- Unlike its rhetoric, AfD’s policies are ‘quite robustly neoliberal … about more marketization, less taxes, less redistribution, less welfare state,’ says Bohmann

BERLIN

As the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) sees rising poll numbers ahead of this month’s snap elections, an experienced political sociologist believes the party is deliberately stoking social fears for political gains, while offering no meaningful solutions to the country's problems.

“What the AfD is doing is agitation. They’re igniting discomfort, stirring up fear and hatred, blaming immigrants for the socioeconomic problems such as the housing crisis or rising rents. But they are not offering any real solutions to Germany’s problems,” Ulf Bohmann told Anadolu.

The far-right expert from Chemnitz University of Technology explained that politics of agitation has become an effective tool for right-wing extremists, who stir fears by manufacturing threat scenarios and falsely linking problems primarily to targets such as immigrants, intellectual elites or climate activists.

“Agitation is something quite different from common propaganda,” Bohmann said, adding that it aims to provoke emotional responses, inciting anxiety and animosity, often by exploiting existing problems – even without factual evidence.

“In common propaganda you would try to bring a certain message in the heads of people, to convince them of something, to repeat over and over again some view … In agitation, it’s just the other way around, so you connect with an uneasiness that’s already there, and you target it towards other social groups,” he explained.

In recent years, far-right German politicians have portrayed immigrants as the source of various problems, particularly housing shortages and soaring rents in major cities.

AfD’s senior figures have repeatedly claimed that “mass migration of refugees” was directly responsible for Germany’s housing crisis, despite evidence proving insufficient social housing construction and lack of government subsidies as the primary causes.

Bohmann said AfD leaders consistently use misleading narratives to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment, while avoiding discussions about the root causes of problems and their solutions.

He noted that AfD politicians adapt their agitation tactics to target different issues over time. Initially, they exploited citizens’ economic fears during the Eurozone crisis, then pivoted to immigration when they saw an opportunity to capitalize on public concerns about the refugee influx in 2015 and 2016.

“The AfD is specifically targeting these kinds of fears, and usually it can just substitute one topic for another,” he said.

“So, it’s not just the economy per se. If the economy works quite well, it can be something else, like the so-called migration crisis or refugee crisis or so on, but it can also be war and peace, or job insecurity, or … costly measures to combat climate change and so on.”

Exploiting ‘a fear of losing something’

Latest opinion polls show the AfD is set to become Germany’s second-largest party in the upcoming Feb. 23 elections, with approximately 22% voter support.

Recent studies indicate that the party has expanded its support base beyond low-income households in Germany’s less-developed eastern regions to include middle- and high-income earners throughout the country.

Last year, Bohmann and his colleagues conducted a comprehensive study for the Otto Brenner Foundation analyzing AfD politicians’ strategies in the eastern state of Saxony.

The AfD expanded its voter share in Saxony in last September’s regional elections, finishing second behind the Christian Democrats by just over 1%. However, it prevailed in the state of Thuringia – the first time Germany’s far right won a state election since World War II.

The study revealed how the party extensively uses agitation techniques to emotionalize political discourse, foster distrust, and provoke aggressive responses rather than promote rational problem-solving.

Bohmann warned that the agitation techniques that are helping the AfD and other right-wing parties gain voters pose a significant threat to democratic processes by prioritizing emotional manipulation over constructive political dialogue.

This, he said, makes political compromises and stable governments more and more unlikely.

“What we know quite generally is that more and more people are attracted to right-wing – or historically to fascist – political parties, not when they are really poor or economically devastated, but when there’s a widespread fear of moving down the social ladder, a fear of losing something,” Bohmann said.

Various studies have shown that middle- and upper-middle-class voters could turn to far-right parties when they perceive threats to their social status or economic security, he emphasized.

“If there is a considerable uncertainty about the future, a fear that there will be a decline, it typically motivates significantly more people to vote for right-wing parties,” he said.

The AfD significantly improved its position in the European Parliament elections in June last year, securing 15.9% of the vote nationwide and taking second place ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

A survey by German research firm Infratest dimap for public broadcaster ARD after the elections revealed that most AfD voters were concerned about their economic well-being and feared a future decline in their standard of living.

It also found that 95% AfD voters were worried that “too many foreigners were coming to Germany”; 91% feared their lives “will change too much” due to recent developments; and 78% expressed concern about being able to maintain their standard of living.

Divisive rhetoric and contradictory policies

The AfD has faced numerous scandals in recent years, most notably a secret meeting where senior officials discussed plans for mass deportation of immigrants – an incident that raised serious concerns about the party’s commitment to democratic values.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has been monitoring the party’s youth wing and various branches since 2021, citing concerns about anti-democratic tendencies.

In recent years, prominent AfD members have consistently stirred controversy with inflammatory rhetoric targeting minorities, issuing discriminatory statements against immigrants and Muslims during public events and on social media.

They have advocated for restrictions on Muslims’ religious freedoms and spread conspiracy theories about immigration.

Critics – including mainstream political parties and anti-racism activists – contend that the AfD deliberately promotes xenophobia, antisemitism, and anti-Muslim sentiment to further its political agenda in Germany.

However, these scandals have not eroded support for the party.

A recent INSA poll showed it could get 22% of intended votes in the upcoming elections, positioning it as the second-strongest party behind the conservative CDU/CSU bloc at 30%.

Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats polled at 15.5%, with the Greens following at 13%.

Despite its popularity, Bohmann emphasized that the AfD is still using socioeconomic problems as fuel for its agitation but offers no genuine solutions to address social inequalities, housing problems, or rising rents.

Instead, the party’s proposed policies primarily focus on market deregulation and tax cuts, which experts say could potentially worsen these socioeconomic challenges rather than resolve them.

“When you take a closer look at the AfD and what their actual policies are, you will find out that they are, with a few exceptions, quite robustly neoliberal. It’s usually about more marketization, less taxes, less redistribution, less welfare state,” he said.

“The actual policies the AfD would supposedly implement … wouldn’t really solve the kind of socioeconomic problems those very politicians have scandalized in their discourse. That’s typical for agitation. That is not a political solution, but a mechanism to let people remain in a state of discomfort and uneasiness, in order to have political gains from resulting anger.”​​​​​​​