Liberal Democracies Must Abandon Reactive Tactics and Address Root Causes to Stop the Far Right's Rise
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/cas-mudde. "The AfD’s win in Germany is a dark day for Europe. Time is running out to stop the far right | Cas Mudde | The Guardian." September 7, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that Germany's far-right AfD party just won a huge share of votes in a regional election, and this is part of a dangerous Europe-wide trend where far-right parties keep growing stronger. He says the usual responses—either trying to ban far-right parties or trying to work with them as if they're normal conservatives—aren't working, and instead mainstream politicians need to actually fix real problems like housing and inequality while also protecting democratic institutions, before it's too late.
Conclusion
To protect liberal democracy, mainstream and liberal parties must urgently abandon both the strategy of cordoning off far-right parties (firewalls/bans) and the strategy of normalizing them, and instead pursue substantive policy reform and strengthen democratic institutions—because time is running out before far-right parties achieve dominant power in Germany and across Europe.
Premises
- The AfD won 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a dramatic increase from 20% in 2021, despite being officially classified as an extreme-right party.
- Far-right parties are surging across Europe, with an average vote share of roughly 25%, and this trend is accelerating rather than stabilizing.
- Neither of the two dominant strategies—maintaining a cordon sanitaire ('Brandmauer') against far-right parties, or normalizing and integrating them into mainstream coalitions—has successfully halted their rise.
- Banning far-right parties risks a severe popular backlash, while treating the far right as an external threat ignores that mainstream party systems themselves are fragmenting and failing.
- A growing share of voters no longer feel represented by mainstream politicians and increasingly vote against parties (specifically the far right) rather than for a positive vision, which is an unsustainable basis for democratic legitimacy.
- Once far-right parties gain governing power, the fight to preserve democracy becomes significantly harder and less fair, as demonstrated by Hungary and the United States.
- Coalition governments formed purely to exclude the far right tend to be unstable and inefficient, which paradoxically fuels further political dissatisfaction and far-right support.
Assumptions
- Far-right electoral success is driven primarily by voter dissatisfaction with mainstream governance rather than genuine ideological conversion to far-right values.
- Democratic institutions and mainstream parties can still be reformed quickly enough to reverse or slow the far-right's momentum.
- Strengthening democratic institutions and addressing socioeconomic concerns (housing, inequality, climate) will meaningfully reduce far-right support rather than being orthogonal to it.
- The AfD's trajectory and the dynamics in Saxony-Anhalt are representative of broader European trends rather than a regional anomaly.
- Fighting the far right and strengthening democracy are complementary goals that can be pursued simultaneously without one undermining the other.