Frauke Petry of AfD leaves a press conference unexpectedly announcing that she won't become a member of the AfD in the Bundestag on the day after the elections, September 25, 2017. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.It’s been a funny day in Düsseldorf. The day after an election always feels odd, but this was something different. After Brexit happened, and again after Trump, the city woke up in shock. Last year, on the mornings of June 9 and November 9, everybody at the tram stop was glued to their phones. In fact, public transport on those days was eerily quiet throughout – as though the inhabitants of this prosperous, cosmopolitain city forty minutes down the motorway from Holland and a four hour train-ride from Paris had reached an unspoken decision to tread gently, aware that the ground underneath their feet might not be as solid as they’d always supposed.
I’d been expecting September 25 2017 to have a similar hushed quality, but the inner-city rail-link I use to get my protesting toddlers to nursery was buzzing. Nobody seemed to be looking at their phones and nobody – thank goodness – seemed to pay any attention to the aforementioned toddlers. Instead, snatches of feverish conversations – some anxious, some excited – kept spilling over the seats with one word raw and ugly amongst them: AfD.
Germany’s far-right immigration party only (only!) got eight percent of the vote in Düsseldorf – five percent below the national average. The local paper, The Rheinische Post, is even claiming that when its reporter showed up to the party’s modest after party, only a dozen or so supporters were there. Contrast that with those ecstatic scenes from Saxony, where the AfD scooped up nearly thirty percent of the vote, and you could forgive Düsseldorf for thinking it had got off lightly. Still, everybody knows that something has changed – even here.
