Would Alternative für Deutschland be worse than the League, the Rassemblement national, Vox, Fratelli d’Italia, Wilders? More toxic, more unpresentable? Upon closer inspection, we don’t see why it should. Maybe it’s just that certain things spoken in German are more frightening and that in Germany anti-fascist sensitivity and institutional protections are still developed enough to hinder any possible alliance between the conservative center and the far right, under the surveillance of the services.
The pretext seized upon by Lega and Le Pen to get rid of an unseemly associate who is an obstacle to electoral tactics is the statement by the Spitzenkandidat of the AfD according to which “whoever wore the SS uniform was not automatically a criminal”. A possibility not to be ruled out, but to which it should have been added that however he carried out a ferociously criminal function and task, such as to prevent any absolving attitude. In any case, how many times among the ranks of the Italian right has it been argued that those who supported the Germans in the fascist militias of Salò were not necessarily criminals (and perhaps even a mistaken patriot), without any clarification on the objective role of collaborationist massacre which he zealously carried out. And even on the left there was no lack of acquittal and reconciliatory inclinations on the part of a terrible president of the Chamber of Deputies, pioneer of that clearance of the fascists which ultimately led their heirs to the government.
But Afd’s affinities with the identity political forces that today ungenerously expel it from the ID group certainly do not end here. On immigration and the homogenization of European society, the Germans do not express ideas that are different from Wilders and very similar to those of the League and the Rassemblement. Not to mention the Westernist value rubbish and, naturally, the absolute prevalence of the national interest. But, as mentioned, said in German it is more disturbing. Biörn Höcke, the most radical of the AfD exponents, ended up on trial for having proclaimed “everything for Germany”, a recurring slogan during National Socialism. But by trying to translate this expression into Italian and for Italy we could even include Forza Italia and Noi moderato among the suspects. If any substantial difference can be recognized between the AfD and their southern colleagues, it is more than anything else the residue of that original rigorism that the founding professors of the party flaunted against the spendthrift parasites of southern Europe and which is always kept hidden in full harmony with the dominant ordoliberalism .
However, the temporary ban on the German far right cannot mask the fact that the border, the embankment, the ditch that was supposed to clearly separate the center from the far right in Europe has already disastrously collapsed before the June elections and therefore capable to condition them. Rich Holland is the laboratory where one of the most indigestible xenophobes and racial purists like Wilders managed, despite renouncing the premiership, to set up the government with an unworthy liberal party, peasant corporatism, and a formation of Eurosceptic Christian Democrat populists, who promises a decisive nationalist turn and the ruthless persecution of immigrants. The Netherlands has shown that anything can be done. And, after all, the far right already influences the government in Sweden and has long been at home in the halls of power in Vienna. For the European People’s Party, but also for the liberals, these formations are a competitor, but increasingly also an opportunity. The signs of a possible alliance of the EPP with individual exponents or segments of the far right are increasingly clear and frequent.
There is therefore absolutely no guarantee that the current majority in the European Parliament can be maintained. In Germany the “Grand Coalition” no longer reigns as a model for European politics and the German Christian Democrats are looking to the right for a reaffirmation of their identity which they believe has been obscured by Angela Merkel’s ecumenical political season. What is holding them back, but ever more weakly, is the awareness that the European construction on which many of the interests to which they must respond are based, would hardly be able to breathe tightly in the sovereignist embrace. The dilemma is not easy to resolve, especially when Putin’s sympathies are involved, but a clear tendency towards compromise seems to prevail on the right. In any case, regardless of alliances, a decisive shift to the right in European politics has already occurred and continues to accentuate, without encountering any resistance from a pale socialist grouping which is moreover willing, on various grounds, to support it.
