The Expected Victory of the Afd in East Germany

The tiny East German state of Saxony-Anhalt is having a state election on 6 September, and Germany is deeply worried that the high level of voter support for the neofascist AfD could put an AfD-led government – a Machtergreifung 2.0 – within reach.

Many recent surveys of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt project an AfD win. In the two-million-strong Saxony-Anhalt – currently ruled by Germany’s conservatives, the CDU, in a coalition with the social-democratic SPD and the neoliberal FDP – one survey of 1,500 people, or one tenth of voters, showed an unchanged preference for the AfD, with 42% voter support, followed by the CDU with 22%, the progressive Die Linke (the Left) with 11%, the SPD with 8%, the environmentalist Greens with 6%, and the FDP with 4%.

Yet, with such a result, the AfD’s goal of an outright majority government cannot be reached. A CDU-led minority government with the SPD and the Greens as junior partners would be likely.

Only a few days ago, the top candidates of the AfD – former neo-Nazis (HDJ) Ulrich Siegmund and the CDU’s Schulze – once again exchanged blows. The AfD is neither interested in nor known for debating. It is – and this follows the shouting of its idols, from Adolf Hitler to Freisler – interested in shouting, screaming, personal insults, and what made it big on corporate online platforms (social media): sensationalism, wild and unsubstantiated accusations, catchphrases and, of course, turning democracy into a spectacle.

Unlike the AfD’s top Gauleiter – a regional Führer – Siegmund’s public statements, the party program of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt says the exact opposite. For example, children with disabilities are not to be taken away in grey vans, as was once the case in Germany.

But, instead, the AfD wants the immediate abolition of inclusion. No more teaching children with and without disabilities side by side. Instead, the AfD targets the expansion of so-called ‘special schools’ – a potential precursor to camps.

In the eyes of the follow-up organisations of Hitler’s Hitler Youth (HJ), Siegmund’s HDJ and his current ideological home, the AfD, disabled children are in need of a special case – a kind of Sonderbehandlung.

Teaching all children together is, for Siegmund’s AfD, only an ‘experiment in inclusion’ that has failed. Perhaps anyone not fitting the Volksgemeinschaft needs to be taken away so that what the AfD explicitly calls ‘normally gifted’ children can be segregated from ‘handicapped’ children.

Meanwhile, German lawyers believe that a complete abolition of inclusion is a possible violation of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), as well as a violation of the principle of equal treatment enshrined in Germany’s constitution. Yet the self-appointed defenders of ‘law and order’ seemingly do not care much about the ‘law’ and the democratic order it underpins in Germany.

Meanwhile, the AfD wants women ‘back at the stove’ in what reactionary political parties call ‘the 3Ks’ – Kinder, Kirche, Küche, or children, church and kitchen.

The AfD says quite clearly, “we want women, first of all, to have as many children as they can get”, reminiscent of Hitler’s Mutterkreuz award for supplying his fascist Wehrmacht with fresh gun fodder.

Next, the AfD wants to abolish compulsory education in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Education is the domain of the states. This might follow Donald Trump’s ‘I love the poorly educated’, perhaps reflecting the sociological observation that the less education people have, the more likely they are to vote for Trump or Germany’s AfD. Hitler’s Nazis were not plagued by an oversupply of intellectual brilliance – on the contrary. Adolf Hitler had basically no education beyond the minimum level required in his country of birth, Austria.

Following the ideology of Hitler, the AfD election program fancies what it calls a more traditional image of the family. Following the Volksgemeinschaft, such a family consists of father, mother, and as many children as possible. Any other form of living cannot be imagined by the simple-minded AfD apparatchiks and their voters.

Beyond the AfD’s usual racism, its educational ideas in Saxony-Anhalt might well get it into government. This is only the first step. What the AfD plans is a nationwide takeover – formerly known as Machtergreifung – the takeover of democratic institutions and their destruction as the final solution for democracy.

With a win in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD imagines having enormous influence on Berlin – Germany’s capital and seat of the federal government. Party leader Alice Weidel, the Switzerland-based pretty face of German neofascism, confirmed this at the end of August 2026 in a television interview. The lesbian figurehead referred to a state government in Saxony-Anhalt as a ‘first step’ on the way to taking over the federal government of Germany.

She called it “we are on the road to victory” – on the Siegesstrasse. The idea of Sieg, or victory, is a deeply fascistic idea: Hitler’s salute was Sieg Heil, his fascistic army dream was Endsieg, the final victory, and today, the AfD’s Gruppenführer in Saxony-Anhalt, Siegmund, is adored by his followers with ‘Sieg, Sieg, Sieg  – behind closed doors, of course.

Adding to the AfD’s domino theory is the fact that the election result in Saxony-Anhalt, as well as the next state elections in East Germany’s Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Berlin in September, puts pressure on the CDU to weaken or eliminate its ‘firewall policy’ against the AfD, which bars any form of coalition government with the AfD.

Meanwhile, Standartenführer and current AfD candidate Siegmund announced ‘sit up and take notice’, supported by more than 40% of voter support. Trying to bypass outright Nazi ideology, the AfD’s rhetoric during the Saxony-Anhalt election is framed as being more akin to the years 1813 and 1871, the birth years of German nationalism.

With a victory in Saxony-Anhalt, many fear that companies would lose interest in the state and start to invest money elsewhere in Germany. In addition, educational policy would massively suffer under the AfD.

HDJ/AfD strongman Siegmund, of course, sees this entirely differently, as the AfD wants Saxony-Anhalt’s entire education policy to be turned ‘on its head’ – implying a return to the 19th century, at best.

Characteristically, the AfD’s Hauptgruppenführer in Saxony-Anhalt dreams of the ‘German Empire’, which could mean the ultra-nationalistic and chauvinistic Bismarckian empire, but it could also mean Adolf Hitler’s empire that reached from Berlin to Auschwitz, Sobibor and beyond.

Beyond HdJ-Siegmund’s empire dreams and back in Germany, recent studies specifically warn against an AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt that threatens the state’s economy.

Under an AfD government, economists warn of less growth and labour, and that the AfD’s election program is missing billions – programs for which no funding exists.

Shortly before the election in Saxony-Anhalt, the economic consequences of a possible AfD government have been made visible. Economists expect less immigration, further straining the already stressed labour market, which is plagued by a severe shortage of skilled workers. At the same time, financing the AfD’s over-the-top promises will put an unfinanceable burden on the state’s budget.

With an AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt, economists warn of a shrinking economy.

According to the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), an AfD government may put the brakes on economic growth in Saxony-Anhalt. Estimates show that economic growth in Saxony-Anhalt could be cut down to just one percent per year.

The AfD’s xenophobic rhetoric places the state’s economy at a disadvantage. Currently, the share of non-German workers in the state’s food manufacturing, construction, catering and logistics sectors is between 33% and 40%. Approximately every fifth physician in Saxony-Anhalt comes from abroad. These are the people the AfD wants to eliminate or torment into leaving with “well-tempered cruelties”, as the informal boss of the AfD, Björn Höcke, once said.

The IWH investigated regions in which the anti-immigrant AfD has political power, such as Thuringia’s Landkreis Sonneberg. The study found that where immigration declined, the economy declined as well.

Meanwhile, the analysis by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in East Germany, in Halle, found that the election program of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt includes a minimum of €2.2 billion ($2.6bn) in unfunded election promises. The party’s promises of tax cuts will put even more strain on the public purse.

In other words, East German economists are united in the conviction that the election program of the AfD is not affordable. The economists expect that an AfD government would focus on symbolic projects.

It gets worse. A study by the ‘German Institute for Economic Research’ – run by Germany’s all-powerful Employers’ Association (the voice of German capitalism) – produced even more drastic results. In a scenario in which the AfD’s claims of exiting the euro and the EU, limiting immigration and imposing massive government cutbacks are implemented, around 10,000 jobs would be lost in Saxony-Anhalt. Available income might decline by around €1,600 ($1,880) per person.

In purely mathematical terms, this is the equivalent of a four-member family losing €6,400 ($7,500) of disposable income per year.

Beyond that, the decreased attractiveness of the state, combined with young people leaving – seen as out-migration – would further put the state at a disadvantage. This out-migration might well be strongest among non-Germans living in Saxony-Anhalt.

Fearing an AfD government led migrants to strike in Saxony-Anhalt, as shutters went down on their shops – no more kebab, which, so the joke goes, AfD apparatchiks buy in secrecy.

The ‘migrant strike’ in Saxony-Anhalt led to 160 stores in Magdeburg being closed. The clear and present danger of an AfD government becomes ever clearer.

A few weeks ago, on an ordinary Wednesday morning, the Bingöl Grill in Magdeburg looked different from a normal day of the week. There were no lights and there was no staff in the store. Instead of serving customers, the staff were engaged in a conversation about the political situation in Germany.

Samet is watching what happens. On a normal day, the Bingöl Grill would be busy. But today, it is not because today is the day of the migrant strike. Together with 160 other traders in Magdeburg, they opted against profits. They decided that

money will come back quickly,

but democracy, once it’s gone,

does not come back again.

* Thomas Klikauer has over 1200 publications (including 16 books) and writes regularly for Cross Border Talks ( Europe), Countercurrents (India), and ZNet (USA) on global warming, labor relations, and Germany’s far right.

Source: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-expected-victory-of-the-afd-in-east-germany/