European Far-Right Nationalists Rise Against Merkel in Germany

As the gatekeeper of the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing political turmoil in her own country. Merkel’s pro-migrant policies have fomented a popular backlash that may spread far beyond immigration policy. Populist fervor is once again dawning over Berlin as far-right politicians pander to the lowest common denominator: European-style nationalism.

The face of the anti-Merkel movement in Germany is Frauke Petry, the petite yet loquacious 40-year-old leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Petry has “ridden a wave of discontent over the chancellor’s embrace of more than one million refugees to their strongest poll ratings ever,” reports The New York Times. “They are now roiling Germany’s placid, consensus-driven politics and threatening to alter its political landscape as insurgent parties have done in less stable or prosperous countries around Europe.”

Here is Petry at a recent press conference:

European far-right politics is nothing like American conservatism; or at least it wasn’t until populist demagogue Donald Trump entered the stage. “But reflecting their working-class constituencies, European right-wing parties are often more anti-business, anti-trade and pro-social-welfare than American Democrats, let alone American Republicans,” writes Dan McLaughlin in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.

Petry, and her ilk of far-right counterparts in Europe, including France’s Marie Le Pen, aren’t just run-of-the-mill anti-establishment figures, but hyper-nationalists stoking the fires of economic protectionism and domestic insulation. While Merkel’s policies have been more than generous to Muslim refugees, perhaps imprudently so, Petry’s dystopian vision of a homogenous Germany swings the pendulum entirely the other way. “Where Ms. Merkel, the chancellor, has welcomed refugees, Ms. Petry, a rising far-right leader, has said border guards might need to turn guns on anyone crossing a frontier illegally,” notes The New York Times.

The European far-right’s full-blown hostility to migrants of all stripes has been part and parcel of their crude populist appeal for decades. However, as the European Union confronts its greatest migrant crisis yet, fringe politicians, like Petry and Le Pen may storm into the corridors of power, riding on the waves of popular mandate.

Western Europe’s extreme tolerance of intolerance, turning a blind eye to hate preachers, derelict imams, and the separate Muslim communities within its borders created the perfect storm for a populist insurgency. Instead of assimilation, Europe promoted marginalization, under its separate but equal multi-culturalist policies. Muslim immigrants have congregated in insular and self-reinforcing Islamic communities, where self-policing and religious piety turned unassuming European neighborhoods in France, Germany, and elsewhere into petri dishes of extremism.

As EU residents grow weary of misguided "diversity” policies that ironically foster further social polarization, nationalist parties will flourish and reap the rewards. Dan McLaughlin adds:

In recent decades, Europe has experienced much heavier mass immigration from nearby Third World Muslim countries such as Algeria and Morocco, so that fears of culture clash that are mostly theoretical here are daily realities there. It has also seen independent nations drawn into the multinational bureaucracy of the European Union, raising real fears that national identities will fade away.

Against the backdrop of a disoriented European Union, independent nation-states, tired of receiving commands from Brussels, are attempting to reassert their national identities through whatever means necessary. Now, all eyes are rightly on Berlin. If Merkel isn’t able to hold the line against far-right anti-EU nationalist parties, or a viable, sensible right-wing alternative doesn’t emerge soon, it may create a domino effect through the continent.