In two recent state elections – Bavaria and Hessen – voters took a strong turn toward the radical right. Voters in the southern state of Bavaria (population: 13 million), and in Hessen (6.3 million), voted mostly for conservative, anti-Semitic, right-wing, far-right, and even neo-fascist parties.

In both states however, Germany’s traditional conservatives – Merkel’s CDU, called CSU in Bavaria – remained the wounded but still clear winners.

While the environmentalist Greens lost voters in both elections, the party maintained its stable constituency of around 15%. Germany’s only neoliberal party – the FDP – failed to get into Bavaria’s parliament while just scraping into Hessen’s parliament, overcoming Germany’s 5% barrier by 0.03%.

The biggest loser was the once mighty social-democratic SPD – in both elections. Worse, the biggest winner, by far, in both elections was Germany’s neo-fascist AfD. Germany’s only real opposition party – the progressive-socialist The Left is no longer represented in Hessen’s parliament. The results are:

Party	Bavaria	Hessen
The conservative reactionary CDU/CSU	37%	34.6%
The social-democratic SPD	8.4%	15.1%
The environmental Greens	14.4%	14.8%
The neoliberal FDP	3.0%	5.03%
The semi-fascist AfD	14.4%	18.4%
The conservative-antisemitic Free Voters	15.8%	3.5%
The socialist The Left Party	1.5%	3.1%

One of the most crucial reasons for the descent of the otherwise rather strong Green party is a sustained anti-Green right-wing tabloid campaign exacerbating fears of a so-called eco-dictatorship. One of the biggest contributors to this was Germany’s Murdoch-like right-wing tabloid, the infamous Axel Springer-owned Bild-Zeitung.

The right-wing campaign focused on Germany’s Building Energy Act. The law provides for the replacement of outdated and unsustainable oil and gas heaters. The right-wing tabloid scare campaign ran for weeks before the election.

Apart from a rather common Politics of Fear campaign, it also targeted Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck (Green Party).

The sustained right-wing campaign was mostly directed against the Green Party, but also against Germany’s governing traffic light coalition – consisting of SPD (red), FDP (yellow), and The Green Party (green).

The right-wing media campaign featured the so-called heating hammer that will come and hammer your heating system into bits and pieces. It was nonsense, and another example of The Big Lie, but it worked. The right-wing tabloid’s fear mongering was unprecedented.

Germany’s right-wing worked in symbiosis with the neo-fascist AfD. While the right-wing media was hitting the Greens hard, it pushed up the AfD – just as planned.

The right-wing media campaign included the impression that the Green party was going to create a “green dictatorship,” insinuating that a small elitist minority from the better educated and higher income strata would impose their values on the vast majority of Germans.

Aided by this, the elections in Hessen and Bavaria turned out to be a fiasco for the traffic light coalition parties of SPD, FDP and Greens. The elections in Hessen and Bavaria are now interpreted as a vote of no confidence against the traffic light coalition government in Berlin.

The SPD received its historically worst results in both states. In Bavaria, it received just 8.4%. In neighboring Hessen, where the SPD’s top-candidate Nancy Faeser also faced a sustained media campaign against her, the social-democratic SPD fell significantly behind the conservative CDU and neo-fascist AfD.

Despite the massive right-wing tabloid campaign, the Greens got off relatively lightly despite significant losses. They could even continue to govern in Hessen – together with the conservative CDU.

Yet, the overall trend in both elections is clearly to the right – and to the far right. After these two elections, the neo-fascist AfD is no longer just a phenomenon in eastern Germany.

More than 18% in Hessen and almost 15% in Bavaria made the neo-fascists the second (Hessen) and third (Bavaria) strongest force. There is no doubt that the two elections have shaken up German politics.

In Hessen, once a stronghold of the social-democratic SPD, there is now a vast gap of almost 20% between the SPD and the conservative CDU. The SPD’s Nancy Faeser lost big time to state premier Boris Rhein – nicknamed Tough Dog.

In both states, the sustained media campaign made it possible for the neo-fascist AfD to celebrate itself as the big winner. The winds of change in Germany are blowing from left to right. Germany is becoming more conservative, more reactionary, and more neo-fascist.

The AfD’s Mini-Me Führer and Switzerland resident Alice Weidel – the pretty face of German neo-fascism – said: “Our record-level results prove our policy right!”

Weidel believes the election results in Hessen and Bavaria are just interim successes on the way to greater things. Just as Hitler’s star propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said: “It will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.”

The AfD believes that Germany’s political landscape could be shaken up even more in 2024 with elections scheduled in AfD strongholds like eastern Germany’s Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.

In recent polls, the neo-fascist AfD was ahead of all other parties in those three states, receiving well above 30% support. Yet, in eastern Germany’s Bitterfeld-Wolfen (Saxony-Anhalt), the AfD did not succeed, as they had hoped they would, in winning the mayoral election and grabbing their first mayorship in Germany. Even neo-fascists don’t win all the time.

Meanwhile, in the state of Bavaria, state premier and CSU boss Markus Söder could not make up for his disastrous result in the previous election five years ago. However, support for his arch-conservatives has, at least, not deteriorated any further.

Söder claims that “With such a strong AfD, you also need a very strong prime minister.” In other words, better a reactionary Führer than a neo-fascist Führer! A rather questionable proposition. Yet, the shift to the right in the Bavarian state elections was strong.

The clear trend to the right in Bavaria and Hessen is reflected in Germany-wide polls. While the results in both elections should have been an opportunity to disarm right-wing propaganda in, for example, Germany’s asylum debate, the opposite was the case.

The shift towards the radical right is ever more obvious. Even though the previous governing coalitions in Hessen and Bavaria were confirmed at the ballot box, the political landscape has shifted toward the radical right.

In other words, although both elections confirmed the ruling coalitions in Bavaria and Hessen,  the Overton Window of German politics has moved to the right.

Overall, Germany’s federal progressive-environmental coalition lost significantly. The only true opposition, the Left Party or Die Linke, is – after 15 years – no longer in Hessen’s parliament. While the numbers for progressives declined, the conservative CDU, the neo-fascist AfD, and the reactionary-anti-Semitic Free Voter party increased their support – significantly.

The right-wing antivax campaign on Covid-19, fear of refugees, fear of high inflation, lies about energy and environmental policies are some of the reasons for the success of the AfD. This is coupled with strong “conservative” media support for the AfD.

The neo-fascist AfD made particular use of the heated asylum debate, which is, after all, a domain of the right-wing populists and adjacent neo-fascists in every country where capitalist wars and neo-liberal financial policies (IMF) have destroyed local economies and made sure that right-wing dictators are enabled, for example in the Middle East, Africa as well as Central and South America.

For many months, the CDU, the FDP, and Germany’s right-wing media gave voters the impression that refugees are currently the biggest problem facing the country and that due to their influx Germany is on the verge of collapse. Germany’s right-wing media provided free-of-charge campaign assistance for the AfD by trumpeting the migration issue.

This alarmism, which has constantly conjured up new horrors, was often in recent months just drawn out of the ideological hat. That kind of basic magic trick gave the right-wing populists and neo-fascists a significant boost.

For months before the election, the AfD could sit back, relax and watch how others were doing their bidding and engaging in scaremongering.

The ideas currently being loudly proposed, of more border protection and more deportations, actually benefits the AfD. And so does the hallucination of returning refugees to war-torn, hunger-ravaged and economically devastated supposedly safe countries of origin, where military juntas aided by mercenaries, dictatorships supported by neo-colonialist “First World” countries and kleptocratic dictators preside and sell the mineral and agricultural wealth of their countries to multinational corporations.

Imagine if Germany’s traditionally democratic parties had forced the media to declare global warming to be the main issue with the same fervor, and outdid each other with proposals on how to counter increasing threats to life on Earth.

Of course the Greens would have benefited from this, but so would the other traditional parties. Fear of a disastrous future can work for the benefit of democracy as well, especially if the fear is supported by facts and logical plans of action toward a solution of the problem.

Yet, Germany’s conservatives, reactionaries, neo-fascists, and the adjacent right-wing press outdid each other and concentrated solely on right-wing issues.

Worse, the fact that Bavaria’s reactionary and anti-Semitic Free Voters party got a record result is particularly distasteful. Its Führer Hubert Aiwanger turned his very own anti-Semitic scandal into an election success. Another adept use of the Bannon playbook.

Aiwanger’s deeply anti-Semitic leaflet was spiced up with “a complimentary flight through the chimney at Auschwitz.” Albeit issued decades ago, it allowed him and Germany’s right-wing press to present him as a victim. It was a classical neo-fascist victim-perpetrator reversal. Aiwanger portrayed himself as a persecuted innocent.

This is the first time in Germany’s recent history that anti-Semitism has not harmed a politician – it actually benefited Aiwanger – with anti-Semitic views that a number of his acquaintances have described in detail.

Quite apart from anti-Semitism helping a politician in Bavaria to get from 11.6% to 15.8% – anti-Semitism gets you 4% of additional support in Germany – the overall result of these two state elections also shows further disturbing trends.

 Media capitalism has managed to completely annihilate any serious opposition to capitalism.

The only anti-capitalist political party – the Linke – received only 1.5% (Bavaria) and 3.1% (Hessen). From the standpoint of an anti-capitalist critique, Germany’s inconsequential Coke-vs.-Pepsi choice has been narrowed to a fabricated non-choice between the conservatives (CDU), the eco-neoliberal Greens, the truly neoliberal FDP, the reactionary Free Voters, the “please be nice capitalism” social-democratic SPD, and the outright neo-fascist corporatist AfD.

Ever more, Germany reflects what Noam Chomsky once described as living in a one-party system – the business party. In the USA it has two wings: Republicans and Democrats. In Germany, the business party has a few more wings but it is essentially also a business party.

Any opposition worth its name has been comprehensively annihilated. Meanwhile, Germany’s march towards an anti-Semitic, reactionary, and authoritarian political system continues. This march even carries connotations of the Harzburger Front of the 1930s – a coalition of fascist and conservatives. Such a neo-fascist (AfD) – conservative (CDU) coalition is expected to become political reality in the eastern part of Germany first.

The domino theory of political capitulation lies at the heart of the right-wing playbook and is used effectively by the neoliberal and neofascist players.

They have a plan. They announce their plans. Then they put their plans into action. There is no discussion. If violence against resisters needs to be used, violence is used.

Democrats engage in discussion and try to respect the law. In the closed minds of fascist anti-democrats there is no discussion and absolutely no respect for the law. This is what people who support democracy are up against in Germany 100 years after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

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