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Right-wing populism and religion in Germany: Conservative Christians and the Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Rechtspopulismus und Religion in Deutschland: Konservative Christen und die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)

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Abstract

This essay provides an analysis of the nexus between conservative Christianity and the political party “Alternative for Germany,” hereinafter called AfD. The AfD is widely acknowledged as a right-wing populist party, although not by insiders. Of particular interest here is how a conservative religious position has become aligned with right-wing political activism. For this purpose the overlap of conservative religious and right-wing populist themes is analyzed. Furthermore, the type of Christians who constitute the activists and members of the AfD is looked at. Also of interest is the sub-group “Christians in the AfD.” Because the AfD combines an anti-immigration, nationalist, islamophobic, and cultural-conservative agenda, and caters to ethno-racist groups, both the party, and the sub-group in particular, are suited for an analysis of the intersections between Christianity and right-wing populism.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Aufsatz analysiert den Nexus zwischen konservativem Christentum und der politischen Partei Alternative für Deutschland, im Folgenden mit dem Akronym AfD bezeichnet. Die AfD gilt weithin als rechtspopulistische Partei, allerdings nicht bei Mitgliedern. Von besonderem Interesse ist in hier, wie eine konservative, religiöse Haltung sich mit einem rechtspopulistischen Diskurs verbinden konnte. Zum Zweck der Analyse wurden die Überlappungen zwischen den konservativ-religiösen und rechts-populistischen Themen analysiert. Außerdem wurden die politischen Aktivisten und Mitglieder mit Blick auf ihre christliche Konfession betrachtet. Von Bedeutung ist zudem die Gruppe „Christen in der AfD“ (ChrAfD). Beide, die Partei AfD und diese Gruppe sind besonders für eine Analyse der Schnittstelle zwischen Christentum und Rechtspopulismus geeignet, weil die AfD migrationsfeindliche, nationalistische, islamophobe und kulturell-konservative Inhalte kombiniert und völkisch orientierte Gruppen anspricht.

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Notes

  1. At first, the AfD achieved 94 seats. However, shortly after the election, Frauke Petry and Mario Mieruch declared that they did not want to be part of the AfD group. They are now individual members of the German parliament (Holzapfel 2017, p. 24).

  2. A description of Pegida, the Identitarian movement, and the European Right follows later in the text.

  3. The reference to Christianity does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with practiced religiosity; that is, the distinction between self-labeling as defenders of the Christian occident and actual religious identity is important here. Or, as one of the anonymous reviewers poignantly said, “Can you imagine Lutz Bachmann as a regular church-goer?” Lutz Bachmann is regarded the founder of Pegida and is a multiply-sentenced criminal (possession of drugs, numerous burglaries, personal injuries, and sedition) (Niewendick 2014; Rögner 2016).

  4. The Junge Freiheit is a national weekly newspaper. Its self-depiction is that of a conservative medium. Political scientists classify the profile of the paper between conservativism and right-wing extremism and depict it as a “mouthpiece of the New Right” (Braun and Vogt 2007; Maaß 2014). Editor in chief Dieter Stein, underlines in an interview with a journalist from the newspaper Die Welt, that the Junge Freiheit is not the party newspaper of the AfD (Mahlberg (March 31) 2017).

  5. Christian “Right” means here a liaison between ethno-racist (völkisch) and Christian cultural claims.

  6. I have deviated, whenever it seemed appropriate, from this strict structure. Likewise, biographical sketches appear in the third section on discourse, and discursive elements will be found in the history section.

  7. This line of reasoning harkens back to Max Weber (1980) and his “interpretative sociology,” to Pierre Bourdieu and his “theory of practice,” (Bourdieu 1977), and to Frederik Barth and his concept of “ethnic groups and boundaries” (Barth 1969, 1996).

  8. This is a paraphrase from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s book, The Social Construction of Reality; only Berger and Luckmann are referring to a Tibetan monk and an American businessman. See Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 2–3).

  9. Anti-elitism is an element that is repeatedly mentioned by literature on populism (see also Decker 2015, p. 64; Mudde 2015, and Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017).

  10. Different strands of Christian positions also exist in the AfD, which is especially visible on the website of the group “Christians in the AfD.”.

  11. It is rather the invention of tradition that can be seen in ethno-racist and nationalist movements. See Stern (1963) for the 19th and early 20th century Germany; and Hobsbawn and Ranger for Great Britain (1996).

  12. The German Bundestag is elected in accordance with the principles of proportional representation in combination with a candidate-centered election. This is also called personalized proportional representation. Under this system, each voter has two votes. The first vote is for a specific candidate, and the second vote is for a party. First votes and second votes results can therefore vary. For the electoral system, see Bundeswahlleiter (2018).

  13. The center-right CDU/CSU parliamentary group (32.9%) and the center-left SPD party (20.5%) achieved first and second place respectively (Deutscher Bundestag 2017).

  14. For years he led Sunday school classes in his church (Ankenbrand (December 14) 2013). In 2004, he strongly opposed the economy-critical statement of faith which the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) had adopted (Wasserloos-Strunk 2009, p. 77).

  15. In the preamble on page five, the program states: “As free citizens we believe in direct democracy.” On page eight the point is extended: “The AfD advocates the introduction of referenda in Germany based on the Swiss model. The German people should have the right to vote on laws made by Parliament. From the outset this would have a limiting and moderating effect on Parliament and over time would stem the flood of nonsensical legislation” (AfD 2017, p. 5).

  16. For instance, Tommy Robinson (alias Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) of the right-wing extremist English Defence League, Austrian FPÖ, Pro-NRW, Pro-Deutschland, the violent European hooligan scene, and sezession.de, the latter linked to the Identitarian movement and Götz Kubitschek (Strube 2015a, 21–22).

  17. Naturally, this is seen differently by some (devote) Christians in the AfD; for instance by Michael Frisch who sees the AfD as a party that best represents Christian positions, compared to all other parties (Thielmann 2017a). Frisch is Catholic, was for many years a CDU-member, and since 2014 he leads the AfD in his home-town of Trier. Moreover, he is an AfD-politician and member of the Rhineland-palatinate federal state parliament and authored a church-political manifesto (Thielmann 2017a).

  18. Kubitschek founded the institute together with Karlheinz Weißmann, a theologian, historian, author, publicist, and teacher (of history and religion). Weißmann is considered the intellectual mastermind of the New Right in Germany. For the link between conservative Christianity and the AfD, it seems important that he is one of the frequent authors of the Junge Freiheit, a weekly newspaper in which subjects on Christianity are strongly represented, and in which the majority of the authors take positions as “Christian” (Uhrig qt. in Wagenseil 2012). Christian Uhrig analyzed the Christian and Islam images in the paper. According to him, the positive and negative images of Christianity and Islam that the paper creates have to be taken together, in that a polarization is created which ultimately serves as an upgrading of a positive Christian identity through the devaluation of the Muslim “Other.”

  19. Williamson opposes the changes in the Catholic Church brought about by the Second Vatican Council. The reason for his expulsion was however not his opposition to the Second Vatican council, the raison d’être of the Society of Saint Pius X, but his denial of the Holocaust. Williamson had already denied the Holocaust in 1989, when he called it an “invention by the Jews.” Important in this respect is that Pope John Paul II had already excommunicated the anti-Semitic Bishop, a decision the German Pope Benedict XVI revoked in 2009 (Wensierski 2009).

  20. Björn Höcke was socialized in West Germany, and Frauke Petry moved from the GDR to West Germany in 1989, shortly before the reunification, when she was fourteen years old (Amann 2017). Important is here that they represented the AfD in the eastern German states.

  21. Konrad Adam, married and with three children, was born in western Germany in 1942. Apart from being an AfD politician, he is a journalist and author. He worked for the prestigious newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt. From 2013 to 2015, he was one of the federal spokespersons of the AfD. In April, 2017, he left the Protestant German Church. He justified his decision by claiming a one-sided and unreliable attitude of the leadership of the churches in refugee matters (ideaSpectrum 2017).

  22. Lucke later founded the party Alliance for Progress and Awakening (ALFA, Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch), which later changed its name to Liberal-Conservative Reformers (LRK, Liberal-Konservative Reformer). Lucke was the federal chairman of that party until June 2016. In the state elections of that year the party was not very successful and, therefore, not a serious threat to the success of the AfD.

  23. Already before the party convention in Essen, a flurry of membership resignations started. The argument of those who left was mainly that a right-wing push had occurred in the party, tied to the above positions on how to deal with Pegida, but also ethno-racist, islamophobic, anti-immigration commentaries and attitudes by leaders. The new party board was denying these accusations with the argument that the programme of the party had not changed. Along with Bernd Lucke, almost twenty percent of members left the party (Oppelland 2017, p. 176).

  24. Liane Bednarz voiced this opinion in an event at the Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS), where she presented her book Preachers of Fear (HBS Berlin (June 20) 2018). What is even more indicative is that Bednarz quotes in her book an email exchange between political scientist Claus Leggewie and Götz Kubitschek (Bednarz 2018, pp. 187–188). The latter had published the exchange on the blog sezession.de without the consent of the first. Kubitschek leaves no doubt that a Christian-Pegida alliance would give the New Right a much greater spiritual force, legitimacy, and a stronger cultural identity (Bednarz 2018, p. 188).

  25. Two examples from the party declaration: “The economy is calling for women as part of the workforce. There is a misconceived view of feminism, which favors women with a career above mothers and housewives. The latter often experience less recognition and are financially disadvantaged” (AfD 2017, p. 40). “There should once again be an incentive to marry, raise children, and spend time with them. The AfD will initiate a public discussion about strengthening the role of parents, and reduce the propagated stigmatisation of traditional gender roles” (AfD 2017, p. 40).

  26. Judith Götz, a political scientist and expert on the Identitarian movement, also notes that this movement is characterized by a strong anti-feminist discourse and three core enemy images: political liberalism, multiculturalism, and gender-egalitarianism (Götz 2017). To recapitulate, strong ties exist particularly between Björn Höcke, who represents the ethno-nationalist wing of the AfD and the Identitarians, particularly Götz Kubitschek. Höcke himself also encourages his male supporters with slogans such as, “We have to rediscover our manhood” (qt. in Die Welt 2018).

  27. Emile Durkheim’s theory on anomie and crisis, and its enlargement by Robert K. Merton, are a fitting example. Durkheim understands anomie as the result of a disintegration of society through the erosion of formerly accepted norms and values. In the realm of crisis and rapid social change, altered social conditions are evidently a fertile ground for the development of new ideas, concepts, and beliefs.

  28. In this regard it is also necessary to point to the conditions under which migrants lived in the GDR. So-called contract workers were kept separate from the population. Housing, shopping and all spheres of life, except work, were separated. For further details, see Marianne Krüger-Potratz (1991); and Ann-Judith Rabenschlag (2016).

  29. Positive liberalism means here a position of being against a positive or proactive role of the state in guiding the economy (Garner 1996, p. 137).

  30. The profound study by Gisa Bauer (2012), Evangelikale Bewegung und evangelische Kirche in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Geschichte eines Grundsatzkonflikts (1945 bis 1989) comes to the same results. More importantly, Bauer stresses that the German evangelical movement was not homogeneous in terms of its support-groups but is was homogeneous in terms of its content (Bauer 2012, p. 662).

  31. To be sure, Beatrix von Storch and her followers in the AfD do not advocate for a restoration of the German nobility; however, they want to have the interests of the nobility protected (e. g. by tax privileges) (Amann 2017, p. 129). In the 1990s, she was active in the battle for reparations from the state authority for the loss of a three million hectare estate by her family, which was confiscated after the war in the Soviet occupation zone (Amann 2017, p. 65). Her grandfather, Johann Ludwig “Lutz” Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, was, under Adolf Hitler, Minister of Finance from 1932 to 1945. Beatrix von Storch is described by many to have a conservative and economic neoliberal political outlook. In fact, von Storch is a member of the Friedrich August von Hayek-Gesellschaft, an organization that tries to maintain the legacy of this eponymous liberal economist, and she was for a short time a member of the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) (Amann 2017, p. 64). More important though is that Amann and others attest her to be determined activist in the conservative arena of protecting the traditional family against the “abortion-industry,” the “homo- and gender-lobby,” the protection of the house-wife against “quota-terror,” and children against “early-sexualisation.” It was with these subjects that von Storch was able to assemble an electoral group deeply disappointed by other parties, including anti-abortionists and ultraconservatives, which donated substantial sums of money to the AfD (Amann 2017, pp. 66–67).

  32. This is, by the way, not reflecting reality, as current statistics show. In a representative survey of the Federal Ministry for Family, two-thirds of the interviewees responded that the family is for them a way to achieve happiness (BMFSFJ 2012, p. 12). A family is made of, for the respondents, a mother, father and at least one child. In 2013, the dominant family (almost 70%) was the one where a mother and father raised at least one child (Statistisches Bundesamt 2014, p. 52).

  33. Gender mainstreaming is a public policy concept of assessing the different implications for women and men of any planned policy action, including legislation and programs, in all areas and levels. The EU included gender-mainstreaming in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997.

  34. Also the statistical survey based on biographical information on the AfD delegates in the Bundestag clearly indicates that the AfD has no Christian profile. Of the 92 delegates only nine gave information about their religious affiliation (3 Protestants and 8 Catholics); 78 refused to give personal details on their religious affiliation (Holzapfel 2017, p. 318).

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  1. Gesellschaft der Europäischen Akademien, Bonn, Germany

    Andrea Althoff

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Correspondence to Andrea Althoff.

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Althoff, A. Right-wing populism and religion in Germany: Conservative Christians and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Z Religion Ges Polit 2, 335–363 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41682-018-0027-9

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