VENI, VIDI… DID I UNDERSTAND?

Does This Road Lead to Another Führer?

There are numbers that force us to ask uncomfortable questions. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has just won 43.8 percent of the vote. We are no longer talking about a fringe party or a protest vote that can simply be dismissed. At the national level, the picture is no longer confined to eastern Germany either: the latest DeutschlandTrend puts the AfD at 27 percent, ahead of the CDU/CSU.

Something similar, though involving very different parties, is happening across Europe. Le Pen and Bardella in France, Meloni in Italy, Vox in Spain, the FPÖ in Austria, the Sweden Democrats. The right is advancing. And in Germany, one question inevitably follows: haven’t we seen this movie before? The short answer is no. The interesting answer takes a little longer.

First, we need to get the words right. Conservative right, radical right, far right and neo-Nazism are not synonyms. Germany’s CDU or Spain’s PP belong to the traditional democratic right. Vox, Rassemblement National and the FPÖ belong, with considerable differences between them, to the radical right. Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia has proved far more institutional and Atlanticist in government than many expected before she came to power.

The AfD is a more troubling case. It is a radical-right party containing ethnonationalist currents, and some of its regional organizations have been officially classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence authorities as right-wing extremist. In Saxony-Anhalt there is little ambiguity on that point: the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the regional AfD as gesichert rechtsextremistisch — confirmed right-wing extremist.

Does that make the AfD a Nazi party? I would not use that description. Not because there is any reason to soften what the party represents, but because words have meanings. Neo-Nazism implies something considerably more specific: identification with central elements of National Socialism, including biological racism, antisemitism, the Führer principle, a racially defined Volksgemeinschaft, rejection of democracy and, in its more extreme forms, historical revisionism. Calling everything to our right “Nazi” may be emotionally satisfying. It does very little to help us understand what is actually happening. And what is happening may be worrying enough without bringing Hitler into it.

This Is Not 1933

The differences from the 1930s are enormous. The Weimar Republic was a young democracy battered by defeat in war, first by hyperinflation and then by the Great Depression. Millions were unemployed. Political murder, street fighting and paramilitary organizations were part of everyday political life. Powerful parties openly declared that they wanted to destroy the democratic system.

Europe in 2026 does not look like that. We have established democracies, welfare states, constitutional courts, the European Union, NATO, pluralistic media and highly developed civil societies. Germany went further: after 1945, it deliberately constructed a constitutional system intended to make another 1933 extraordinarily difficult.

The Basic Law is not the Weimar Constitution. And the AfD is not the NSDAP. It has no SA, no party army fighting political opponents in the streets. It does not openly advocate a one-party totalitarian state, nor does it present an expansionist project comparable to Lebensraum. Automatically equating the two is not merely historically inaccurate. It may cause us to look for the danger in the wrong place.

What Does Look Familiar

There are similarities too. Once again, there is deep distrust of political elites. A growing part of the population believes the traditional parties no longer represent its concerns. Immigration, cultural insecurity, the cost of the energy transition, European bureaucracy, war, economic stagnation and the feeling that ordinary citizens have lost control over fundamental decisions all feed that frustration. There is also something historically familiar in the search for simple explanations for extraordinarily complicated problems.

But perhaps the most important development is the gradual disappearance of a taboo. For decades in Germany, being considered rechtsextrem was almost enough to place a political movement beyond the electoral pale for the overwhelming majority of society. That is changing.

Millions now vote for the AfD while knowing perfectly well how parts of the party are classified by Germany’s constitutional protection authorities. Saxony-Anhalt has just provided an extraordinary demonstration: a regional party officially classified as right-wing extremist received 43.8 percent of the vote.

That does not mean 43.8 percent of voters have suddenly become Nazis. It means something different, and politically perhaps something much more important: the label “extremist” is losing its power as an automatic electoral barrier.

There Is No Single European Right

It would also be a mistake to imagine one homogeneous right-wing bloc marching from Madrid to Berlin. Meloni, Le Pen, Vox, the FPÖ and the AfD agree on many things: immigration, national identity, criticism of multiculturalism, sovereignty and resistance to aspects of European integration. But on other issues they differ enormously.

Meloni is firmly Atlanticist and supports Ukraine. Vox is much closer to NATO than to Moscow. The AfD and FPÖ are considerably more sympathetic toward Russia. Poland’s PiS may be nationalist, socially conservative and deeply critical of Brussels, but hostility toward Russia is almost part of its political DNA.

Their concepts of the nation differ as well. Vox’s nationalism is fundamentally Spanish, statist and centralist: one Spain, national sovereignty and fierce opposition to separatism. Within parts of the AfD there is something different, and particularly sensitive given German history: an ethnic-cultural conception of who truly belongs to the German people.

There is another crucial difference. Vox already makes deals with Spain’s PP. Meloni governs Italy. Marine Le Pen has spent years trying to turn Rassemblement National into a party that millions of French voters who would never describe themselves as extremists can vote for. The AfD remains behind Germany’s Brandmauer — the firewall separating it from the mainstream parties. For now.

Germany’s Real Question

As long as the CDU and CSU refuse to govern with the AfD, the party can win regional elections and perhaps even become Germany’s largest political force without necessarily entering government. But eventually arithmetic becomes politics.

A party with 10 or 15 percent can be isolated relatively easily. At 25 or 30 percent, increasingly awkward coalitions are required to keep it out. And when it approaches — or, as in Saxony-Anhalt, comfortably exceeds — 40 percent, maintaining the firewall means almost everybody else has to govern together. How long can that work?

That may become one of Germany’s defining political questions over the next few years. The collapse of the Brandmauer would matter far more than another three percentage points for the AfD. It would mean the party had crossed the line from being electorally powerful but politically untouchable to becoming a potential partner in government.

From There to a Führer?

No. At least, not necessarily. The Führerprinzip meant something far more radical than having a charismatic or authoritarian leader. Authority flowed downward from the Führer, whose will stood above effective institutional restraints. Political pluralism disappeared, separation of powers disappeared, and genuine alternation of government disappeared.

I do not see that as the likely destination of Europe today. The contemporary danger is subtler. A party can win a perfectly democratic election and then gradually reshape institutions, fill public bodies with loyalists, put pressure on independent media, reduce judicial autonomy, alter electoral rules and portray every institutional obstacle as an attempt by “the elites” to frustrate the will of the people.

Elections continue. Parliament continues. The opposition continues. Formally, democracy continues. But removing the government can become progressively more difficult.

And this is where Hungary remains an extraordinarily interesting case — although for a different reason today than it was only a few months ago.

What Orbán’s Defeat Tells Us

Viktor Orbán no longer governs Hungary. After 16 years in power, his Fidesz party was decisively defeated in the April 2026 parliamentary election by Péter Magyar’s TISZA party. TISZA won 141 of the 199 seats, and Magyar became prime minister in May.

That result matters enormously to the argument about Europe’s democratic future. For years, Orbán’s Hungary illustrated how an elected government could reshape institutions, concentrate power and construct what Orbán himself called an “illiberal democracy.” But his defeat has now shown us the other side of the story: despite all those changes, voters were still able to remove his government through an election.

Hungary therefore offers two lessons rather than one. It demonstrates how far democratic institutions can be altered from within, but it also demonstrates that democratic erosion is not necessarily irreversible. After 16 years, power still changed hands peacefully at the ballot box.

That makes Hungary a far more interesting example than a simplistic comparison with the 1930s. The question is not merely whether democratic institutions can be weakened. It is whether enough of them remain intact for democracy eventually to correct itself.

Democracy or Majority Rule?

The political message of illiberalism does not necessarily say, “We want to destroy democracy.” It says something closer to: “We are the real democrats because we represent the people. Judges, journalists, Brussels, NGOs and elites are the ones preventing the people’s will from being carried out.”

That changes the nature of the conflict. It is no longer simply democracy versus dictatorship. It becomes a dispute over what democracy actually means.

Liberal democracy says that even a 60 percent majority faces limits: fundamental rights, judicial independence, freedom of the press, minority rights and separation of powers. Majoritarian democracy replies with a deceptively simple question: if the majority won, why shouldn’t it be allowed to do what the majority voted for?

And Hungary’s 2026 election adds another question: how strong must democratic institutions remain so that voters can still peacefully remove a government that has spent years reshaping those very institutions?

So Where Is Europe Going?

I do not believe Europe is marching toward a repeat of the 1930s. I do believe Europe is moving clearly to the right.

We are likely to see much tighter immigration policies, more deportations, stronger border controls, greater emphasis on national identity, less enthusiasm for transferring additional sovereignty to Brussels and reconsideration of some climate and cultural policies that dominated the previous decade.

Some of these changes will be introduced by radical-right parties. Others will be introduced by mainstream parties precisely to stop their voters from continuing to move right. And that may ultimately prove the new European right’s greatest victory.

It does not need 51 percent. It only needs to move the centre.

When an idea considered politically unacceptable ten years ago ends up in a mainstream party’s platform, the radical party may have lost the election and still won the argument.

And Germany?

My most likely scenario is not another Führer. It is an AfD that continues to grow or stabilizes at historically high levels; a CDU under increasing pressure to harden its positions; regional governments becoming progressively harder to form without the AfD; and eventually an open debate over whether the Brandmauer can be maintained indefinitely.

The moment of real danger would not come simply when the AfD reaches 30, 35 or even 40 percent. It would come if that electoral growth were accompanied by three things at once: the concentration of the party around an unquestionable leader, an open rejection of constitutional limits on majority power, and widespread acceptance of the idea that some citizens deserve fewer rights because they do not belong to the “real people.”

If those three lines ever cross, we will have good reason to reconsider the comparison with the 1930s. We are not there today.

And Hungary has added an important qualification to the warning: the road toward illiberal democracy is not necessarily a one-way street. Even after 16 years of Orbán, an election was still able to produce a change of government. That does not make institutions less important. It demonstrates exactly the opposite. What ultimately matters is whether enough of them survive to allow democracy to correct itself.

Perhaps that is the least spectacular and, at the same time, the most unsettling conclusion. History rarely repeats itself wearing the same uniforms, using the same words and carrying the same symbols.

The real challenge is recognizing something new before we need something old to give it a name.