German employers are increasingly beginning to take an interest in the political beliefs of their employees. For example, a newly formed alliance consisting of the Who’s Who of German capital (such as Bayer, DHL, Mercedes, BASF, Volkswagen), as well as the German Federation of Trade Unions, and the German Industrial Federation, has set out to promote “liberal values” and popular confidence in the European Union for the upcoming European elections in July.
The purported reason for this activity lies in the publication of reports of a secret meeting in a lakeside villa near the city of Potsdam in November 2023. Here, guests, including members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), business people, and a prominent far-right activist, were allegedly discussing a concept called “remigration”: plans to deport millions of immigrants, refugees, and putatively non-assimilated citizens to their countries of origin.
While “deportation plans” of German citizens with immigrant backgrounds at what mainstream media—blowing it up out of all proportion—called a “Wannsee Conference 2.0” have been debunked since, a sense of crisis has since then prevailed not only within the German elite, but among the wider public as well. For several years, German mainstream media—from Der Spiegel to Die Zeit to public service broadcasting—has been portraying the danger of fascism as looming just around the corner: except, of course, when it is the State and mainstream media itself that call for a return of dictatorship—as they did during Covid.
For several years, German mainstream media has been portraying the danger of fascism as looming just around the corner: except, of course, when it is mainstream media itself that calls for a return of dictatorship—as it did during Covid.
The “fight against the right” has become a hyperbole for the German elite’s fight against the only opposition party in the Bundestag, the AfD. Mass protests in the wake of the “Wannsee Conference 2.0” were able to halt the AfD’s success in the polls for a while, but they failed to substantially redirect the popular dissatisfaction with the political elite that underlies the success of the Right. As of May 17th, polls still place the AfD second with 17 percent. They would therefore, if a vote were held now, be the second strongest parliamentary party in Germany. Thus, nervousness among elites has rather intensified as they anxiously look toward the next elections, in September 2025.
Employers have been trying to make the gravity of the situation clear to their employees. While labor law forbids employers from threatening people with dismissal if they vote for a party disavowed by the employer or company, bosses have publicly criticized the AfD and committed themselves to the liberal canon of values. A drastic example is the 89-year-old billionaire Reinhold Würth of the Würth assembly materials firm, who recently wrote a letter to his staff warning against voting for the AfD. For Würth, there is no reason to vote for the Right as most voters are relatively well-off, and those in need are generously supported by the German welfare state.
Footage from the island of Sylt, a popular holiday destination for CEOs and business school students in the North Sea, has recently gone viral on social media. It shows a group of well-dressed, but arguably drunk, young people partying and chanting “Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans!” to Gigi D’Agostino’s Eurotrash hit of 1999, L’Amour Toujours. As the footage from the party sparked popular outrage, Chancellor Scholz issued a statement on the matter and handed over to the state security service, to investigate for demagoguery. The people involved, including a young man seemingly gesticulating the Nazi salute and sporting a Hitler moustache, were doxxed and subsequently fired from their jobs. A young woman seen in the video faces exmatriculation from her university. In addition, Parliamentary President Bärbel Bas has demanded the maximum sentence for the party attendees: 5 years in prison for “inciting hatred”. Needless to say, the Oktoberfest and other festivals have announced a ban on L’Amour Toujours being played in public places.
The people involved in a filmed incident involving the chanting of a slogan hostile to foreigners were doxxed and subsequently fired from their jobs. In addition, Parliamentary President Bärbel Bas, has demanded the maximum sentence: 5 years in prison for “inciting hatred”.
This opens up complicated questions, as German law considers acts such as those in the Sylt incident as—in principle—a private matter, and therefore not the business of employers. The question from a legal perspective therefore seems to be where the line between the private and the public runs in the era of social media and, more fundamentally, to what extent it exists at all if democracy really is, as so many fear, in acute danger. For Armin Laschet, the Christian Democrats’ candidate for Chancellor in 2021, however, the public reaction to the Sylt video is a positive signal. At the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the German Constitution, he said—unbothered by labour law considerations—that “as a society, we must ensure that this [the consequences faced by the people in the video] applies to all these incidents”, including anti-Semitic protests at universities and demonstrations by radical Islamists. These, however, remain without consequence. The perpetrators of a violent rampage at Humboldt University Berlin, self-avowed Hamas allies who destroyed property worth several million Euros, will not face charges or be exmatriculated from the university.
The perpetrators of a violent rampage at Humboldt University Berlin, self-avowed Hamas allies who destroyed property worth several million Euros, will not face charges or be exmatriculated from the university.
Other employers seem to agree with this double-faced approach. Take, for example, Rüdiger Schuch, the president of the German Deaconry (the philanthropic arm of German’s Protestant churches), one of Germany’s largest employers, with more than 600,000 employees. In April, he publicly announced that employees supporting the Right would need to go, as “the inhumane worldview of the AfD contradicts the Christian image of man”.
Despite such acts of virtue signaling, it is only legal for the church to fire employees if they act in ways that contradict Christian values. It is not legal to dismiss employees solely on the basis of party affiliation, as there needs to be grave misconduct to justify dismissal. However a disciplinary procedure was recently opened against a pastor in East Germany because he was running for a city council election for the AfD. In another case, an AfD politician was excluded from a Catholic church council due to his political activities.
Special guidelines also apply to the state as an employer. Here, German history comes into play, because it raises the question of how liberal democracy can protect itself from those who presumably want to destroy it. This is why experts and policymakers are debating a ban on the employment of teachers and civil servants who are considered too radical. Applicants for jobs within the civil service would then be subject to a background check by the domestic intelligence service, which, according to critics, amounts to snooping on individuals’ political views in the name of ensuring that civil servants are loyal to the German Constitution.
In the last couple of years, it seems that German political culture has deteriorated significantly, as denunciation has become a common feature of political discourse.
This kind of authoritarian denunciation, reminiscent for many of life in the German Democratic Republic, is not restricted to online spaces anymore. A recent video shows the Liberal Democrat Party member Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the top candidate for the European Parliament and one of the loudest proponents of sending more weapons to Ukraine, speaking in front of an audience at a campaign rally. When a man in the audience accused her of risking jobs and general prosperity, she was caught on camera rebutting: “Does your boss know what you’re doing here? Which company do you work for?”
When a man in the audience accused Strack-Zimmermann of risking jobs and general prosperity, she was caught on camera, rebutting: “Does your boss know what you’re doing here? Which company do you work for?”
However, there’s more to the story than an alleged threat to democracy emanating from COVID or the war in Ukraine. What motivates elites to lobby for the European election lies also in what they view as the potential economic consequences of an AfD-led government. Such a government is widely expected to drain the flows of foreign investments which are extremely important for the Green Modernization of the German economy, and to further tighten the labor market as skilled personnel from abroad may be deterred by the prospects of a xenophobic government.
If it’s about national politics, why then the fuss about the European elections? The European elections are seen as an indicator not only for the national elections in September 2025 but also for the popular approval of the EU in general. Above all, it is the prospect of Germany potentially leaving the Eurozone that is making the economic decision-makers’ blood run cold. The common European currency has been essential for the German growth model, as it allows German export capital to sell its goods much more cheaply than with a national currency such as the Deutschmark. A Dexit, as proposed now and then by some AfD officials, is thus seen as a potential death blow to German export capital.
A Dexit, as proposed now and then by some AfD officials, is thus seen as a potential death blow to German export capital.
The current carrot-and-stick approach, however, of appeasing AfD voters and simultaneously fighting them politically, has failed so far. Corporate calls in support of liberal values probably won’t help either, as people like Würth, who shrugs off child poverty and poverty among the elderly, appear aloof from the concerns of ordinary citizens.
Yet such efforts by employers are indicative not only of a deteriorating political culture but also of deep desperation among elites. In their helplessness, they echo the famous call of ex-chancellor Angela Merkel for a “market-conforming democracy”—one that is subject not only to the will of the people but also to that of global markets. The question is, then, what happens in Germany if these two collide.
