The latest demonstration of right-wing strength came earlier this week in Germany, where the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) alliance and the even more emphatically conservative Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) together accounted for just under half of the popular vote.
The corollary of right-wing strength is, of course, left-wing weakness. In Germany the traditional left-wing standard-bearer, the Social Democratic Party, slumped to its lowest share ever of the postwar popular vote.
The Greens also lost ground. Only the relatively minor Left Party registered solid gains.
On its face, the German result would indicate the swift formation of a strong right-wing coalition government. The German electorate has, after all, delivered the right-wing parties a commanding majority in the German parliament.
That such a coalition will not, as matters presently stand, eventuate, requires some explanation.
Predictably, that explanation derives from the 12 years that Germany spent under Nazi rule. The crimes committed against the German people and, ultimately, the entire world by Adolf Hitler and his followers presented the victors of World War 2 with a dilemma: how to establish a political system sufficiently robust to allow the Germans to rule themselves without embracing the same radical-nationalist ideas that gave birth to Nazism.
In the Russian zone of occupied Germany, "denazification" was accomplished by constructing another totalitarian state, the German Democratic Republic, in which a single political organisation, the Socialist Unity Party (superintended by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), controlled everything.
The American, British and French occupiers of the defeated Reich, already engaged in bitter ideological competition with the Soviets, could not be seen to embrace the totalitarian solutions of the Communists. Their brand-spanking-new Federal Republic of Germany could only be a democracy — with all the dangerous freedom that entails.
"Dangerous freedom"? Of course "dangerous freedom". Because, if freedom is to be anything other than a sham, it must encompass the possibility of its own rejection.
People are not genuinely free unless they are also entrusted with the power to surrender their freedom. Liberty cannot be enforced.
The American, British and French occupiers disagreed. The constitution of their new republic was shaped in such a way that any political party unwilling to conform to its unwavering intolerance of anti-democratic ideas would be shunned by all the pro-democratic parties.
If this political ostracism failed, and the voters, against all reason, continued to vote for an anti-democratic party in large numbers, then the all-powerful "Office for the Protection of the Constitution" could ban it altogether.
For good measure, all speech supportive of Hitler’s Nazi regime; the public display of Nazi symbols and memorabilia; and the use of Nazi greetings and slogans was outlawed.
Following the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989, and the reunification of Germany in 1990, the exclusion of the anti-democratic Right was extended to the anti-democratic Left.
On the grounds that a number of its founders had been members of the Socialist Unity Party, the centrist Social Democrats and their Green Party allies point-blank refused to enter into a coalition with the Left Party.
The AfD, branded "far right" by Germany’s political mainstream, suffered a similar fate. The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU (many of whose members support the AfD’s tough anti-immigration stance), have ruled out any possibility of entering into a coalition with the radical-nationalists.
For the long-suffering Germans this means enduring yet another "grand coalition" of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. (In New Zealand terms, National and Labour.)
But these two ideological formations are traceable historically to very different socio-economic classes and cultural/religious divisions in German society. Politically speaking, it is extremely difficult to effect a durable combination of chalk and cheese.
Nor is it a durable solution to the steady expansion of radical-nationalist populism in Germany, or, for that matter, across the globe. Once a political movement achieves sufficient momentum to double its popular support from 10%-20% of the electorate, excluding it from political office becomes completely counterproductive. What meagre support for democratic principles that still exists within its ranks will disappear altogether.
The treatment of the AfD will prove the truth of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous maxim: "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger."
■Chris Trotter is an Auckland writer and commentator.
