Extremes come true: Germany’s far-right triumph

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The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world. How many people can you fit on a motorbike? This terrifying question is being tested right now in many African cities as cheap motorcycles flood the market and transform local areas. And these days, many restaurant dinner plates are adorned with an ingredient so powerful and so posh that we only get a few shavings, the truffle. Our correspondent visited a truffle growing part of Spain that wants to produce more of these magic mushrooms. But first, It can be hard to care about regional elections in another country. But this weekend, two states in eastern Germany yielded shocking results that everyone needs to pay attention to. The Alternative for Germany Party, known as the AfD, is designated an extremist group, but it led the vote in one state and racked up a large share in another. People want change, declared bjorn Hoerke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, who slammed what he called the cartel party system. Voters have said no to the policies of the traditional parties, he said. Another populist party, this time on the left, also did surprisingly well. The Sara Wackenknecht alliance, or bsw, which was formed less than a year ago. These were clearly no ordinary state elections.

These elections in Saxony and Thuringia threw up some very complicated results that politicians will have to chew over for a while.

Tom Nuttall is our chief Germany correspondent.

But there's basically one big story, and that is that the alternative for Germany, a far right party, has taken first place in a German state election.

Okay, so give us a breakdown of the results. What happened?

Okay, so in Thuringia, a small state of just 2 million people, the AfD came first, got around a third of the vote. The Saara Wagenkonnecht alliance, which its leader, Ms. Wagenkonnecht, calls a sort of left conservative grouping. It's a splinter from a left wing party that has taken on some right wing positions. They came third, the Christian Democrats came second. And the result in this state, it's almost precision engineered for chaos because it's just very, very difficult to see how you can get a coalition that would command a secure majority from the numbers that we've got. So there's going to be some really, really tricky negotiations ahead. In Saxony, the cdu, the Conservatives, who have been running the state for a while, came in first, just ahead of the AfD. They will be able probably to continue running the place, although you're also going to have some tricky coalition talks there. And crucially, no other party will work with the AfD. Germany maintains the cordon sanitaire around its extremist parties, unlike these days, most other European countries. But of course, that makes the matter of forming coalitions that much more complicated. And so probably both, both in Saxony and Thuringia, the Christian Democrats are going to have to talk to this new party, the Saarwagenkonnecht alliance. This would be a highly unholy alliance because they disagree on everything from welfare to support for Ukraine. And there's a lot of people inside the Christian Democrats who are deeply unhappy with working with a bunch of people they consider to be basically a rabble of ex communists.

So, as you say, the shock result is quite how well the AFD has done. What do they actually stand for?

The AFD was set up in 2013 basically to oppose the euro and bailouts to countries like Greece. But it's followed a trajectory that's quite familiar for right wing populist parties in Europe, where it's become increasingly radical, increasingly concerned with what you might consider cultural matters, migration, top of the list, rather than economic ones. I've been to AFD rallies. The lead candidate, Bjorn Hooker, was railing against migrants, also against the mainstream media. Interestingly, the COVID years are still a very sort of animating issue for the AfD. They want to set up parliamentary inquiries into the lockdown policies that were passed. Some of them even want to put mainstream politicians in prison or to fine them. There's a strong strain of conspiratorial thinking. And another issue which is in theory should be irrelevant in state elections because they have no power in foreign policy. But that played a central role in these campaigns was the war in Ukraine. Both the AfD, but also the Sahenwagenknecht alliance, they want to put an end to German support for Ukraine. They capitalise on fears that the war could come all the way to Germany. And sometimes the lines that you hear them spouting can come quite close to Kremlin propaganda.

And as you say, there's a cordon sanitaire around the AfD, which means that the other rising party from the left is now becoming more important. How do they differ?

The Saha Wagenknecht Dixie was only set up in January. What Ms. Wagenknecht has tried to do is to sort of shed what she and her allies considered to be a set of policies that were designed to appeal to tofu eating wokerati in the middle of big cities like Berlin or Hamburg, and to focus on kind of earthier matters. So their party's position on Russia and Ukraine can be quite hard to distinguish from the afds. A lot of sympathy for Russian lines. They're also skeptical about immigration and asylum, but they maintain left wing positions on kind of economic matters, the welfare state, those sorts of things. So political scientists like to talk about the Horseshoe theory, where parties of the hard left and the hard right sometimes end up coming quite close to resembling one another. And the Wagenknecht Party is almost like a kind of real world application of that theory.

And what do you expect from those coalitions? How is anyone going to govern?

I think it's just going to be a mess. Five years ago, the last time that Thuringia held an election, it was also a mess. It's very difficult to see how you're going to get a coalition that doesn't involve both the CDU and the Wagen Connect Party. But they won't have enough seats. They are probably both in Saxony and in Thuringia. They are probably going to have to team up with the Social Democrats. This is the party that leads the national coalition, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. And in Saxony, at least, those three parties would have the numbers to have a relatively stable majority, at least in theory. In Thuringia, they would not even have a majority themselves. So it gets even more complicated. They would probably need to rely on the support of the left party, Die Linker, which currently runs the state, but had a terrible result last night. The problem is that the CDU has a national prohibition against working not only with the AfD, but also with Die Linker. So they would have to overturn that rule, which is something that a lot of people, people in the party nationally would have a problem with. So I think the only thing today that we can say with any certainty is that it's going to be an absolute nightmare.

Tom, you Mentioned, of course, that these are two states in the East. Why have radical parties flourished in the East?

I think you have to ground this in history and in particular the experience of East Germans under the Communist Republic after reunification in 1990. The traditional parties of West Germany, CDU, SPD, Free Democrats, the Greens, they never really established themselves properly in the East. That's why you see now this tremendous volatility in politics in the East. Voters move around from one party to another much more readily than they do in the West. They're much more receptive, crucially, to the appeals of political entrepreneurs like Sah and Farkendeck to sort of appear as if from nowhere and then secure large numbers of votes. And I think the other thing to mention is that both the AfD and the have been quite successful into tapping into putative sense of Eastern identity. In a way, some politicians from these parties will play on a sense that you get among some voters in the east that they were given a raw deal after 1990, that they were neglected by the West.

So what implications do you think there are then for the rest of Germany, Germany at large, and for the federal elections next year?

Although the AfD and the BSW do perform significantly better in the east than in the west, we shouldn't pretend that the west doesn't have a problem with political extremism. The AfD has been second in national opinion polls for a long time now. There's just a general kind of mood of anxiety. The political party system is fracturing in a way that it never has done before. It's going to become much harder to form coalitions not only in the east, but at national level. The second element is the national called traffic light coalition of three parties that leads the country, led by the Social Democrats in coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. This coalition has just become a sort of a nightmare. The parties can't agree on anything. They argue publicly all the time. All three parties did very, very badly. These parties always do badly in the East. This is not a new phenomenon, but they did particularly badly yesterday. There are going to be fresh questions raised about whether they can kind of stagger on to the finish line in the run up to the federal elections in September next year. I think they will. It's very hard for a German government to break up prematurely and to hold early elections, but it is certainly going to contribute to this extremely gloomy mood that has prevailed in Germany for some time now.

Tom, thank you so much. Great to talk to you.

Thanks a lot, Rosie.

And immigration is a hot button. Topic everywhere right now. If you want to hear more More Friday's episode of Checks and Balance was about the changing politics of immigration in the US and later this week, Money Talks is devoted to the economics of immigration that goes out on Thursday. For both of those, you'll need to be a subscriber to listen. If you aren't one Search Economist Podcast plus.

If you were to stop at any traffic, light it in any African city, you will pretty quickly find a swarm of motorcycles around you.

John McDermott is the Economist's chief Africa correspondent.

Some of them will be carrying people on their way to work, but you might see some quite impressive sites like a mum with two or even three children on the way to school, delivery guy with a huge bunch of bananas or boxes upon boxes, like some kind of giant mobile Jenga vehicle. And their number has been exploding in recent years because of that. They're really transforming life not just in African cities, but across the continent.

Why hasn't this happened before? It seems like this is the perfect way to get around.

I think motorcycles have just been too expensive before, and what's happened in the last decade or so is that Chinese and Indian manufacturers have flooded the market with motorcycles, around $1,000 in price. So you know, Africans on the whole are too poor to be driving Harley Davidsons around. And for the most part, even these thousand dollar bikes are not for personal use, they are for taxis and for deliveries. But what's happened is that the supply has come from Asia, just at the point where demand is also taking off because you've got these growing cities and people just want to get around.

A lot of people think that the railways in Victorian Britain spurred urbanization. So what's going on here? Are motorbikes spurring urbanization in Africa, or is the urbanization sparing the motorbike use?

I think it's a bit more of the latter. Africa's cities are growing really quickly, by some measures the top 10 fastest growing anywhere in the world, or all in Africa. But they're doing so in a way that makes motorcycles the perfect thing for that new urban life because they are sprawling. I mean, you've lived in Beijing, Rosie, so you'll have seen sprawl, but also the city going up and you see all these huge skyscrapers. But in most African cities they're going out, not up. And that means if you live outside or on the outskirts of these cities and need to get to work, you either are facing a ginormous walk or being stuck in traffic all day. I mean, I'm sure Orey could tell you about the traffic in Lagos. By one Measure, commuters spend 30 hours a week in traffic jams, which just sounds like hell on earth to me. But if you can hail a motorcycle taxi, then you can zig and zag and weave your way through that traffic.

And is it just that motorbikes are very useful for getting around and avoiding that traffic, or have they actually become vital to the functioning of the economy?

Certainly they're essential to the functioning of the economy. A lot of these cities would grind to a halt without them. But it's not just an urban phenomenon. I think one of the really underappreciated trends in Africa of late has been what I call the rise of small town Africa. So I think in the Western imagination, Africa is either a megacity like Lagos or it's a village. It's either the bustle or the bush. But the fastest growing kind of stratum and urban life in Africa is actually these small towns. By one OECD sponsored study, there are now almost 9,000 areas that have at least 10,000 people in them, which is basically three or four times more than there were in 1980. And whereas before, if you lived in a village, say, and you wanted to get to a bank or a shop or take your kid to a clinic, you either had to get on a bicycle and travel a hell of a long way or you had to get a car. And that was very expensive. But nowadays, if you want to tap into that small town economy and you live in a village, you can do so with a motorcycle.

So they're very useful. It does sound incredibly terrifying, John, either to be on them or to be around them. What's it like on the roads?

Oh, it's madness. It's totally madness. I mean, not in Rwanda, which is about the only African country where you will actually wear a helmet if you are a passenger in one of these things. But then Rwanda is a moderately effective authoritarian state where things actually get enforced. But go to Lagos or Kampala or Dar es Salaam or Nairobi, and yeah, it can get quite hairy because you're unlikely to be given a helmet if you're a passenger. And frankly, even if you're given a helmet, I mean, it's kind of like one of those dress up helmets that I would give my kids when they want to pretend to be construction workers. So if you were to fall, then you could do yourself some damage. And that is definitely one of the downsides to motorcycles. I mean, Africa only has 3% of all motor vehicles in the world, but it accounts for about a fifth of all road deaths. And these motorcycles are a big part of that carnage. There are laws on the books that say that drivers and passengers are supposed to be wearing helmets, but frankly, like a lot of laws in Africa, the state is too weak to enforce them.

So it sounds like motorcycles are here to stay in Africa.

Then you are seeing some efforts to stall the growth of motorcycle taxis. And I think that's because they've become quite a powerful political force as well. In a continent where there is a real struggle for young men in particular to get jobs, these are a ready source of informal employment. And when you have a lot of young men out in urban areas, politicians can perceive them as a threat. Plus, quite frankly, a lot of these politicians who are driving around in their comfortable Toyota Land Cruisers just see them as something of a nuisance. There have been bans in Ghana, which still has one that is in theory in place, but is widely flouted, as well as big cities in Senegal, Nigeria, Cote d'. Ivoire. In other cases, like in Uganda, you've actually seen political parties try to co opt them as de facto youth wings, which is another way of recognizing their importance in the political economy. But ultimately, as I see when I'm in traffic in African cities, there are just too many of them responding to such a great demand that they aren't going to be going anywhere. So I think the sound of revving will be heard in African cities for many years to come.

And John, are these going to be the taxi of choice for your family?

I think what I need is a motorcycle and sidecar, given the growing brood. You know what? I think I'll get down to the shop as soon as I can.

John, thank you so much for your time. It's great to talk to you.

Cheers, Rosie.

I just arrived to Mora de Rubiellos after driving for four hours from Barcelona, and it's a quite remote village. It seems very deserted and very dry. And I'm just gonna go check in to my hotel now, which is called La Trufanegra, which means black truffle. I recently traveled to a place called Teruel, which is in Spain's province of Aragon, in the middle of the country.

Carla Suburana Artus is a journalist at the Economist.

And it's a modest and unassuming place which is known for being the world's largest producer of tuber melanosporum, which is the prince of black truffles. If you haven't heard of it, you're not alone. As it only recently became a top producer. A man called Manolo Donate was the first to cultivate truffle plantations there. When he was growing up, he would always see men with dogs in the mountains near his home who were coming to catch wild truffles, which grew in abundance in that land. In the 1980s, he visited a truffle plantation in France and had the idea of becoming the first to cultivate truffles in those mountains. I spoke to his daughter Simona. She told me that everyone thought he was crazy. No one had ever cultivated truffles there, and very little was known about how to farm them. But in the end, he proved everyone wrong. Teruel is now the world's biggest producer of black truffles. Last year, the region exported more than 26,000 kilograms. Truffle farming is an anxious process. That's a local farmer, Julio. He drove me around on his quad, so it was quite hard to have a conversation. But he told me farmers must inoculate the oak trees with the truffle fungus, replant them in a field and prune them regularly. When they begin to produce after more than eight years, they require trained animals to be found. Most farmers use dogs. He told me that every truffle is emotional to him and that when he picked his first truffle here, he had to kneel down because he was so emotional. Now, France's Perigord region used to be the biggest producer, but production has plummeted over the past centuries because farmers have switched to easier crops. However, Terruel's soil is very poor and it's unfit for farming most crops. So locals have had to bet everything on growing truffles. Simone told me that their poor soil is both a blessing and a curse, because production has actually enriched farmers. Black truffles are really expensive. They fetch up to €700 per kilogram. And the boom has also halted the population. Although Aragon's population has fallen a lot in recent years, in Sarrion, the population has held steady, and it has also helped other industries, such as hospitality. Daniel Breida is the head of the Red Truffle Farming Association. He says that Terel needs to increase the value of its land and win international recognition. Because truffles from France are still regarded as the gold standard. He's working on obtaining a geographical indication, a legal label that would give Terrell's truffles the same protection as champagne or Parmahan. Everything would need to be produced in the territory, ensuring that farmers benefit from all stages of production. He hopes that the European Union will grant it before the next season starts in November. Another challenge that Mr. Brito is working on is Spaniards lack of appetite for truffles. The ingredient was banned during the Spanish Inquisition because it was considered a poison from hell, so it never really made the country's cook replacement books. To Tyrell, however, truffles are a gift from heaven.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastconomist.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.