A Seismic Shift In German Politics

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party has entered a stunning new phase in its trajectory toward state and federal power after finishing first in the Saxony-Anhalt election on September 6.

Although it did not win an absolute majority, the AfD is close to becoming the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era. This is nothing less than a seismic shift in German politics, a development that unsettles mainstream conservatives, liberals, neighboring nations, and Germany’s Jewish community.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, articulated his fears when he denounced the AfD’s lead politician in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, as a “declared enemy of our open society” and urged a boycott of the party.

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, a nation Germany invaded and brutalized in 1939, said that “only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD.”

US President Donald Trump, however, adopted what seemed like a pro-AfD stance after posting a screenshot of the election results on his Truth Social platform. Prior to last year’s German federal election, US Vice President JD Vance endorsed the AfD in a move criticized in Germany as political interference.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, was on the same page as Trump and Vance. He praised the AfD’s electoral breakthrough and called it a “pragmatic” party of “hope and reason.”

The AfD, which fosters a sense of German national pride and rejects the country’s “guilt complex” over the Holocaust, is already Germany’s most popular party on the national level, with 28 percent of the electorate supporting it, according to surveys.

The AfD won 43.8 percent of the seats in Saxony Anhalt, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ Christian Democratic Union winning only 17.2 percent. Merz admitted he was “deeply shocked” by the AfD’s success.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party fared poorly as well, respectively garnering 9.3 percent, 8.9 percent and 8.6 percent of voters’ support.

Having won 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament, the AfD is only three seats short of an outright majority, an outcome that would enable Siegmund, 35, to become Saxony-Anhalt’s premier.

The AFD is clearly on a roll.

Two years ago, it won the largest number of seats in the neighboring state of Thuringia, just falling short of attaining power.

In last year’s federal election, the AfD finished second, picking up 20.8 percent of the vote and becoming Germany’s largest opposition party. In the wake of that election, Merz formed a coalition with the Christian Social Union, his sister party in Bavaria, and the Social Democrats.

Speaking of the AfD’s latest breakthrough, Siegmund said, “We have made history today. The people have made it absolutely clear that they finally want political change, and above all, they have shown that they want it with us.”

Judging by exit polls, many of the AfD’s gains came at the expense of the  Christian Democratic Union and its coalition partners.

“The AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt is less a reflection of the appeal of its political agenda than a stark demonstration of the political establishment’s failure to articulate a convincing vision for the state’s economic, political and social future,” Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The New York Times.

The question now is whether the AFD can form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, a small state with a population of two million.

Since the founding of the AfD in 2013, mainstream parties have refused to work with it due to its politically radical platform. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified its Saxony-Anhalt branch as extremist and has monitored the national AfD for “suspected” extremism.

The AfD has rejected this designation as scaremongering and an insult to its supporters.

Citing its anti-constitutional positions, the federal government claims that the AfD has violated the principles of human dignity, democracy and the rule of law. As a result, mainstream parties have erected a “firewall” to prevent the AfD from governing on either the state or federal level.

Consequently, the AfD will find it difficult to cobble together a government in Saxony-Anhalt. Nevertheless, Siegmund intends to “reach out to all those who wish to work with us to bring about a fundamental political turnaround.”

Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader, has hailed the “historic” result in Saxony-Anhalt, which, she contends, has given it a clear mandate to govern. At the same time, she has sharply criticized the Christian Democratic Union for refusing to cooperate with the AfD.

The Christian Democratic Union will now attempt to outflank the AfD by building a coalition with the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, known as the BSW. While the BSW will not endorse Siegmund as state governor, it has not ruled out supporting the party.

The AfD hews to a nationalist agenda that includes rigorous restrictions on immigration, the expansion of deportations and the movement of refugees into group shelters, the improvement of bilateral relations with Russia, the removal of the euro as Germany’s currency, and a deemphasis on school courses about the Nazi interregnum.

Although the AfD has officially distanced itself from neo-Nazi rhetoric and groups, party leaders have drawn on banned Nazi slogans such as “Alles fur Deutschland,” or “Everything for Germany.”

Björn Hocke, the AfD chairman in Thuringia who once described Berlin’s Memorial To The Murdered Jews Of Europe as a “monument of shame,” has said that Germany must move past its “guilt complex” regarding the Holocaust.

The party’s manifesto holds that Germany’s culture of Nazi crimes commemoration has “led to a situation where national pride is generally considered disreputable, the defence of one’s own interests is perceived as indecent, and politicians avoid any positive reference to our rich history before 1933.”

Hocke used a Nazi propaganda expression when has called for “a large-scale remigration project” to facilitate the expulsion of immigrants and prevent “our impending Volkstod,” or “death of the people.”

Saxony-Anhalt is the site of several Holocaust memorials, including the Lichtenburg concentration camp, all of which receive both federal and state funding. Some observers believe that the AfD may cut these subsidies or reduce them to a point where many of these memorial sites will no longer be able to function.

The AfD has not explicitly come out in support of eliminating the funding of Holocaust memorials. But it has proposed the abolition of the State Agency for Civic Education, which finances a significant proportion of school trips to these places.

Officially, the AfD is pro-Israel, but its public support of Israel is seen by critics as mainly superficial and defensive, deployed selectively as a tool to advance its anti-immigration and anti-Muslim agenda. In addition, some party members have criticized Israel for having financially exploited Germany to atone for the Holocaust.

While the AfD is not overtly antisemitic, it has systematically embedded antisemitism into its core ideology, says Lars Rensmann, a political science professor at the University of Passau in Bavaria. Late last month, the American Jewish Committee released his report on antisemitism.

Its key findings are disturbing.