The German Government Thought the Virus Had Killed off Populism. It Thought Wrong

On the surface, 2020 seemed like a unique year in Germany (as in much of the world). A dangerous novel virus arrived and a new political experiment – the lockdown – was born. But the German government’s gloomy miserablism and politics of fear were sadly nothing new.

In theory, 2020 should have been a successful year for Germany’s governing elites, despite the great challenges posed by the pandemic. Back in August, polls showed record-breaking approval ratings for chancellor Angela Merkel and her coalition government.

At first, it even seemed as if the fight against the virus had granted the government and its supporters some respite in their ongoing battle with the populists. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has found it difficult to develop a coherent response to Covid and has been mired in infighting. Populism was on the back foot, many seemed to think.

Though deaths from the virus, tragically, began to rise rapidly in autumn (at the time of writing over 21,000 Germans have died), around the same time we received the brilliant news of a vaccine. BioNTech, which developed one of the first successful vaccines, is based in Mainz. The quick development of this highly effective mRNA technique might have been seen as an expression of Germany’s innovative power and ingenuity. But that’s not how the German government liked to present the news. In the absence of any clear strategy for dealing with the virus, it has instead been keen to uphold a climate of fear and passivity.

Of course, neither Merkel – the ‘crisis chancellor’, or Krisenkanzlerin, as she is known in Germany – nor her government have ever been particularly inspiring. But her emotional, almost teary warnings of ‘a last Christmas with the grandparents’, just before announcing a new hard lockdown, marked a new low.

Merkel was not the only doom-monger this year, however. The German media insisted that there was ‘no reason for euphoria’ at the arrival of the vaccine. Few journalists made any demands of the EU authorities to approve its use, despite the UK, the US and Canada declaring it safe.

Another absurd example of this culture of fear was the media attention given to virologist Christian Drosten – a staunch lockdown supporter and one of the government’s top medical advisers. In November, he warned that a new, potentially even more deadly pandemic from the MERS virus could be around the corner.

Though Covid was certainly a challenge, the pandemic has largely just made many of our government’s underlying problems more visible. At a recent press conference, Markus Söder, the Bavarian state premier (often tipped as a successor to Merkel in the CDU), spoke of a society in a state of ‘semi-consciousness’. He was referring to the ‘lockdown lite’ Germany was living under until a full lockdown was introduced in December. But he could have just as easily been talking about what has happened to his party.

Although there will be federal elections next year, voters still don’t know who the CDU will nominate to replace Merkel as chancellor. And because there hasn’t even been a party conference this year, the hapless Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), who was meant to step down in February, is still the CDU’s acting chair. This sad state of affairs has nothing to do with Covid, but rather speaks to the party’s inability to handle its inner power struggles and deal with its long-term decay.

It will not have escaped the notice of the German voters, who are much more awake than Söder and Co would like them to be, that the AfD was perfectly capable of holding a party conference – live, with masks and social distancing.