Why I’m voting for the AfD

On 23 February, I will vote for the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in the German general election. As someone with an immigrant parent, a postgraduate degree, and who works in the liberal world of film and TV, this is the last thing I’m supposed to admit to in public.

My fellow Germans might understand my not wanting to vote for the Social Democratic party (SPD), the left-wingers who lead our deeply unpopular coalition government. But as an ‘educated’ millennial, surely I ought to vote Green? After all, our shamelessly non-neutral public broadcasters ARD and ZDF acclaim them the ‘party of youth’.

Or perhaps, as someone who usually thinks of themselves as a conservative, I should vote for the Christian Democratic Union, the bland centre-right party which is predicted to gain the most votes in the election? The hard truth, though, is that Germany is no longer the safe, prosperous country I remember from my childhood, and it is these ‘normal’ parties who are to blame.

Many of Germany’s problems started when Angela Merkel, the former CDU chancellor, decided in 2015 to open the borders to anyone who claimed to be a Syrian refugee. Millions came, with a compliant media claiming they would be the doctors and engineers of the future who would pay for our pensions. Nearly a decade on, many of those who arrived still don’t have jobs, can’t speak German and rely on benefits. There has been a significant rise in terror attacks and an increase in violent crime linked directly to some of these immigrants.

Now nearly half of all welfare recipients are foreigners. More than €132 billion in welfare has been paid to them since 2010, with costs tripling between 2010 and 2023. By contrast, it is estimated that the sum needed to upgrade schools, roads and our increasingly unreliable public transport system comes to €165 billion.