in eastern Germany have started to argue publicly that it will be impossible to uphold.
At this month's international security conference in Munich, the U.S. vice president echoed this thinking, arguing that shutting out populist parties with a political “firewall” was undemocratic. Vance also met with AfD's Weidel, who praised him for an “excellent speech.”
Merz will now try to form a grand coalition with the ruling Social Democrats, who suffered a historic defeat and shrank to 16.4%. Will they manage to find a compromise on migration, lift up Germany's shrinking economy and turn the tide of populism? Or will they get washed away like so many other governments did?
We saw it happen in the United States, where the Republicans transformed into the party of Trump. We saw it in the United Kingdom, where the Tories held the Brexit vote that ended up wrecking five of their conservative prime ministers. Far-right parties have also become dominant in other European countries, such as Austria and France.
Germany, however, is the country that put Hitler in power, started World War II in the name of “racial supremacy” and killed 6 million Jews. This is the country that vowed to “never again” fall into the traps of fascism.
American historian Timothy Snyder recently said, "Germany is now the most important democracy." As President Trump is remaking the world in a blitzkrieg of executive actions, my home country will have to step into a new leadership role.
Thirty-five years after reunification, German is at a crossroads again. Let's hope that it will take the right way forward.
Khue Pham is a German journalist and writer. Her debut novel is "Brothers and Ghosts," inspired by her Vietnamese family in Berlin, California and Saigon.