If we are to take seriously the reporting of the media, this week a devil was unleashed in the core of Europe. The tension had been building but the growing risk had hitherto been successfully contained. No more. A diabolical hand has knocked over the first domino in one regional election in Germany. Now all eyes are now on other dominos in Germany and beyond, notably France and the United Kingdom. Unbridled fear is now spreading that if more dominos fall, the demonic possession of the vaunted liberal democracies of civilized Europe will become complete.

Most commentators prefer to call it an electoral earthquake, as if it was nothing more than a natural disaster. But those same pundits point to diabolical agency and intent as they highlight the victorious party’s “efforts to relativize Germany’s Nazi past.” Anyone tempted by anything related to Nazis, especially in Germany, must by definition be on the side of demons.

To define with precision the stakes, Time Magazine defines the domino logic of this event in these terms: “Germany stands as a reminder of how swiftly democratic norms can erode.” Really? Is there anything swift about this or is the journalist simply unaware of recent history, a common symptom of much contemporary journalism. This drama has been building for some time. It didn’t suddenly happen on a September Sunday.

More significantly, that remark about eroding values should leave us wondering what the magazine’s notion of “democratic norms” consist of. Not only did the voting appear to take place without incident or suspicion of fraud, but the fact that the result deviates from past patterns of voting, now labeled “norms,” would seem to demonstrate exactly what democratic processes were designed to do: allow for political change rather than enforced continuity.

How bad was the quake?

It’s only by examining the multiple facets of this trend that we can begin to see why some have reacted in a state of panic. Their panic is certainly a more significant story than the election itself. So, how does this break down?

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won Sunday’s election in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. With another election in the offing in less than two weeks, the extent of the demonic possession of Germany’s electorate will soon be confirmed. With a discredited Chancellor Friedrich Merz having successfully cut in half his own party’s electoral results — his Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) party dropped from 37.1% five years ago to 17.2% today — some predict the AfD could come in first in the next national elections.

This creates a major dilemma for both Merz, now considered the least popular chancellor ever, and especially his ruling CDU that has been the dominant party for the majority of the post World War II period. Leaders such as Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel contributed to defining the CDU as the most stable element of the political landscape. All that has suddenly changed, justifying the metaphor of the earthquake.

Merkel himself has become the focus of everyone’s attention. Although the next round of scheduled federal elections need not take place before 2029 — barring a No Confidence vote and the breakup of the current ruling coalition — Merz could maintain his hold on the office of chancellor. He has insisted on his “determination to continue the reform course is unbroken.” But his poor ratings combined with a failing economy means that he has become a liability for his party. He could eventually be replaced, but such a move is saddled with risks. A change at the top (Kanzlertausch) might allow the party to pivot its economic and social messaging, signaling to voters that the CDU is listening to widespread discontent rather than digging in, but voters might equally read it as an avowal of helplessness.

Some believe that the results of Sunday’s election are being overhyped. Saxony-Anhalt is a small state of East Germany and far from representative of the general German electorate. Reporting on the election, the Associated Press’s journalists clarify this point by describing Saxony-Anhalt’s AfD in these terms: “Its regional branch is one of several considered a proven right-wing extremist group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.”

I get the drift, but at this point I help wondering about the journalistic quality of such an assertion. Note he passive construction of the sentence. What could be more insubstantial than asserting something is “considered” to be “proven?” Either it is proven or not but citing the fact that it is considered renders the assertion meaningless.

But that’s only the beginning. Affirming that what it is proven to be is a “right-wing extremist group” compounds the mystification. Calling AfD “far right” would have been justified because the AfD is clearly further to the right than any of the other major parties. But labeling this branch “proven right-wing extremist” is at best a debatable value judgment, especially given that the source that makes the accusation “proven” is Germany’s intelligence agency. We should all understand that the information intelligence agencies make public is just as likely to be a tendentious lie as a truthful assertion. That’s a serious part of their job. Demonizing enemy governments, opposition political parties or people the establishment doesn’t like is standard practice by governments, intelligence agencies and many in the media. But it’s also, as often as not, another kind of demonic practice.

Harnessing the power of demons

Under Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, Germany established a “special relationship” with evil. Ever since, the nation has been struggling to purge the memory of that infernal lapse. But exorcism is never an easy or painless task. And devils that have been effectively cast into exile sometimes manage to show up again in moments of weakness.

Fascination with the diabolical has a long and glorious history in German culture. Playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s most famous work, Faust, features the demon Mephistopheles and gives him a fundamentally constructive role to play. In the “Prologue in Heaven” that introduces the drama of Faust’s pact with the devil, God explains:

Man’s doings all too easily abate,
And he so quickly longs for perfect rest.
To give him a companion would be best,
A devil who will work, stir, and create.

In other words, devils have their uses and may even be the recipe for building Europe’s future. If the AfD can be condemned because of its apparent nostalgia for Hitler — an unambiguously evil political devil — other more constructive political devils will be free to “work, stir and create.” They sometimes have names like Emmanuel, Ursula and Larry.

In Act V of playwright Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, written two centuries earlier than Goethe’s magnum opus, the eponymous hero, agonizing over his fate, is carted off to hell as punishment for his dabbling with the devil. Goethe’s Faust finds an escape clause in his contract and achieves redemption by committing himself to a public works project that consists of draining a swamp to create arable land for a free society. It’s precisely the kind of thing a good chancellor might want to encourage.

Merz may secretly identify with Faust. The Associated Press article explains that crestfallen chancellor wants “to assure Germany’s allies that ‘our institutions are resilient and stable.’” In other words, he sees himself promoting arable land in place of a fetid swamp. The AfD has been cast in the role of the infectious swamp.

To save his soul despite compromising it with Mephistopheles, Faust commits to engineering a massive coastal land reclamation project aimed at draining a toxic tidal marshland and converting it into arable, inhabited land protected by a system of dikes, canals and dams. Like Faust, Merz recognizes that his nation’s image is compromised by its former pact with the devil and requires a spectacular initiative to achieve redemption.

“We know,” Merz now admits in his comments on the election results, “that Germany carries special responsibility because of its history.” However, instead of draining a swamp and building dikes, canals and dams, Merz commits to an even more ambitious project. Paradoxically, it happens to be the one that Hitler himself embraced: military domination.

Despite their supposed fondness for Hitler, the growing electoral base of the AfD voters may be reacting to what they see as Merz’s truly diabolical neo-Hitlerian mission. The chancellor is not just preparing for war with demonized Russia, but he insists on the importance of endowing Germany with the “strongest conventional army in Europe.”

Haven’t we seen that before? Could that be the factor that’s attracting new voters to the AfD?

What the voters might be thinking

Though Western media has not highlighted it, a major insufficiently documented reason for the rise of AfD is its opposition to the growing obsession in Germany and more generally in the European Union with preparation for a continent-wide existential war against Russia. Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appear convinced that military Keynesianism is the horse serum that will restore Europe’s failing economic health. Many voters who might not otherwise have been attracted to the AfD feel that plan will only further undermine a flailing economy. And as none of the traditional parties are willing to deviate from the official EU–NATO orthodoxy of “war against Russia is a noble mission,” voting AfD may seem like the easiest form of protest.

In his remarks, Merz doubles down on his Faustian project when he promises not to “budge one millimeter from my fundamental conviction that we must defend our freedom against Russia now.” This Devil’s Advocate has to laugh at the eerie historical echo he detects. Was Merz unaware of the resemblance of his assertion with the famous promise to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev: “NATO would not move one inch eastward?”

Four US presidents, beginning with Bill Clinton, successively broke that promise, none more vehemently than George W. Bush in at the 2008 Bucharest NATO conference. Barack Obama dramatically accelerated the process in 2014, when his administration, in a coordinated coup, helped to oust Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, because of his opposition to NATO expansion. That opened the door to an intransigent commitment by the Joe Biden administration to achieve Bush’s stated goal of enlarging NATO to include Ukraine.

Some will debate the reality of the initial promise and who should share the blame for what has now become Europe’s new forever war. But a growing number of European voters — and not just in Germany — appear attracted to any of the rare parties or candidates that dare to buck government propaganda and exhibit their willingness to break free of the establishment media’s obsequious discourse by daring to call into doubt the Faustian bargain of the new “coalition of the willing” (France, Germany and the UK) intent on waging war against Russia.

I’ll leave it to Goethe’s Mephistopheles to provide the epitaph, which may correctly describe the illusion most of today’s European politicians privately embrace.

“A part of that power, / Which always intends evil and always brings about good.”

Ein Teil von jener Kraft, / Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.

*[The Devil’s Advocate pursues the tradition Fair Observer began in 2017 with the launch of our “Devil’s Dictionary.” It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself — political and journalistic rhetoric — to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider’s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.