Thing Can Only Get Besser

Can Germany shake off the corrosive spiral of declinism in 2024?

I wanted to learn German because it seemed cool. Lots of Germans, who have grown up thinking that their culture is embarrassing and lame, would find this laughable.

But I made the decision back in 2013, when Germany seemed to have the wind in its sails. Unlike just about everywhere else in Europe, the economy was booming. Young people from all over the world were drawn to the alternative mecca of Berlin. The football team played exciting modern football and were on track to win the World Cup. Angela Merkel was something of a girlboss. The whole place just gave off good vibes. Germany seemed like a tolerant, progressive and confident nation. 

Of course, some of this was my naive 21-year-old lens. But if I were now choosing a new language to learn, would I be so drawn to German? Of course, there is still the rich cultural heritage and fascinating history, but unlike those heady days of the early 2010s, Germany now has a rather sad air about it. 

Much of what provided the foundation for this success turned out to be built on rather shaky ground. The economic boom? Based on cheap gas from bellicose fascist Russia and powered by selling big diesel-powered SUVs to the nouveau riche of China and the Gulf monarchies. 

Sensible fiscal leadership? Dogmatic discipline to the orthodoxy of austerity in the boom years - personified by the recently deceased Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel’s long-time finance minister -  has left the state and its critical infrastructure lagging behind. The once feted rail system, Deutsche Bahn, has become a laughing stock. The state bureaucracy is inflexible and ill-equipped to deal with the ever-accelerating digital world. 

Merkel as a strong and unifying leader? Her legacy isn’t looking so great now. The decision to shut down all nuclear power stations has backfired spectacularly. Germans now have higher energy bills than any other European country, and the country’s economy has been hamstrung in its efforts to decarbonise. 

Germany as a beacon of tolerance and openness? Since the peak of the migration crisis in 2015, German politics has been poisoned by concerns around integration and immigration. It seemed like the far-right would never be able to return in Germany’s mature democracy; now the AfD, a party full of people somewhere to the right of Hermann Goering, are polling at comfortably over 20%, and look set to become the dominant party in several east German Bundesländer in state elections this year. 

Even the national football team, traditionally a dependable and strong unit, look an aimless mess at the moment, and with their current form could be on track for humiliation when hosting the European Championship this summer. 

All of this has congealed to create a morose mood around the place. Declinism, the feeling that things used to be better, long a favoured national pastime of the French, has taken hold of public discourse.

Of course, it’s easy to understand why the declinists think the way they do. I’ve spent the first part of this article outlining numerous ways things have got worse over the past decade. And on a global scale, Europe continues to be less and less significant economically and demographically. It is the old continent, left behind technologically, trading off its former glories, wedged between the buzzing centres of power in Asia and America.

Politicians seem entirely powerless to provide solutions to the increasing insecurities of the population. The hollowing out of the social state, the housing crisis, crumbling infrastructure, shoddy public services, grotesque inequalities; it is incredibly easy to lose our bearings, to feel like nothing makes sense anymore.

The Ampelkoalition (traffic-light coalition) of the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberal FDP seems to have run aground after just two years. The former two parties’ stated ambition of a green economic transformation have been severely hamstrung by the market fundamentalism and corporate cronyism of the FDP. The design of the coalition means FDP leader Christian Lindner holds the keys to the finance ministry, allowing him to slash and restrict plans for public spending. This, as well as the unrelenting global omnicrisis, has served to make the government ineffective and wildly unpopular.

A majority of Germans don’t think the government will last the year. Cynicism, ennui and pessimism are the order of the day. 2024 has got off to the worst possible start, with a Gilets Jaunes-esque uprising by farmers over scrapped diesel subsidies causing chaos on the roads and contributing to the all-round sense of malaise and discord.

Signs of decline are everywhere, but declinism is a corrosive way of viewing the world; once we submit to the idea that everything is getting worse, it makes it impossible for things to get better.

History proves as much, especially in Germany. One of the most famous declinist works is Oswald Spengler’s 1918 book Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), a 1,000-page tome outlining how Western civilisation was approaching the end of its life cycle. If we consider the horrors of the First World War and the chaos of the early Weimar Republic, it’s easy to see why the book became a hit in the 1920s.

Spengler’s ideas became a major influence on the Konservative Revolution which broke out during the Weimar years. This was a broad reactionary cultural movement which decried various aspects of modernity - democracy, rationalism, liberalism, cosmopolitanism - and longed for a return to traditional social orders. 

The Konservative Revolution shouldn’t be seen as synonymous with Nazism. The Nazis had a clearly defined socio-political ideology, whereas the Konservative Revolution was a disparate bundle of thinkers and concepts united by a sense of modern-day decline and nostalgia for a simpler past. 

But the conservatives stood on the same side as the Nazis in a bitter culture war which divided Weimar society. The big cities, Berlin in particular, became havens of modernist art, subversive cultural movements and queer liberation. For right-wingers, this symbolised the decadence of a depraved cultural elite and reflected the failures of democracy to uphold order and decency in society. This festering discontent around the Weimar Republic, exacerbated by the shockwaves of the great depression, helped to create the opening for Hitler to seize power.

This is why the current rise of declinism in Germany (and indeed Europe as a whole) is so alarming. Of course, there are big problems which must be openly discussed and addressed. But fixation on the mistakes of the past and how things used to be better can only serve to make the present worse and further poison the political mood in the country.

Reunification at the end of the Cold War allowed Germany to have a positive national narrative for a long time. But the first big sign that perhaps not all was well came back in 2010, with the release of a bestselling book, Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab (Germany is Destroying Itself). Written by Thilo Sarrazin, a veteran politician for the Social Democrats in Berlin, the book outlined how Germany was bringing about its own demise, primarily due to a falling birth rate and mass immigration from the Middle-East and Africa. Sarrazin was condemned by all right-thinking people, but the book became a massive bestseller, one of the most popular non-fiction works in Germany’s post-war history.

The success of Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab exposed a major fracture in German society, one which was torn open from 2015, when an unprecedented situation developed with the arrival en masse of refugees at train stations throughout Germany. At first, the prevailing public mood was one of openness and acceptance. Huge numbers turned out to welcome the new arrivals and work as volunteers. 

But it wasn’t to last. And the AfD had their opportunity to break through. In the 2013 federal election, the party was nothing but a ragtag band of Eurosceptics who finished with less than 5% of the vote and thus didn’t achieve parliamentary representation; by 2017 they were the third biggest party, with 12.6%. 

After a slight drop in 2021, the AfD are now sitting comfortably over 20% nationwide. And they haven’t got there by becoming more moderate and appealing to the centre. If anything, they’ve done the opposite, drifting ever rightwards. Senior party members are regularly exposing themselves as outright Neo-Nazis. 

This week, the party had its latest mask-off moment, as high-ranking members were revealed to have attended a secret far-right meeting at which plans were discussed to deport millions, including “unassimilated” German citizens and people who worked to help refugees.

There is a serious possibility that the party could be banned for violation of the constitution, which was designed to protect German democracy from far-right extremists. There is certainly a strong legal case. The question is whether it would be politically expedient to do so. 

Over 20% of the population haven’t turned into Neo-Nazis over the course of the past ten years. A large chunk of their share in the polls is made up of protest voters, who have turned to the AfD because they feel their concerns aren’t being listened to by an out-of-touch elite. Banning the AfD could be counterproductive, as it would give the impression that the establishment would rather shut down dissent than listen to voters. This could in turn lead to further radicalisation and distrust.

The only way around this will be for the other parties to grasp why people are being lured by the far-right and what can be done to address their concerns. But this won’t be easy. Take immigration, for example. Many people are voting AfD because they want to see it reduced. Tensions over multiculturalism flare up regularly, most recently over the conflict in the Middle-East. But as huge numbers of baby boomers retire, the German economic establishment has been crying out for more immigration to fill gaps in the labour market. 

The same goes for green policies. Meeting climate targets requires radical changes in the way we live. This won’t happen without inconvenience. We can only achieve the required transformation if we bring people on board and share the burden across society. But existing policies to lower emissions can too easily be painted as an attack on ordinary people, particularly those who live in structurally disadvantaged areas and have seen their living standards drop while inequality spirals. 

There is no easy way to solve these political problems. But we certainly won’t do so by lamenting how everything used to be better in the past, nor by using outdated approaches which no longer fit our runaway world. The only way we can make things better is by bringing people together with a positive and ambitious project of social transformation. If the declinists continue to set the tone, the problems facing Germany will just get worse and worse.