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      In a France Fearful of Immigrants, Another Candidate Tacks Hard Right

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      Valérie Pécresse, the center-right candidate in April’s presidential election, has adopted the vocabulary of the far right when discussing immigration.PARIS — As president, the candidate said, she would “eradicate zones of non-France,” or neighborhoods with high crime, where “the little old lady is told to stay home” because there is a drug deal underway outside her apartment.She would send in the army to help in the “Republican reconquest” of these areas where, she promised, offenders would be punished more severely under the law.“We have to eradicate them,” she said during a prime-time debate, referring to the areas, “and that’s what I would do as president of the republic.”It was not Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, who was speaking, but Valérie Pécresse, the center-right candidate in April’s presidential election.Ms. Pécresse recently won the nomination of the Republicans — the successor to parties once led by Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — by tacking hard right. She adopted the far right’s vocabulary, with its racial and colonial undertones, while proposing harsher penalties in high-crime zones for the same offenses as elsewhere, a policy that experts said would violate France’s bedrock principle of equality before the law.But with the primary behind her, Ms. Pécresse — an otherwise moderate conservative who has often been compared to President Emmanuel Macron — now faces the difficult task of enlarging her support base. Pulled right by her own party and the far right, she must also speak to moderates and traditional conservatives less interested in the themes of immigration and national identity that have dominated the political campaign.Ms. Pécresse in 2018 with President Emmanuel Macron, to whom she has often been compared.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinStill basking in her primary victory two weeks ago, Ms. Pécresse, the current leader of the Paris region and a former national minister of the budget and then higher education, has risen to second place behind Mr. Macron in the polls among likely voters in the election. For Mr. Macron, a challenge by an establishment figure like Ms. Pécresse could prove far more formidable than one by Ms. Le Pen, whom he easily beat in 2017.The rise of Ms. Pécresse, 54, comes at an unsettled time in French politics. Until this past summer, most experts had expected a rematch of 2017, pitting Mr. Macron against Ms. Le Pen in the second round of France’s two-round voting system. But the emergence and rapid rise of Éric Zemmour, a far-right author, television pundit and now presidential candidate, has turned things upside down.By severely weakening Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Zemmour’s candidacy has created a path for Ms. Pécresse to move past the first round and face Mr. Macron.Like the president, Ms. Pécresse is a graduate of France’s top schools and is at ease speaking English in international settings. She, too, is regarded as pro-business and pro-Europe, even though she has criticized Mr. Macron for his spending and recently proposed cutting 200,000 government jobs. On social issues, though, she is considered more conservative than the president. She opposed gay marriage when it became law in 2013, though she has since changed her position.Like others on the right and far right — who have railed against a supposed invasion of France by immigrants, even as arrivals have grown less in France than in the rest of Europe or in other rich nations worldwide in the past decade — Ms. Pécresse has taken a tough stance on immigration. Describing it as “out of control,” she said there was a link between immigration and the rise of Islamism, terrorism and crime. She has proposed putting quotas on immigrants by country of origin and category, and cutting social benefits for them.Migrants warming themselves by a fire at a makeshift camp in Paris. Ms. Pécresse has taken a hard line on immigration, calling it “out of control.”Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe first woman nominated by the Republicans as a presidential candidate, Ms. Pécresse has mentioned former Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain in speaking about her own leadership.Alexandra Dublanche, the vice president of the Paris region, who has worked with Ms. Pécresse for a decade, said the candidate was inspired by Ms. Thatcher as a “reformer and for her courage to get things done.” In Ms. Merkel, Ms. Pécresse admired “a long-term vision and the capacity to unite people behind her,” Ms. Dublanche said.Ms. Pécresse’s victory in the primary was widely considered a surprise to political experts and to her opponents, including allies of Mr. Macron. She defeated four men, including two who had been described as clear favorites. Ms. Dublanche said Ms. Pécresse was “clearly” underestimated because of her gender.In the first days after Ms. Pécresse’s victory, Mr. Macron’s allies scrambled for a strategy to counter her candidacy, but they are now emphasizing her positions during the primary.“On issues like immigration, she is on the hard right or close enough to the extreme right,” said Sacha Houlié, a national lawmaker of Mr. Macron’s party.Ms. Pécresse’s proposal to cut 200,000 government jobs was an example of the kind of austerity that would harm an economy recovering from the pandemic, Mr. Houlié said.Ms. Pécresse at a televised debate for her party’s presidential primary last month in Paris. She defeated four men, including two who had been considered clear favorites.Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of Ms. Pécresse’s supporters say her gender could prove an asset against Mr. Macron, who despite emphasizing equality at the workplace during his presidency, has been criticized for governing with a small circle of men.Female candidates of other parties made it to the second round of elections in 2007 and 2017, Mr. Houlié said.“So I think it’s hype,” he said. “Yes, she’s a woman, and maybe it’s new for the right, which reflects their backward vision of French society. It’s normal for everyone else that women are in politics.”But for now, Ms. Pécresse’s greatest challenge will be to manage the divergences within her own party and potential supporters, experts say.Like the rest of French society, her party has moved further right in recent years, said Emilien Houard-Vial, an expert on the party who teaches at Sciences Po university in Paris.“She is facing a stronger pressure on the right,” Mr. Houard-Vial said, adding that she would be expected to “give pledges” on issues like immigration, crime, national identity and “cancel culture.”Traditionally, party leaders have drawn a clear line between their organization and the far right led by Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally, formerly known as the National Front.Ms. Dublanche said that for Ms. Pécresse there was a “complete barrier” between her party and the far right.Barbès, one of the poorest districts in Paris, is home to the city’s largest Muslim community. Ms. Pécresse recently linked immigration to the rise of Islamism, terrorism and crime.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesBut in recent years the lines separating the party from the far right have increasingly blurred. Eric Ciotti, the runner-up in the Republicans’ primary, said that in a hypothetical showdown between Mr. Macron and Mr. Zemmour, he would back the far-right television pundit and writer.In fact, Ms. Pécresse quit her party in 2019 — coming back only in October — because she said at the time that she disagreed with its orientation under its leaders at the time.“She herself quit the party because she disagreed with the growing shift to the right,” said Gaël Perdriau, a longtime Republican who was forced to step down as vice president a few days after Ms. Pécresse’s victory because of his criticism of the party’s tilt further right. “So I don’t understand why she would return to the party and promote the same kind of ideas she criticized in the past.”During a prime-time debate during the primary, Ms. Pécresse adopted a studiously ambiguous position on the “great replacement” — a conspiracy theory that was popularized by Mr. Zemmour and that argues that France’s white Christian population is being intentionally replaced by African Muslims. The expression has been cited by white supremacists in mass killings in New Zealand and the United States.“If she’s not clear on this theory of the great replacement, I can’t vote for someone who supports those ideas,” Mr. Perdriau said. He added that instead of “offering concrete solutions to social problems,” his party found a “scapegoat in the foreigner.”“We can be representatives of authority, law and justice,” he said, “without lapsing into words that flirt with racism and hatred of the other.” More

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      France's Éric Zemmour Tries Channeling De Gaulle to Win Votes

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      Éric Zemmour has adopted imagery reminiscent of Charles de Gaulle, the wartime leader. But his call for reborn glory for France is sharply at odds with the realities of the country today.PARIS — The retro choreography was heavy-handed, its intent obvious: Éric Zemmour in a dark tie, eyes averted from the camera, reading into an old-fashioned microphone from sheets of paper, just like Charles de Gaulle in his famous speech from London on June 18, 1940, when he called for the liberation of a fallen France.Mr. Zemmour is not a towering general, and France is not on its knees. But Mr. Zemmour, the far-right polemicist who this week announced his run for next year’s presidential election, understands the power of provocative imagery. Effrontery and scandal have propelled his outsider candidacy.His campaign-launching video was a nationalistic call for reborn French glory. From Joan of Arc to the singer Johnny Hallyday, from Napoleon Bonaparte to Brigitte Bardot, from Voltaire to Versailles, from Notre Dame to village church bells, it took viewers on a tour of Mr. Zemmour’s imaginary France.The France that — in the telling of this Jewish journalist of North African descent whose family arrived in France 70 years ago — existed before immigrants, Muslim veils, vandalism and mealy-mouthed elites led the country to its most recent strange defeat.“His catastrophic vision speaks to a deep-rooted French pessimism,” said Pascal Perrineau, a social scientist. “We are one of the most pessimistic countries in the world. Combine that with alienation from the political class, inward-looking nationalism, and a defiant French inclination to overturn the table, and you have the Zemmour phenomenon.”Charles de Gaulle delivering a speech from London in which he called for the liberation of a fallen France. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesWhether or not Mr. Zemmour can build out from his current support — in the 12 to 15 percent range, according to polls — and qualify for the runoff round of voting in April is unclear. But one way or another, he will affect the outcome, splitting the far-right share of the vote and so opening up the field. Already this man without a party has illustrated just how far France has lurched to the right.There would be no Zemmour phenomenon if France were not ripe for it, just as there would have been no President Donald J. Trump if the United States had not been ready for his nationalist message.Mr. Zemmour explicitly models himself on Mr. Trump. He rose to notoriety through regular TV appearances, he laces his apocalyptic message with anti-immigrant slurs, he makes the unsayable sayable, he delights in a macho contempt for women, and his slogan might as well be “Make France Great Again.”“We are a great nation, a great people. Our glorious past presages our future. Our soldiers conquered Europe and the world!” Mr. Zemmour declared this week, before insisting that “we will be worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be dominated, turned into vassals, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced.”Mr. Zemmour, like Tucker Carlson of Fox News, is an ardent adherent to the theory of “the great replacement,” a phrase generally attributed to a xenophobic French writer, Renaud Camus, who said: “The great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people.” The new France, according to Mr. Zemmour, would be the one that has been led to “decline and decadence” by Muslim immigration.Mr. Zemmour, a far-right media pundit, his risen to notoriety through regular appearances on television. Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHow did France arrive at this state, where polls suggest at least 35 percent of the population will vote for either Mr. Zemmour or the perennial candidate of the far right, Marine Le Pen, in the first round of voting?Some factors are shared with the United States — cultural fracture between cities and the hinterland, deindustrialization, racial tensions, growing precariousness in the workplace — but others are unique to France.Chief among them is the place of the second religion of France, Islam. Many of the millions of Muslims in France, as much as 10 percent of the population, according to estimates, are successfully integrated, but their story has tended to be overshadowed by numerous terrorist attacks by radical Islamists.This has engendered fear, as has the perception that the teachings of Islam may be hard to reconcile with a Republic dedicated to the notion that education dissolves differences of faith in shared citizenship.“Immigration equals Islam equals insecurity,” said Hakim El Karoui, a Muslim who is a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne. “No politician praises diversity any longer.”Mr. Zemmour’s emergence changes the presidential election, to be held a little over four months from now. Because Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, who is making her third attempt to become president, and Mr. Zemmour, will divide the hard-right-right vote, it may open the way for a center-right candidate to reach the second round. The percentage of votes needed to qualify by being one of the top two candidates in the first round will be lower.Valérie Pécresse, at her campaign headquarters in Paris on Thursday, is emerging as a potential dark horse candidate for the center-right in the 2022 presidential election.Christophe Ena/Associated PressValérie Pécresse, a moderate conservative who heads the Île-de-France regional council and is a former budget minister, won a runoff party vote this weekend to become the candidate of the center-right Republicans. She has described herself as “one-third Thatcher, two-thirds Merkel” and is emerging as the potential dark horse of an election where the French left seems condemned to irrelevance.For now, President Emmanuel Macron, occupying a vast vacated middle ground, looks like the favorite. But he would be less comfortable facing Ms. Pécresse in a runoff than an extreme right-wing ideologue.Mr. Zemmour, unlike Ms. Le Pen, has appealed to some of the center-right through his erudition and culture, but his challenge is now twofold: to convince the French that he is not a one-trick pony and to overcome the impression that he is not “presidential.” In other words, he has to address issues beyond immigration, not least formulate something resembling an economic plan; and he probably needs to cut from his repertoire the kind of crude gesture he aimed at a protester in Marseille last month.Still, until now, as with Mr. Trump, every outrage that might have derailed Mr. Zemmour has left him reinforced, or at least still standing, and often leading the news of the day. An editorial in the center-right daily Le Figaro noted this week that it was a French writer, Honoré de Balzac, who described scandal as “the pedestal of success.”Mr. Zemmour has called child asylum seekers “thieves, killers and rapists.” He has said “most drug dealers are Black and Arab.” He has suggested France’s collaborationist wartime Vichy government saved French Jews. He has equated Jewish children murdered in 2012 with their jihadi terrorist killer because their parents chose to bury them outside France, in Jerusalem.He has argued that “Islam is incompatible with the French republic” and suggested that mass deportation of immigrants might not be impossible. This despite the fact an entire section of the cemetery at Verdun, the World War I battlefield where about 300,000 people were killed, is given over to Muslims who gave their lives for France.Mr. Zemmour signing a copy of his latest book in Toulon, southern France, in September. Daniel Cole/Associated PressHe would ban all “non-French names” like Muhammad. He would rescind the 1972 Pleven law that made incitement to racial hatred illegal and has earned him repeated charges and one conviction.Mr. Zemmour’s 2006 book called “The First Sex,” published when he was a journalist at Le Figaro newspaper, was a best seller. It argued that France had declined because of the loss of male “virility” and the “feminization” of society. In a subsequent best seller, “The French Suicide,” published in 2014, he waxed lyrical about the world before feminism when a bus driver could “slide a concupiscent hand” over a woman’s backside without risking prosecution.Married to a lawyer, he is openly involved in a relationship with his political adviser Sarah Knafo, 28. He has not denied a news report that she is pregnant, although he has sued the magazine that published the article for invasion of privacy, according to his lawyers. The revelations have not caused a stir in France.“A lot of French people don’t care,” said Mr. Perrineau, the social scientist. “They think some level of scandal is the price to be paid for renewing French political life.”De Gaulle said in his London speech that “the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”That, of course, was resistance to a France that had succumbed to the racist, antisemitic ideology of Vichy. More

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      As French Election Looms, Candidates Stake Out Tough Positions on Migrants

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      With a presidential election looming, French presidential hopefuls are hardening their positions against immigration even as other countries compete for migrant workers.PARIS — An out-of-control influx of immigrants. A threat to French identity and stability. A reason to urgently close France’s frontiers.The issue of immigration is dominating political debate in the country five months before presidential elections, as candidates on the right as well as the left harden their positions. The drowning last week of 27 migrants off France’s northern coast has only added to the argument that migration must be checked.Despite the fierce words on the campaign trail, the reality is far different: Nearly all of France’s neighbors have a greater proportion of immigrants in their populations. In the past decade, immigration has grown less in France than in the rest of Europe or in other rich nations worldwide.The figures show that the migration situation in France is “rather ordinary, rather moderate,’’ said François Héran, a leading expert on migration who teaches at Collège de France. “We’re really not a country overrun by immigration,’’ Mr. Héran said.That has not stopped pledges by politicians to impose a moratorium on immigration, hold a referendum on the issue or simply close the borders — in contrast to moves by other wealthy nations, like Germany and Australia, to attract migrant workers to fill labor shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. As French restaurants, hotels, construction companies and other services face a shortage of workers, politicians across the ideological spectrum have proposed raising wages — but not the number of immigrants allowed into the country.“In France, we never talk about the economy when we talk about immigration,’’ said Emmanuelle Auriol, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics and the co-author of a recent government-sponsored report that described how France’s growth has been hampered by its immigration policies. “All the talk is about national identity.’’As French restaurants, hotels and other services face a shortage of workers, politicians across the ideological spectrum have proposed raising wages — but not loosening immigration policies.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesFears that traditional French identity is threatened by Muslim immigrants from Africa — fanned for decades, either openly by the extreme right or with winks and dog whistles by others — have long consumed discussions about immigration. A series of terrorist attacks in recent years, some perpetrated by children of immigrants who grew up in France, have heightened those fears.These concerns have had a cumulative effect in France — making any embrace of immigration political suicide, obstructing badly needed reforms to attract qualified workers from abroad and pushing inward a country once known as a global crossroads.“We’re in a new phase,’’ said Philippe Corcuff, an expert on the far right who teaches at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. “What we’re seeing is the result of what has been happening in France for the past 15 years: the collapse of the left, which is now silent on immigration, and the rise of the extreme right, which ultimately may not win the elections but is setting the terms of the debate.”Candidates among the Republicans, the main party of the center right, are agreed on the need to “retake control” of the borders and to tighten immigrants’ eligibility for social benefits. One candidate, Michel Barnier, who served as the European Union’s negotiator with Britain during the Brexit talks, even proposed changing France’s constitution to be able to impose a “moratorium on immigration” for three to five years.On the left, while most candidates have chosen to remain silent, a former economy minister pledged to block remittances sent home by migrants via Western Union to countries that he said refused to repatriate citizens who are in France illegally. The proposal followed President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement that he would tackle the problem by slashing the number of visas issued to citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.Michel Barnier, a center-right party presidential primary candidate, proposed changing France’s constitution to be able to impose a “moratorium on immigration” for three to five years.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersOn the far right, Éric Zemmour, the writer and TV personality who on Tuesday announced a run for the presidency in next year’s elections, has said France’s very survival is at stake because immigration from Muslim nations threatens its Christian heritage.“We won’t allow ourselves to be dominated, turned into vassals, conquered, colonized,” Mr. Zemmour said in a video announcing his candidacy. “We won’t allow ourselves to be replaced.”With Mr. Zemmour’s candidacy, the previously taboo topic of the “great replacement” — a conspiracy theory accusing politicians like Mr. Macron of using immigration to replace white, Christian people — has become part of the election discourse. Mr. Zemmour accused successive French governments of hiding “the reality of our replacement’’ and has said that Mr. Macron “wants to dissolve France in Europe and Africa.’’During a recent prime-time debate, while center-right candidates hesitated to embrace the expression — which has been cited by white supremacists in mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex. — they indicated that the threat of replacement represented a real problem facing France.According to a recent poll, 61 percent of French respondents said they believed that Europe’s white and Christian population would be subjected to a “great replacement’’ by Muslim immigrants.The intensity of the election rhetoric stands in contrast to the recent elections in Germany, where immigration was not an issue — even though Germany has led Europe in accepting refugees in recent years.“Immigration was missing from the campaign in Germany,’’ said Jean-Christophe Dumont, the head of international migration research for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D.A regional training hub in Dortmund, Germany. To deal with a labor shortage, Germany is trying to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and migrant workers.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times“There is a French obsession with immigration issues,’’ Mr. Dumont added. “In reality, France is not a major country for immigration.’’In 2020, France’s share of immigrants in its population — 13 percent — was below the average of O.E.C.D. nations. That proportion grew 16 percent between 2010 and 2020.By contrast, immigrants made up 16 percent of Germany’s population — a 30 percent increase during the same period.France stopped taking in huge numbers of workers from its former colonies in northern Africa as a long period of economic growth came to an end in the mid-1970s — a few years before the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front, now known as the National Rally, which helped make immigration a radioactive subject in French politics.Since then, migrant workers have accounted for only a small share of new immigration, which has been dominated by foreign students and family-linked arrivals.“We take in immigrants, not to work, but to join their spouses,’’ said Ms. Auriol, the economist.The result is that France’s immigration population is much less diversified than in other rich nations. In 2019, more than 40 percent of all arrivals came from Africa, especially Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, according to government data.That lack of diversity — coupled with the concentration of new immigrants in urban areas like Paris — fuels anxieties related to immigration, said Patrick Weil, a historian of immigration who teaches at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris and at Yale.While anti-immigrant sentiments played a role in former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016, immigration in France — closely linked to its colonial history, especially in Algeria and other Muslim nations — makes it an even more combustible topic, Mr. Weil said.“In France, there is a link between immigration and religion, whereas in the United States they are separate,” Mr. Weil said.Éric Zemmour, center, who is running for the presidency in next year’s elections, said that France’s very survival is at stake because immigration from Muslim nations threatens the country’s Christian heritage.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockFanned by the right, the fears surrounding immigration and a supposed threat to France’s Christian heritage make it extremely difficult to hold any discussions about reforming to attract qualified foreign immigrants, said Ms. Auriol, the economist.Current immigration policies, she added, stifles economic growth and the economic recovery from the pandemic.Modest changes have been carried out in recent years. But they are insufficient to attract the kind of motivated, skilled immigrants that France desperately needs to bring innovation and fresh thinking, Ms. Auriol said. Given the anti-immigrant climate, France also attracts relatively few citizens of other European Union nations, who can move freely to France, and suffers from a low retention of foreign students after graduation, she said.“In the 20th century, all the world’s talented people came to Paris,’’ she added. “Immigrants who contributed to France’s economic greatness, its scientific greatness and its cultural greatness. We were an open country. What happened to us?”Léontine Gallois More

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      What We Did the Last Time We Broke America

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      What happened to normal politics? I’ve spent the past five years commuting between two centuries, trying to find out.As a curator of political history at the Smithsonian, I have attended protests and primaries, talked politics at Bernie Sanders rallies and with armed Ohio militiamen. Again and again, 21st-century Americans wonder at a democracy that looks nothing like the one they grew up with.I’ve asked the 19th century the same question. Heading into the Smithsonian’s secure collections, past recently collected riot shields and tiki torches, I’ve dug into the evidence of a similar crisis in the late 1800s. Ballots from stolen elections. Paramilitary uniforms from midnight rallies. Diaries and letters, stored elsewhere, of senators and saloonkeepers and seamstresses, all asking: Is democracy a failure?These artifacts suggest that we’re not posing the right question today. If we want to understand what happened to 20th-century politics, we need to stop considering it standard. We need to look deeper into our past and ask how we got normal politics to begin with.The answer is that we had to fight for them. From the 1860s through 1900, America was embroiled in a generation-long, culturewide war over democracy, fought through the loudest, roughest, closest elections in our history. An age of acrimony when engaged, enraged participation came to seem less like a “perversion of traditional American institutions,” as one memoirist observed, and more like “their normal operation.”The partisan combat of that era politicized race, class and religion but often came down to a fundamental debate about behavior. How should Americans participate in their democracy? What was out of bounds? Were fraud, violence and voter suppression the result of bad actors, or were there certain dangerous tendencies inherent in the very idea of self-government? Was reform even possible?Ultimately, Americans decided to simmer down. After 1900, a movement of well-to-do reformers invented a style of politics, a Great Quieting aiming for what The Los Angeles Times called “more thinking and less shouting.” But “less shouting” also meant less turnout, less participation, less of a voice for working people. “Normal” politics was invented to calm our democracy the last time it broke.Over a century of relative peace, politically speaking, this model came to seem standard, but our embattled norms are really the cease-fire terms of a forgotten war.This period from the Civil War to World War I is often quickly explained with history textbook abstractions like “industrialization,” “urbanization” and “immigration,” but those big social forces had intimate effects on Americans. Living in a time of incredible disruption, instability and inequality pushed unsteady citizens into partisan combat. Nervous people make nasty politics, and the churn of Gilded Age life left millions feeling cut loose and unprotected. During this era, Americans saw weaker family ties, had fewer communal institutions and spent more time alone. Though we associate the Gilded Age with packed factories and tenements, loneliness and isolation were driving social and political forces in this shaken nation. Americans “had to cling to something,” observed the writer Walter Weyl, and in the absence of their old folk customs or local institutions, “the temptation to cling to party became ruthless.”The parties were willing to oblige. The only thing Gilded Age life seemed to want from struggling Americans was their hard labor. But the Democratic and Republican Parties wanted their voices at rallies, their boots on the cobblestones, their stomachs at barbecues, their fists at riots and their votes on Election Day. Richard Croker, a Tammany Hall boss — once jailed for an Election Day stabbing — called his machine America’s “great digestive apparatus,” capable of converting lonely immigrants into active citizens.Likewise, people needed the parties. Some had concrete goals, like the Black politician and Philadelphia barber Isaiah C. Wears, who explained that he did not love the Republican Party — it was merely the most useful tool in his community, the “knife which has the sharpest edge and does my cutting.” Others needed something more emotional. Many sought the community that came from marching together or sharing the party’s lager or guffawing at the same political cartoons. And because participation was so social and so saturating, even the women, young people and minorities denied the right to vote could still feel palpably engaged without ever casting a ballot.But their efforts resolved little. Voter turnouts climbed higher than in any other period in American history, and the results were closer than ever, too, but neither party won lasting mandates or addressed systemic problems. Every few years, some bold new movement pointed to the issues Americans were not addressing — inequality, immigration, white supremacy, monopoly — only to be laughed off as cranks by swelling multitudes that preferred parties that, as one Tammany operative said, did not “trouble them with political arguments.”Even those on the front lines of the era’s violent politics wondered what it was all for. One African American reverend pointedly asked Black Republicans fighting to hold on to voting rights, “With all your speaking, organizing, parading in the streets, ballyhooing, voting and sometimes fighting, what do you get?”The more demands Americans put on their democracy, the less they got. By centering politics on what The Atlantic Monthly called “the theater, the opera, the baseball game, the intellectual gymnasium, almost the church of the people,” by making it the locus for a culture war, a race war and a class war, by asking it to provide public entertainment and small talk and family bonding, progress became impossible. Little changed because so many were participating, not in spite of that.“Government by party is not a means of settling things,” as the muckraker Henry Demarest Lloyd said. “It is the best of devices for keeping them unsettled.”Over the years, politics alienated widening circles. On the right, America’s old aristocrats — like the revered Boston historian Francis Parkman — hissed that the very idea of majority rule was a scheme to steal power from “superior to inferior types of men.” On the left, Populists and socialists denounced political machines that had hoodwinked working-class voters. These populations would never agree on what should come next but had a consensus on what had to end.After 1890 or so, a new alliance began working toward the secret cause of making politics so dry and quiet that fewer of those “inferior types” wanted to participate, often explicitly viewing mass turnout as harmful. Many cities, scarred by the rising labor movement, banned public rallies without permits, hoping to shove public political expressions back into “the private home,” as the Republican National Convention chairman put it. They closed saloons on Election Day, shuttering those key working-class political hubs. And they replaced public ballot boxes with private voting booths, turning polling places from vibrant, violent gatherings into a confessional box.Though each change felt small, taken together, they amounted to a revolution in political labor. Campaign work once done in the streets by many ordinary volunteers was now done in private by a few paid professionals.What came next was predictable. Voter turnout crashed by nearly a third in presidential elections from the 1890s through the 1920s, falling from roughly 80 percent to under 50 percent. Voting decreased most among working-class, young, immigrant and Black citizens (even in Northern states where African Americans maintained the ability to vote). For the first time, wealth and education correlated with turnout. To this day, class remains the largest determiner of participation, above race or age.There were some benefits to these quieter elections. Political violence became rare and shocking. Between 1859 and 1905, one congressman was murdered every seven years, and three presidents were killed in just 36 years. In the subsequent century, the nation suffered one presidential assassination and the murder of a congressman every 25 years. In this cooler political environment, lawmakers were finally able to pass long-delayed Progressive reforms. Women’s suffrage, federal protections for workers, direct elections of senators, progressive income taxes and regulations on industry, transportation, food and drugs all finally passed — after decades of failure — once electoral politics quieted. American lives improved more in this period than in any other, and yet it all coincided with a crash in participation.But this early-20th-century democracy was also more distant from ordinary life. These are the years when it became impolite to talk politics at the dinner table, when growing numbers struggled to distinguish between the parties, when incumbent politicians began to hold on to office for decades. The number of seats in Congress, which had always expanded with the population, permanently froze in 1911 at 435, even though our population has tripled since then.And this is the same ugly era when Southern states began an onslaught on the million Black voters who participated in many elections during Reconstruction. States from Mississippi to Virginia passed repressive new constitutions between 1890 and 1910, essentially killing democratic participation in much of the South. Though that was far more extreme, all these changes grew from a new climate of restraint that quieted politics nationwide in the new century.Political objects can tell the story of this change. From 1860 to 1900, parties held torch-lit midnight marches to rally the faithful. In 1900, after a sweltering Republican convention in Philadelphia where participants wore straw hats, the jaunty boater became the new icon of a cooler approach to politics. A glance at political cartoons from 1920 or 1960 or even 2000 finds caricatures still wearing boaters — a style far removed from the torch-lit democracy of the 1800s.The Smithsonian has steel drawers full of such boaters (made from straw, plastic and Wisconsin cheesehead foam). My colleagues and I have spent the past few years shuttling between these collections and contemporary political events, trying to identify objects that might embody the change we’ve witnessed in our democracy, that might go behind museum glass in a century to help explain 2016 or 2021. And wondering what these eras might say to each other. When it comes to electoral politics, our problems are different from those Americans dealt with 150 years ago, but the 19th century does have a surprisingly hopeful takeaway to offer the 21st.We’re not the first generation to worry about the death of our democracy. Grappling with this demanding system of government is, well, normal. It’s partly because we’re following the unusually calmed 20th century that we don’t feel up to the task today. Our deep history shows that reform is possible, that previous generations identified flaws in their politics and made deliberate changes to correct them. We’re not just helplessly hurtling toward inevitable civil war; we can be actors in this story. The first step is acknowledging the dangers inherent in democracy. To move forward, we should look backward and see that we’re struggling not with a collapse but with a relapse.Jon Grinspan, a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, is the author of “The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Éric Zemmour Is Turning French Politics Upside Down

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      Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant writer and TV commentator, is surging in opinion polls before presidential elections next year — and he is not yet a candidate.PARIS — He is the anti-immigration son of parents from Algeria. He styles himself as the great defender of France’s Christian civilization, though he himself is Jewish. He channels Donald J. Trump in an anti-establishment campaign. And he is now scrambling the battle lines before France’s presidential election in April.The meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour, a far-right author and TV pundit, has turned France’spolitics upside down.Until a few weeks ago, most had expected France’s next presidential elections to be a predictable rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen that, polls showed, left voters who wanted alternatives deeply dissatisfied.Though still not a declared candidate, Mr. Zemmour, 63, shot to No. 2 in a poll of likely voters last week, disrupting campaign strategies across the board, even beyond those of Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.“The French want to upset a political order that hasn’t won them over, and Éric Zemmour appears to be the bowling ball that’s going to knock down all the pins,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist at Sciences Po University specializing in elections and the right.Mr. Perrineau warned that voters were not seriously focused yet on the elections and that polls could be volatile.Yet candidates are not taking any chances.Mr. Macron’s campaign has focused on winning support on the right and forcing a showdown with Ms. Le Pen, in the belief that the French would reject her party in the second round of voting, as they have for decades.Now it is far less clear whom he would meet in a runoff: A strong showing in the first round could propel Mr. Zemmour into the second one, or it could split the far-right electorate to allow a center-right candidate to qualify for the finals.After weeks of ignoring Mr. Zemmour, Mr. Macron is now criticizing him, though not by name, while government ministers and other Macron allies have unleashed a barrage of attacks.Mr. Zemmour is the author of several books, and a star on the right-wing CNews network. Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Zemmour’s rise has been most unsettling for Ms. Le Pen, who is plummeting in the polls — so much so that her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder, said that he would support Mr. Zemmour if the writer were in a stronger position.Ms. Le Pen has for years tried to broaden her base with a so-called un-demonizing strategy of moving her nationalist, anti-immigrant party from the most extreme xenophobic positions that it was known for under her father. Now she finds herself in the unusual position of being outflanked on the right.Mr. Zemmour became one of France’s best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation’s decline — fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a “great replacement” of white people, a conspiracy theory that has been cited by gunmen in multiple mass shootings.As the child of Algerians who settled in metropolitan France, he has presented himself as the embodiment of France’s successful system of assimilation. He has said that the failure to integrate recent generations of Muslim immigrants lies with the new arrivals, who hate France, and not with a system that others say has not kept up with the times.Mr. Zemmour’s influence rose to an entirely new level in the past two years after he became the star of CNews, a new Fox-style news network that gave him a platform to expound on his views every evening.His supporters include voters most deeply shaken by the social forces that have roiled French society more recently and that they now lump into “wokisme” — a #MeToo movement that has led to the fall of powerful men; a racial awakening challenging France’s image of itself as a colorblind society; the emergence of a new generation questioning the principles of the French Republic; and the perceived growing threat of an American-inspired vision of society.“In its history, France has always had a strong cultural identity, but now there’s deep anxiety about that identity,” Mr. Perrineau said. “People feel that their culture, their way of life and their political system, all is being changed. It’s enough.”Mr. Zemmour at a book promotion event in Nice last month.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Éric Zemmour plays on that very well, on this nostalgia for the past, and this fear of no longer being a great power, of dissolving in a conglomerate that we don’t understand, whether it’s Europe or globalization or the Americanization of culture,” he added.In the 2017 election, Mr. Macron was the new face who overturned the existing political order. But during his presidency, “the new world of Emmanuel Macron has come to look a lot like the old world,” disillusioning voters, Mr. Perrineau said.Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament, said that French voters seek a larger-than-life figure in their president.“In the United States, a president could be a movie actor like Reagan or a carnival performer like Trump,” said Mr. Olivier, who is also Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law. “In France, we elect the king.”But the two-round system compels much of the electorate to vote in the runoffs against candidates — and not for someone of their liking.“In the second round, the point is who is more repulsive,” Mr. Olivier said. “I believe Macron would be more rejected than Marine, but Zemmour would be much more rejected than Macron.”As France has grown more conservative in recent years, Mr. Macron has tacked right on many issues to try to grab a bigger electoral slice, especially among voters in the traditional center-right Republicans party.The Republicans, who have yet to select their presidential candidate, are now facing a new threat themselves, because Mr. Zemmour draws support from them as well as from the far right.In their own bid to attract far-right voters, many leaders on the traditional right have flirted with Mr. Zemmour in recent years, excusing or overlooking the fact that the writer has been sanctioned for inciting racial hatred.“The traditional right made a serious mistake that is now exploding in their face,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “Because it’s long been in competition against the far right on issues like national identity, immigration and sovereignty, it kept winking at Zemmour.”A fan taking a photo with Mr. Zemmour at a book signing in Toulon last month.Eric Gaillard/ReutersNow the traditional right is looking for ways to distance itself from the TV star without alienating his supporters.Patrick Stefanini, a Republican who ran President Jacques Chirac’s successful 1995 campaign, said Mr. Zemmour was benefiting from divisions within the traditional right on issues like immigration.“Mr. Zemmour has turned immigration into the single key to understanding the difficulties facing French society,” said Mr. Stefanini, who is now leading the presidential bid of Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris region. “The Republicans are having a little trouble positioning themselves because the tendencies aren’t the same within the Republicans.”Mr. Stefanini attributed Mr. Zemmour’s rise partly to the traditional right’s failure to quickly decide on a candidate, and said he felt confident that the TV star’s ratings would peter out.But for now, many voters appear to be taking a look at Mr. Zemmour, who has been attracting huge crowds at campaign-like events across France as he promotes his latest book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet.”Last week, three residents of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a wealthy suburb of Paris, came together to attend an event with Mr. Zemmour in the capital.Françoise Torneberg, who said she was in her 70s, said she liked Mr. Zemmour because “he gives a kick in the anthill,” she said.Her friend Andrée Chalmandrier, 69, said, “We love France but not the France of today.”“We’re not at home,” Ms. Chalmandrier said, adding that often when she shops in her suburb, “I’m the only French representative. There are four or five veiled women around me, who furthermore are extremely arrogant.”“And yet it’s a good neighborhood,” Ms. Torneberg said. “It’s not at all a working-class neighborhood.”Léontine Gallois contributed reporting. More

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      Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s Chancellor, Faces Corruption Probe

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      The future of the chancellor’s coalition looked increasingly uncertain after prosecutors opened a criminal investigation on suspicion that he paid off pollsters and journalists.BERLIN — The government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria teetered near collapse on Friday after federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation against him this week on suspicion of using government funds to pay for favorable opinion polls and news articles.Mr. Kurz, who has been feted as the young face of European conservatism, vigorously denied the charges. But he is now facing calls to step aside as three opposition parties plan to introduce a vote of no-confidence against him at a special parliamentary session next week.President Alexander Van der Bellen addressed the nation on Friday evening, reassuring Austrians that while the latest crisis threatened the government, the country’s democratic institutions remained intact and functional. “We have a crisis of government, not a crisis of state,” Mr. Van der Bellen said. “Our democracy is prepared for all possible situations, including this one.”The future of Austria’s government will now depend on the left-leaning Greens, the junior coalition partners, who were always uncomfortable political bedfellows with Mr. Kurz and who had campaigned on a platform of “clean politics.” Prominent voices in the Greens party now see that position and their support for the government as untenable under a chancellor who is suspected of using funds from the finance ministry to pay for positive media coverage.They are now calling for another member of his People’s Party to take over the chancellorship. Short of that, they could pull out of the ruling coalition and try to form a new government with a combination of smaller opposition parties, though they lack the numbers in Parliament. If all fails, the country could face new elections. “Such a person is no longer capable of performing his duties, and of course the People’s Party has a responsibility here to nominate someone who is beyond reproach to lead this government,” Sigi Maurer, the Greens’ leader in Parliament, said of Mr. Kurz.Mr. Kurz, 35, says he is determined to hang on. He rose to prominence after seizing control of the conservative People’s Party and refashioned it by co-opting many of the messages of the far right at a time when anti-immigrant populism was surging in Europe.After an intense, social media-savvy campaign focused largely on patriotic themes and a hard line against migration, Mr. Kurz became Austria’s youngest chancellor after elections in 2017, when he forged a government that included the far-right Freedom Party. Less than two years later that government collapsed after the far right was itself engulfed in scandal when a video emerged showing the Freedom Party’s then leader promising government contracts in exchange for financial support from a woman claiming to be a wealthy Russian. In new elections in 2019 Mr. Kurz came out on top once again, but pivoted to form a government with the left-leaning Greens, demonstrating his skill as a political shape shifter.Now it is Mr. Kurz who is suspected of the ethical breach that may implode his latest government.Austria’s federal prosecutor said on Wednesday it had launched a criminal investigation against Mr. Kurz and nine others on suspicion of misusing government funds to pay for polls and articles in the news media that cast him in a favorable light in the months leading up to and just after his election to the chancellery.Mr. Kurz before a meeting with Austria’s president, Alexander van der Bellen, on Thursday in Vienna.Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images“Between the years 2016 and at least 2018, budgetary funds of the Federal Ministry of Finance were used to finance surveys conducted by a polling company in the interest of a political party and its top official that were exclusively motivated by party politics, and sometimes manipulated,” the prosecutor’s office said. The results of the polls were then published in media belonging to the Österreich Media Group, “without being declared as an advertisement,” the prosecutors said. In exchange for the favorable coverage, prosecutors said they suspected that “payments were made to the media conglomerate.”The chancellor denied it. “I know what I did and I know that the accusations are false,” Mr. Kurz told reporters in Vienna on Thursday, where he met with Mr. Van der Bellen. “Just as the independent judiciary is an important pillar of our democracy, so is the presumption of innocence essential to our rule of law,” Mr. Kurz said. “At least, that has been the case until now.”Mr. Kurz and the leaders of his conservative party have so far rejected calls for him to step aside, circling the wagons instead. “The leaders of the People’s Party today made very clear that they only want to stay in this government under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz,” Elisabeth Köstinger, a member of the party and minister for tourism in Mr. Kurz’s government, told reporters.Mr. Kurz after parliamentary elections in 2017, when he joined the far right in government. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesSince taking over leadership of the People’s Party, Mr. Kurz has been its unchallenged leader, said Alexandra Siegl, a political analyst with Peter Hajek Public Opinion Strategies in Vienna.“You could say that the People’s Party in the past few years has been Sebastian Kurz,” she said. “There is no one else in the party who is as well known across the country and there is no obvious successor.”But there is also no easy path for his opponents to take power. The three opposition parties lack the majority needed for their no-confidence vote to succeed, unless several lawmakers from the Greens join them in support. On Thursday the leaders of the Greens met with their counterparts from the Socialists, the largest opposition party in Parliament, to try to find a solution. Even if the two were to join forces with the smaller, liberal Neos party, they would still lack a majority and could only survive by securing the support of the far-right Freedom Party, itself an awkward and potentially unstable proposition.“It is imperative that Mr. Kurz step down,” the Freedom Party’s current leader, Herbert Kickl, told reporters on Friday. He gave no indication whether his party would be willing to support a three-way minority government led by the Socialists. Failing that, Austria could face new elections — territory where Mr. Kurz has shown twice he knows how to perform. The Greens, on the other hand, have seen their support dwindle since 2019 and such a move could jeopardize two of their signature bills, which have been worked out with the government, but not yet passed into law.The Chancellery in Vienna on Wednesday.Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty ImagesBut the ongoing criminal investigation into Mr. Kurz , which will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to press charges, may make it impossible for the Greens not to bolt. On Friday, the prosecutors’ office made available more documents showing the text message exchanges between Mr. Kurz and his advisers, which included disparaging remarks about the previous conservative party leader and insults about members of the government in which he once served as foreign minister and calls to “stir up” a region against then Chancellor Christian Kern.“This hardens the suspicions against him,” Ms. Siegl said. Nevertheless, it may not be enough to shatter Mr. Kurz’s popularity among Austrians, especially a core group of supporters who continue to support his hard line on migration, she said. “They just push it to the side and say that every politician has something to hide, if you look hard enough,” she said. “No one likes to admit that they have been taken for a ride.” More

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      Angela Merkel deja a una Alemania transformada

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      Ahora que la canciller se prepara para dejar su cargo tras 16 años al mando de Alemania, deja atrás un país que ha cambiado profundamente, y que está ansioso por cambiar aún más.STUTTGART, Alemania — La pequeña estrella plateada en la punta del Mercedes de Aleksandar Djordjevic brilla. La pule cada semana.Djordjevic fabrica motores de combustión para Daimler, uno de los principales fabricantes de automóviles de Alemania. Tiene un sueldo de unos 60.000 euros (alrededor de 70.000 dólares), ocho semanas de vacaciones y una garantía negociada por el sindicato de que no puede ser despedido hasta 2030. Tiene una casa de dos pisos y ese Mercedes clase E 250 en su entrada.Por todo eso, Djordjevic pule la estrella de su carro.“La estrella es algo estable y fuerte: significa Hecho en Alemania”, dijo.Pero en 2030 ya no habrá motores de combustión en Daimler, ni personas que fabriquen motores de combustión.“Estoy orgulloso de lo que hago”, dijo Djordjevic. “Es inquietante saber que dentro de diez años mi trabajo ya no existirá”.Djordjevic es la imagen de un nuevo orgullo y prosperidad alemanes. Y también de la ansiedad alemana.Mientras la canciller Angela Merkel se prepara para dejar su cargo después de 16 años, su país se encuentra entre los más ricos del mundo. Una clase media amplia y satisfecha es una de las facetas de la Alemania de Merkel que ha sido fundamental para su longevidad y su capacidad de cumplir una promesa fundamental de estabilidad. Pero su impacto ha sido mucho mayor.Viajar por el país que deja la canciller hace patente las profundas transformaciones que ha tenido.Trabajadores ensamblan baterías para carros eléctricos de Mercedes en Stuttgart.El puente transportador de la mina F60 en la mina de visitantes Lusatia, un punto de interés turístico en la región minera oriental de Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf.Ahí está el padre disfrutando de un permiso parental pagado en la católica Baviera. La pareja gay que cría a sus dos hijos en las afueras de Berlín. La mujer con hiyab que enseña matemáticas en una secundaria cerca de Fráncfort, donde la mayoría de los alumnos tienen pasaporte alemán, pero pocos tienen padres alemanes.El trabajador del carbón en el antiguo Este comunista que vota por un partido de extrema derecha que no existía cuando Merkel llegó al poder. Y unos hermanos jóvenes de una isla del Mar del Norte amenazada por la subida del nivel del mar que no recuerdan una época en la que Merkel no fuera canciller y no ven la hora de que se vaya.“Ella conoce el peligro del cambio climático desde antes de que nosotros naciéramos”, me dijo uno de los hermanos mientras se encontraba en el dique cubierto de hierba que protege la pequeña isla, Pellworm, de las inundaciones. “¿Por qué no hizo nada al respecto?”.Mientras Merkel dirigía su país a través de sucesivas crisis y dejaba otras sin atender, hubo cambios que lideró y cambios que permitió.Decidió eliminar gradualmente la energía nuclear en Alemania. Puso fin al servicio militar obligatorio. Fue la primera canciller en afirmar que el islam “pertenece” a Alemania. Cuando se trató de romper los paradigmas de los valores familiares conservadores de su país y de su partido, fue más tímida, pero finalmente no se interpuso.“Vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y le permitió ir hacia ahí”, dijo Roland Mittermayer, un arquitecto que se casó con su esposo poco después de que Merkel invitara a los legisladores conservadores a aprobar una ley que permitiera el matrimonio igualitario, aunque ella misma votara en contra.Helmut y Stephanie Wendlinger con su hijo de 2 años, Xaver, y su hermana recién nacida, Leni, en Baviera.Un antiguo pozo minero convertido en lago cerca de la ciudad oriental de Forst. A medida que se va eliminando el uso del carbón, la población local espera que la industria turística ayude a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Ningún otro líder democrático en Europa ha durado más tiempo. Y Merkel deja su cargo como la política más popular de Alemania.Muchos de sus predecesores de la posguerra tenían legados muy definidos. Konrad Adenauer ancló a Alemania en Occidente. Willy Brandt cruzó el Telón de Acero. Helmut Kohl, su antiguo mentor, se convirtió en el símbolo de la unidad alemana. Gerhard Schröder allanó el camino para el éxito económico del país.El legado de Merkel es menos tangible, pero igualmente transformador. Convirtió a Alemania en una sociedad moderna y en un país menos definido por su historia.Es posible que se la recuerde sobre todo por su decisión de acoger a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015-16, cuando la mayoría de las demás naciones occidentales los rechazaban. Fue un breve momento de redención para el país que había hecho el Holocausto y la convirtió en un ícono de la democracia liberal.“Fue una especie de curación”, dijo Karin Marré-Harrak, directora de una secundaria en la ciudad multicultural de Offenbach. “De alguna manera, nos hemos convertido en un país más normal”.Que te llamen un país normal puede parecer decepcionante en otros lugares. Pero para Alemania, una nación atormentada por su pasado nazi y cuatro décadas de división entre el Este y el Oeste, la normalidad era lo que todas las generaciones de la posguerra habían aspirado.Sin embargo, en casi todas partes existían también la persistente sensación de que la nueva normalidad se veía amenazada por desafíos épicos, que las cosas no podían seguir como estaban.El sueño alemánAleksandar Djordjevic, de 38 años, segundo desde la izquierda, y su esposa, Jasmina, jugando con su hija y unos amigos en Plochingen, cerca de Stuttgart.Djordjevic vive cerca de Stuttgart, la capital de la poderosa industria automovilística alemana. En 1886, en este lugar, Gottlieb Daimler inventó uno de los primeros automóviles en su jardín. En estos días, la ciudad es sede de Daimler, Porsche y Bosch, el mayor fabricante de piezas de carros del mundo.Al llegar a casa después de su turno una tarde reciente, Djordjevic todavía llevaba su uniforme de la fábrica, y junto al logotipo de Mercedes, el pin rojo del sindicato de obreros metalúrgicos.La mayoría de los empleados de Daimler pertenecen están sindicados. Los representantes de los trabajadores ocupan la mitad de los puestos en el consejo de administración de la empresa.“La historia del éxito de la industria alemana es también la historia de una fuerte representación de los trabajadores”, dijo. La estabilidad, los beneficios, las oportunidades para desarrollar habilidades, todo ello sustenta “la lealtad que los trabajadores sienten hacia el producto y la empresa”.Si el sueño americano es hacerse rico, el sueño alemán es la seguridad laboral de por vida.Djordjevic, de 38 años, siempre supo que quería trabajar para Daimler. Su padre trabajó allí hasta que murió. “Fue como una herencia”, dice.Cuando consiguió su primer trabajo, a los 16 años, pensó que lo había logrado. “Pensé: ‘Ya está’”, recuerda, “aquí me jubilaré”.Una fábrica de Daimler en Sindelfingen que producirá vehículos eléctricos.El montaje de un Mercedes-Benz Clase S en la fábricaAhora está menos seguro. Al igual que otros fabricantes de automóviles alemanes, Daimler tardó en iniciar su transición a los carros eléctricos. Su primer modelo puramente eléctrico se lanzó recién este año.El objetivo de Daimler es eliminar los motores de combustión antes de 2030. Nadie sabe lo que eso significa exactamente para los puestos de trabajo, pero Djordjevic hizo las cuentas.“Hay 1200 piezas en un motor de combustión”, dijo. “Solo hay 200 en un carro eléctrico”.“Los carros sostenibles son fantásticos, pero también necesitamos empleos sostenibles”, comentó.Daimler sigue creciendo. Pero gran parte del crecimiento del empleo está en China, dijo Michael Häberle, uno de los representantes de los trabajadores en el consejo de administración de la empresa.Häberle también ha estado en la empresa los 35 años de su vida laboral. Empezó como mecánico y fue ascendiendo hasta obtener un título en negocios y, finalmente, un puesto en el consejo de administración.De pie en una de las fábricas que ahora producen baterías para la nueva línea de carros eléctricos EQS, Häberle dijo que esperaba que la empresa no solo sobreviviera a esta transformación, sino que saliera fortalecida.La cuestión principal, dijo, es: ¿Alemania lo hará?Hubo un tiempo en el que daba por sentada la capacidad exportadora de su país. Pero ahora, dijo, “Alemania está a la defensiva”.Un hiyab alemánIkbal Soysal, de 30 años, da una clase de matemáticas de sexto grado en la secundaria Schiller de Offenbach.La industria automovilística alemana contribuyó a impulsar el milagro económico de la posguerra. Y los inmigrantes impulsaron la industria del automóvil. Pero no aparecen realmente en esa historia.Se les conocía como “trabajadores invitados” y se esperaba que vinieran, trabajaran y se fueran. Hasta hace dos décadas, no tenían un camino oficial hacia la ciudadanía.Entre ellos estaban los abuelos de Ikbal Soysal, una joven profesora de secundaria de la ciudad de Offenbach, cerca de Fráncfort, cuyo padre trabajó en una fábrica de piezas de automóvil para Mercedes.La generación de inmigrantes alemanes de Soysal sí figura en la historia de la Alemania actual. No solo tienen pasaporte alemán, sino que muchos tienen títulos universitarios. Son médicos, empresarios, periodistas y profesores.La población inmigrante de Alemania se ha convertido en la segunda mayor del mundo, por detrás de la de Estados Unidos. Cuando Merkel llegó al poder en 2005, el 18 por ciento de los alemanes tenía al menos un progenitor nacido fuera del país. Ahora es uno de cada cuatro. En la escuela de Soysal, en Offenbach, nueve de cada diez niños tienen al menos un progenitor que emigró a Alemania.Muchos de los profesores también.“Cuando empecé a dar clases aquí, todos los profesores eran alemanes con raíces alemanas”, dijo la directora, Karin Marré-Harrak. “Ahora, casi la mitad de ellos tienen raíces diversas”.Seis de cada diez habitantes de Offenbach tienen familias inmigrantes.Romaissa Elbaghdadi, de 15 años, entrenando con Angelo Raimon, de 13 años, en un club de boxeo en Offenbach.Soysal, musulmana, siempre quiso ser profesora, pero sabía que era un riesgo. En su estado, nunca había habido una profesora de secundaria que usara velo en la cabeza.Así que cuando la invitaron a su primera entrevista de trabajo, llamó con antelación para avisar a la escuela.Era 2018. Una persona lo consultó con la dirección, que rápidamente la tranquilizó: “Lo que importa es lo que tienes en la cabeza, no lo que tienes sobre la cabeza”.Consiguió ese trabajo y otros desde entonces.No siempre fue fácil. “Los alumnos se olvidan del velo en la cabeza muy rápido”, dijo Soysal. Pero algunos padres se quejaron con la dirección.Una vez, una alumna pidió consejo a Soysal. La niña llevaba un pañuelo en la cabeza, pero no estaba segura. “Si no te sientes bien, tienes que quitártelo”, le dijo Soysal.Para ella, en eso consiste la libertad de religión, consagrada en la Constitución alemana. “El asunto es que soy alemana”, dijo, “así que mi velo también es alemán”.La alternativa a MerkelMike Balzke junto con su esposa y sus dos hijas en Drewitz, donde su familia ha vivido por siete generaciones. “No queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”, dijo.Después de Offenbach, la siguiente parada es Hanau. Fue en este lugar donde, en febrero del año pasado, un atacante de extrema derecha entró en varios bares y disparó contra nueve personas, en su mayoría jóvenes, de origen migrante.La reacción contra la diversificación y modernización que ha sucedido bajo el mandato de Merkel se ha vuelto cada vez más violenta. Alemania sufrió tres ataques terroristas de extrema derecha en menos de tres años. El caldo de cultivo ideológico para esa violencia está encarnado en muchos sentidos por un partido que eligió su nombre en oposición a la canciller.A menudo, Merkel justificaba políticas impopulares llamándolas “alternativlos”, sin alternativa.La Alternativa para Alemania (AfD) se fundó en 2013 en oposición al rescate de Grecia que el gobierno de Merkel diseñó durante la crisis de la deuda soberana en Europa. Cuando el país recibió a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015 y 2016, el partido adoptó una postura antiinmigrante beligerante que le dio impulso y lo llevó al Parlamento alemán.La AfD está aislada en el oeste del país. Pero se ha convertido en el segundo partido más fuerte de la antigua Alemania del Este, que era comunista, el lugar donde creció Merkel.La Alemania de Merkel está más dividida entre el Este y el Oeste —al menos políticamente— que en cualquier otro momento desde la reunificación.En Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que solía ser próspero pero perdió miles de puestos de trabajo y un tercio de su población después de la caída del Muro de Berlín, la AfD obtuvo el primer lugar en las últimas elecciones. El centro, las fábricas cerradas y las chimeneas aún salpican el horizonte.Una planta de energía de carbón que se cerrará en 2028, en el pueblo oriental de Jänschwalde.Una de las muchas fábricas abandonadas en Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que alguna vez fue próspero. El nuevo propietario de esta antigua fábrica textil quiere transformarla en un espacio cultural.La desigualdad persistente entre el Este y Oeste sigue siendo evidente tres décadas después de la reunificación, a pesar de que el dinero de los contribuyentes ha fluido hacia el Este y su situación ha mejorado con el tiempo. Dado que el gobierno planea eliminar de manera gradual la producción de carbón para 2038, se prometen miles de millones de euros más en fondos para ayudar a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Pero como dijo Mike Balzke, un trabajador de una planta de carbón cercana en Jänschwalde: “no queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”.Balzke recordó su optimismo cuando Merkel se convirtió en canciller por primera vez. Como era nativa del Este y científica, esperaba que fuera una embajadora de esa parte de Alemania y del carbón.En cambio, su aldea perdió una cuarta parte de su población durante su mandato. Nunca se construyó una línea de tren que había sido prometida de Forst a Berlín. La oficina de correos cerró.A Balzke, de 41 años, le preocupa que la región se convierta en un desierto.Esa ansiedad es honda. Y se profundizó con la llegada de refugiados en 2015.Dos padres y dos hijosRoland Mittermayer y Mathis Winkler con sus hijos Angelo, de 11 años, y Jason, de 6, cerca de Berlín. “Ella vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y permitió que llegara allí”, dijo Mittermayer sobre la postura de Merkel sobre el matrimonio igualitario.La decisión de Merkel de dar la bienvenida a los refugiados fue una de las razones por las que Balzke dejó de votar por ella. Pero para muchas otras personas, sucedió lo contrario.Mathis Winkler, un trabajador de cooperación para el desarrollo en Berlín, nunca había votado por el partido de Merkel. Como hombre gay, estaba consternado por su definición conservadora y limitada de familia, que hasta hace solo unos años lo excluía a él, a su pareja de mucho tiempo y a los dos hijos que adoptaron.Pero después de que Merkel se convirtió en el objeto de la ira de la extrema derecha durante la crisis de refugiados, respaldó en solidaridad a su partido.Merkel impulsó su propia base en varios frentes. Durante su tiempo como canciller, se aprobó una legislación que permite a las madres y los padres compartir 14 meses de licencia parental remunerada. El ala conservadora de su partido se indignó, pero solo una década después se considera ya la nueva normalidad.Merkel nunca apoyó de manera decisiva el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que los legisladores votaran, sabiendo que se aprobaría.Jóvenes en un desfile del Día de Christopher Street en la ciudad de Cottbus, en el Este. Merkel nunca apoyó con firmeza el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que se votara.Helmut Wendlinger, un panadero en la zona rural de Baviera, aprovechó la legislación sobre licencia parental aprobada por el gobierno de Merkel. “Los hombres de la generación de mi padre no tuvieron esa oportunidad”, dijo.Winkler abandonó su apoyo al partido en 2019, después de que la sucesora de Merkel como líder conservadora, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, menospreciara el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Pero reconoció su deuda con la canciller.El 30 de junio de 2017, el día de la votación, le escribió una carta.“Es una pena que no pudieras apoyar con apertura el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo”, escribió. “Aun así, te agradezco por haber hecho posible la decisión de hoy”.Luego la invitó a visitar a su familia “para verla por ti misma”.Ella nunca respondió. Pero él y su familia vivían a la vuelta de la esquina del domicilio de Merkel, quien nunca dejó su departamento en el centro de Berlín. La veían de vez en cuando en la fila para pagar en el supermercado.“Allí estaba ella, con papel higiénico en su canastilla de compras, yendo al supermercado como todos los demás”, recordó la pareja de Winkler, Roland Mittermayer. Incluso después de 16 años, todavía están tratando de descifrar a la canciller.“Es un enigma”, dijo Winkler. “Ella es un poco como la reina, alguien que ha existido durante mucho tiempo, pero nunca sientes que realmente la conoces”.La generación pos-MerkelLos hermanos Backsen: Sophie, de 23 años, Hannes, de 19, y Paul, de 21, en la isla de Pellworm. Su familia llevó al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por sus emisiones de dióxido de carbono.Seis horas al noroeste de Berlín, pasando por manchas interminables de campos verdes salpicados de parques eólicos y después de un viaje en ferry de 40 minutos desde la costa del Mar del Norte, se encuentra Pellworm, una isla tranquila donde la familia Backsen ha estado cultivando desde 1703.Hace dos años, llevaron al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por abandonar sus objetivos de emisión de dióxido de carbono establecidos en el Acuerdo de París. Perdieron, pero luego volvieron a intentarlo y presentaron una denuncia ante el tribunal constitucional.Esta vez ganaron.“Se trata de libertad”, dijo Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, a quien le gustaría hacerse cargo de la granja de su padre algún día.Los hermanos menores de Sophie, Hannes, de 19 años, y Paul, de 21, votaron por primera vez el domingo. Como el estimado del 42 por ciento de los votantes que lo harán por primera vez, votarán por los Verdes.“Si ves cómo vota nuestra generación, es lo contrario de lo que se percibe en las encuestas”, dijo Paul. “Los Verdes estarían gobernando el país”.Paul Backsen transporta granos para alimentar al ganado en la isla de Pellworm. Los Backsens han estado cultivando allí desde 1703.Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, alimenta a las vacas. “Tener una canciller toda mi vida significa que nunca ha tenido la menor duda de que las mujeres pueden hacer ese trabajo”, dijo sobre Merkel. “Pero en el tema climático, ella le ha fallado a mi generación”.Pellworm está al nivel del mar e incluso algunas partes están por debajo de él. Sin el dique que rodea la costa, se inundaría con regularidad.“Cuando hay lluvia constante durante tres semanas, la isla se llena de agua, como una bañera”, dijo Hannes.Aquí, la posibilidad de un aumento del nivel del mar es una amenaza existencial. “Esta es una de las elecciones más importantes”, dijo Hannes. “Es la última oportunidad de hacerlo bien”.“Si ni siquiera un país como Alemania puede manejar esto”, agregó, “¿qué posibilidades tenemos?”.La isla de Pellworm en el Mar del Norte está amenazada por el aumento del nivel del mar.Christopher F. Schuetze colaboró con reportería desde Berlín. More

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      Germany’s Far Right Is Nowhere in the Election. But It’s ‘Here to Stay.’

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      In the next national Parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is likely to remain a pariah force. But it looks assured, too, of a role in shaping the country’s future.BERLIN — They promised they would “hunt” the elites. They questioned the need for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin and described Muslim immigrants as “head scarf girls” and “knife men.”Four years ago the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, arrived in the German Parliament like a wrecking ball, the first far-right party to win a place at the heart of Germany’s democracy since World War II. It was a political earthquake in a country that had once seen Hitler’s Nazi party rise from the fringes to win power in free elections.As another election looms on Sunday, the worst fears of many Germans have not come true: Support for the party has dipped. But neither have the hopes that the AfD would disappear from the political scene as suddenly as it appeared. If Germany’s fate in this election will not be settled by the far right, political analysts say, Germany’s future will partly be shaped by it.“The AfD is here to stay,” said Matthias Quent, professor of sociology at Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences and an expert on the far right. “There was the widespread and naïve hope that this was a short-lived protest phenomenon. The reality is that the far right has become entrenched in the German political landscape.”The AfD is polling at roughly 11 percent, just below its 2017 result of 12.6 percent, and is all but guaranteed to retain its presence in Parliament. (Parties with less than 5 percent of the vote do not get any seats.) But with all other parties refusing to include the AfD in talks about forming the next governing coalition, it is effectively barred from power.“The AfD is isolated,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at Trier University.Yet with Germany’s two main parties having slipped well below the 30 percent mark, the AfD remains a disruptive force, one that complicates efforts to build a governing coalition with a majority of votes and parliamentary seats. Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s two lead candidates in the election, believes that, eventually, the firewall other parties have erected against his party will crumble — most likely starting in one of the states in the former Communist East that is currently its power base.Tino Chrupalla, second from right, and other members of the AfD party before a meeting of the Parliament in Berlin last year.Michael Sohn/Associated Press“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “I’m confident that sooner or later there is no way without the AfD,” he told reporters this past week. “It will certainly start on the state level.”Founded eight years ago as nationalist free-market protest party against the Greek bailout and the euro, the AfD has sharply shifted to the right.The party seized on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016, actively fanning fears of Islamization and migrant crime. Its noisy nationalism and anti-immigrant stance were what first catapulted it into Parliament and instantly turned it into Germany’s main opposition party.But the party has struggled to expand its early gains during the past 18 months, as the pandemic and, more recently, climate change have shot to the top of the list of voters’ concerns — while its core issue of immigration has barely featured in this year’s election campaign.The AfD has tried to jump on the chaos in Afghanistan to fan fears of a new migrant crisis. “Cologne, Kassel or Konstanz can’t cope with more Kabul,” one of the party’s campaign posters asserted. “Save the world? Sure. But Germany first!” another read.At a recent election rally north of Frankfurt, Mr. Chrupalla demanded that lawmakers “abolish” the constitutional right to asylum. He also told the public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Germany should be prepared to protect its borders, “if need be with armed force.”None of this rhetoric has shifted the race, particularly because voters seem to have more fundamental concerns about the party’s aura of extremism. Some AfD leaders have marched with extremists in the streets, while among the party’s supporters are an eclectic array of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazi sympathizers.The AfD has not been linked directly to political violence, but its verbal transgressions have contributed to a normalization of violent language and coincided with a series of deadly far-right terrorist attacks.Supporters of the party at a rally in the central German city of Magdeburg this summer.Annegret Hilse/ReutersIn June 2019, a regional politician who had defended Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy was shot dead on his front porch by a well-known neo-Nazi. The killer later told the court that he had attended a high-profile AfD protest a year earlier.Since then, a far-right extremist has attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle during a Yom Kippur service, leaving two dead and only narrowly failing to commit a massacre. Another extremist shot dead 9 mostly young people with immigrant roots in the western city of Hanau.The AfD’s earlier rise in the polls stalled almost instantly after the Hanau attack.“After these three attacks, the wider German public and media realized for the first time that the rhetoric of the AfD leads to real violence,” said Hajo Funke of the Free University in Berlin, who has written extensively about the party and tracks its evolution.“It was a turning point,” he said. “They have come to personify the notion that words lead to deeds.”Shortly after the Hanau attack, Thomas Haldenwang, the chief of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, placed elements of the AfD under surveillance for far-right extremism — even as the party’s lawmakers continued to work in Parliament.“We know from German history that far-right extremism didn’t just destroy human lives, it destroyed democracy,” Mr. Haldenwang warned after announcing his decision in March last year. “Far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are currently the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.”Today, the agency has classified about a third of all AfD members as extremist, including Mr. Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, the party’s other lead candidate. A court is reviewing whether the entire party can soon be placed under formal observation.Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other co-leader, during a media conference in Berlin last month.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock“The AfD is irrelevant in power-political terms,” said Mr. Funke. “But it is dangerous.”Mr. Chrupalla, a decorator who occasionally takes the stage in his overalls, and Ms. Weidel, a suit-wearing former Goldman Sachs analyst and gay mother of two, have sought to counter that impression. As if to hammer home the point, the party’s main election slogan this year is: “Germany — but normal.”A look through the party’s 207-page election program shows what “normal” means: The AfD demands Germany’s exit from the European Union. It calls for the abolition of any mandates to fight the coronavirus. It wants to return to the traditional German definition of citizenship based on blood ancestry. And it is the only party in Parliament that denies man-made climate change, while also calling for investment in coal and a departure from the Paris climate accord.That the AfD’s polling numbers have barely budged for the past 18 months suggests that its supporters are not protest voters but Germans who subscribe to its ideas and ideology.“The AfD has brought out into the open a small but very radical electorate that many thought we don’t have in this country,” said Mr. Quent, the sociologist. “Four years ago people were asking: ‘Where does this come from?’ In reality it was always there. It just needed a trigger.”Mr. Quent and other experts estimate the nationwide ceiling of support for the party at around 14 percent. But in parts of the former Communist East, where the AfD has become a broad-based political force entrenched at the local level, it is often twice that — enough to make it the region’s second-strongest political force.Among the under 60-year olds, Mr. Quent said, it has become No. 1.“It’s only a question of time until AfD is the strongest party in the East,” Mr. Quent said.That is why Mr. Chrupalla, whose constituency is in the eastern state of Saxony, the one state where the AfD already came first in 2017, predicts it will eventually become too big to bypass.“In the East we are a people’s party, we are well-established at the local, city, regional and state level,” Mr. Chrupalla said. “In the East the middle class votes for the AfD. In the West, they vote for the Greens.”Christopher F. Schuetze More