AfD - The Silence in Which It Grows

It is one of the bitterest truths about freedom that it does not perish because of its enemies, but because of the indifference of its friends. The loud opponent was never the real problem. He provokes resistance, he awakens people, he forces them to take a stand. What truly hollows out a free society is the quiet retreat of those who believed it was secure. And it is precisely there, in that retreat, that the ground on which the AfD has grown can be found. Not in the anger of the many, but in their silence.

People like to embrace the simple explanation that the country has shifted to the right, as though it were weather that simply rolled across the nation without anyone causing it, without anyone bearing responsibility. That explanation is comforting because it places no one under obligation. Yet it misses the essential point. A party like this does not grow solely because of what it does. It grows because of what everyone around it fails to do. It is less a storm than a vacuum, and a vacuum forms wherever something is missing.

What is missing can be described without exaggeration. There is no need to reach for the sweeping numbers that often circulate in these debates, for example the claim that nine out of ten people have become too complacent. Such statements sound powerful, yet they carry no weight because they cannot be substantiated. What can be substantiated is quieter, less conspicuous, and far more significant than any dramatic claim. Voter turnout, trust in political parties, empty union halls, the fading willingness to commit to a cause over many years, all of it has been telling the same story for a long time. The circle of people who remain actively engaged is small, and the level of sustained support is limited. Everyone else watches. Not out of hostility, but because of that gentle absence that settles in when people assume someone else will step forward to defend what they themselves believe to be right. But no one steps forward if everyone waits for someone else to do it. If anyone wants to see where that ends, they only need to look at America, where we ourselves confront every single day a regime that is fully embracing its right wing conservative and, in part, fascist vision.

That absence has a place where it becomes visible, and it is the very place where political conflict is now being fought. Not in Parliament, not in the town square, but in the endless streams of social media, where attention is distributed much like daylight once was. There, the AfD has been ahead of its rivals for years, and that is not a suspicion but a finding confirmed by several independent studies. An analysis by the University of the Bundeswehr Munich covering the period from November 2024 through February 2025 found that AfD accounts generated nearly 120 million views, roughly one quarter of all party related views on TikTok. The Left Party followed with just under 100 million. Together, those two parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum accounted for nearly half of all views, while the political center lagged far behind, with the Social Democrats finishing last at 35 million. Those figures reveal more about the political landscape than many opinion polls ever could.

A deeper examination comes from a study conducted by the University of Potsdam in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation. It found that, during the period examined, the AfD uploaded one out of every five party videos, yet almost one out of every three videos appearing in users' feeds came from the party, nearly twice as many as its share of uploaded content would suggest. And it revealed something that should be remembered. A person creating a brand new TikTok account encountered an AfD video after an average of just eleven to twelve minutes. To encounter one from the Social Democrats, the same user had to wait for more than an hour. Nearly half of all party related content across the major platforms carried the initials of this single party.

That this silence has real consequences becomes unmistakable when looking at the polling data, regardless of how different the methodologies may be. Place the surveys side by side, and they reveal a level of consistency that is itself striking. In its survey published on July 4, 2026, INSA placed the AfD at 29 percent and the CDU/CSU at 21 percent, an eight point lead and the AfD's highest rating since the 2025 federal election. Forsa, polling for RTL and ntv, reported 27 percent to 22 percent. Infratest dimap published the same result at the beginning of July, 27 to 22. YouGov also placed the AfD at 29 percent, with the CDU/CSU at 20 percent. The Forschungsgruppe Wahlen recorded 27 to 25 in its most recent survey, the narrowest lead at two points. The aggregated federal polling average, which weights individual polling institutes according to recency and sample size, places the AfD at roughly 28 percent and the CDU/CSU at just over 22 percent. Every major institute now agrees on the ranking. The only remaining differences concern the size of the lead, not which party is in first place. What stands out is not only the level of support but its direction. At every institute, the CDU/CSU polls well below its 2025 election result, while the AfD has either maintained or expanded its position. Even Forsa director Matuschek attributes this surge less to the AfD's own strength than to the weakness of the governing parties, and under these numbers the governing coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD would hold only about 250 of the Bundestag's 630 seats, far short of a majority.

The data are thinner when it comes to the question of banning the party, and intellectual honesty requires saying so. Not every polling institute has examined the issue. INSA found in July 2026 that 40 percent favored banning the AfD, 45 percent opposed it, and 15 percent remained undecided. Ipsos, shortly after Germany's domestic intelligence service classified the AfD in May 2025, measured 46 percent support for initiating ban proceedings and 44 percent opposition. Civey's ongoing survey, though more controversial than institutes such as Infratest dimap, Forsa, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Allensbach, or YouGov, shows roughly 41 percent in favor and about 48 percent against. Forsa, Infratest dimap, and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen have not recently published nationwide polling on the issue. Across the available surveys, however, a remarkably consistent picture still emerges. The public is almost perfectly divided over the idea of banning the party. Depending on the polling institute and the wording of the question, support ranges between 40 and 46 percent, while opposition ranges from 44 to 48 percent. The division itself becomes the real story. A country that cannot agree on whether its most serious political challenge should be confronted through the instruments of constitutional law has not yet found its answer.

It would be tempting to blame the machine, that hidden mechanism deciding what reaches us and what does not. It would be tempting because it shifts responsibility elsewhere. But the researchers themselves reject that excuse. The Potsdam study explicitly concludes that the AfD's advantage cannot be explained by superior technical skill, because every party uses the same tools. The explanation lies elsewhere. And the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena states plainly where it lies. Behind the AfD's reach stands no brilliant strategy, but the inertia of everyone else. Its success rests on a broad ecosystem, on countless small accounts run by supporters in Germany's states and municipalities, on people who post every single day while their competitors are still debating whether the effort is worthwhile.

This is where the real point lies, and it is an uncomfortable one. This party does not prevail because it is exceptional. Quite the opposite. It is dangerous. It prevails because the space was empty when it entered. While its supporters sent their messages into the world day after day, a long and consequential silence settled over everyone else. Even politicians from the established parties now openly admit that they have fallen behind. Yet this, too, must be said. That disadvantage is not destiny. During the 2025 federal election campaign, the Social Democrats and the Left Party gained significant ground, at times even overtaking the AfD in certain areas. Even so, the AfD remained the most visible political party across most major social media platforms during the 2025 federal election campaign. The most successful individual voices still belonged, in most cases, to the AfD. At the same time, multiple studies show that this lead is by no means impossible to overcome. Those who use the platforms consistently can catch up. Which also means that every failure to do so was never fate, but a choice made through inaction.

That is only half of the truth. The other half is not explained by any single study, yet everyone who examines the issue honestly reaches the same conclusion. The rise of this party has many fathers. The conflict over immigration, fears about personal prosperity, inflation, rising prices, and the growing loss of confidence in those who govern. No one who wishes to remain honest points to only one cause. Yet above all of them hangs the same shadow. It is the feeling shared by many people that they were lectured when they wanted to be heard, dismissed with slow and self assured answers while the questions they were asking became ever more urgent.

Especially in eastern Germany, where we are currently filming a documentary. A government that further fueled this development through a series of unpopular decisions. A government that no longer speaks the language of its people and fails to address their concerns should not be surprised when they begin listening to those who at least pretend to listen.

Read also our article: Erfurt, One Hundred Years Later - The Circus in a Lost Time

At this point, the question expands beyond the politics of the day and reaches something older than any political party. Freedom is not something that can be acquired and then stored away. It is more like a fire that burns only as long as it is constantly fed, and that dies the moment people assume it will keep burning on its own. Those who came before us understood that. They knew that a free society does not collapse the moment an enemy storms its gates, but long before that, in the quiet moment when its citizens stop believing that its survival is their own responsibility. Decline does not announce itself with the sound of drums. It announces itself through comfort, through looking away, through endless scrolling, through the quiet thought that someone else will surely take care of it.

And that is the warning rising from these sober figures like smoke from a fire discovered too late. They do not describe a natural event. They describe the sum of human action and human neglect. The AfD occupies a space that others left behind. It speaks where others remain silent. It appears where others are absent. It is present where others only show up from time to time. One may lament that reality, but lamenting it is already part of the problem, because it consumes the very energy that should be devoted to action. Empty space never remains empty. It is filled by those who arrive while everyone else is still debating whether the effort is worthwhile. In the end, the question is not how loudly this party speaks. The question is why everything around it has become so quiet, and whether there are still enough people willing to recognize that silence for what it truly is. Not peace, but the beginning of something that, once it has happened, no one will ever admit they allowed to happen.