The Pandemic Factor: The COVID-19 Crisis in the Alternative for Germany's 2021 Federal Election Campaign

This article examines how and why the covid-19 pandemic featured as a central issue in the Alternative for Germany’s 2021 Bundestag election campaign. Using a wide range of political communication tools, the radical right party’s opposition to public health policies against the pandemic ranged from a critique of hygienic measures to hosting coronavirus denialism and con- spiracy myths suggesting that “the elite” had manufactured “corona hysteria” to subjugate the German people. Mirroring its general radicalization process toward an anti-system movement party, the AfD’s campaign primarily gave voice to an ideologically driven, conspiracist, and authoritarian-nationalist core electorate, which has its center of gravity in the East. In the environment of an emerging “pandemic divide,” the party also sought to appeal to a robust minority of corona skeptics. More generally, the AfD’s campaign points to the still underresearched role of science denialism and conspiracy myths in radical right mobilizations of a counterfactual age.