hhistoric. The adjective is not an exaggeration to describe the results of the two regional elections that were held on Sunday 1Ahem September, in eastern Germany. For the first time since the Second World War, the far right won a state, Thuringia, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won almost 33% of the vote. In the neighbouring region of Saxony, it also exceeded 30% and narrowly missed out on first place, which was narrowly retained by the Christian Democrats (CDU).
This development is hardly surprising. It is not without precedent: it was after its success in the Thuringian elections in 1929 that the Nazi party NSDAP first won a regional ministry, four years before Hitler became chancellor. Almost a century later, the AfD has little chance of participating in future governments in Saxony and Thuringia, and other parties have warned that they will not form a coalition with it. But it will have a blocking minority, which will allow it to influence certain key appointments.
For the three-party government of Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the results of Sunday are a catastrophe. Between them, the SPD, the Greens and the liberals of the FDP account for just over 10%. The sorry image of the coalition in power in Berlin, torn by its internal contradictions and accused of failing to achieve results in the face of the high cost of living, illegal immigration and insecurity, was severely condemned.
Excesses
On Sunday, her weaknesses largely benefited the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a movement founded seven months ago by a former leader of the left-wing party Die Linke, which claims to be progressive on social issues and conservative on social issues, and which demands – like the AfD – a halt to arms shipments to Ukraine and rapprochement with Russia.
Together, Saxony and Thuringia have a total of only 6 million inhabitants, or 7% of the German population. However, this should not put into perspective the significance of what happened on Sunday. Firstly, because the far right – as the 2023 elections in Bavaria and Hesse have shown – is also on the rise in western Germany. Secondly, because the AfD federations in Saxony and Thuringia are among the most radical in the country. Their strongman, Björn Höcke, has just been convicted twice for using Hitler’s SA slogan in public, and his party is now “to put under surveillance” by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the service responsible for domestic intelligence. Despite these excesses, he won more than a third of the voters.
That such a party, founded only eleven years ago, should obtain such high scores in a country like Germany is more than worrying. Given its past, its demographic weight and its economic power in the heart of a European continent gripped by the rise of the extremes, Germany, which will elect its next chancellor in a year’s time, has a great responsibility.
Its political leaders on the right and left, but also its economic and intellectual elites, cannot afford to allow a group whose racist and nationalist worldview to continue to flourish, undermining the foundations of the democratic and liberal order on which the country was rebuilt after the catastrophe of World War III.my Reich.
