“The dark clouds gathering here over Saxony-Anhalt are the harbingers of the cleansing storm that will soon break over all of Germany when we sweep away this federal government and the old parties. And I'm looking forward to it,” Götz Frömming, a member of Germany's parliament for the AfD, proclaims to the crowd.
The AfD's branch in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt is officially categorised as “far-right extremist” by Germany's domestic intelligence agency. Among many reasons is its pursuit of an ethnically homogeneous society.
On Sunday, 6 September, Saxony-Anhalt will elect a new state parliament. The AfD is polling at over 40%. Until now, the party has been kept out of regional and federal governments given other parties’ refusal to enter coalitions with it, an unofficial rule called the “firewall” (Brandmauer).
This could soon change. If enough other parties fall below the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament, the AfD could form Saxony-Anhalt’s government on its own. It’d be the first time since 1945 that a right-wing extremist party formed a government in Germany.
The AfD's candidate for Saxony-Anhalt’s head of government is Ulrich Siegmund, whose inner circle includes people with ties to neo-Nazi organisations and youth groups.
His party wants to gut the EU, deport millions of people with a migration background, including naturalised German citizens, and end sanctions and restart gas trade with Russia. Nationwide, it's been the strongest party in the polls since April.
Many of the party's goals could be unconstitutional, and members of parliament across several parties have pushed for a nationwide ban, though none has been initiated. In 2019, a court ruled that its leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, can be called fascist.
So, how is it possible that Germany is electing fascists again?
Outside the fairground event in Klein Wanzleben, Erik and his mother stand across the street with a sign reading “No votes for Nazis.” Erik is 17, and they live nearby. Many of his friends, acquaintances, and family members are attending the event. “I'm one of two people in my class of 16 who are against the AfD,” he says.
Inside the event, dozens of families with small children, teenagers, and groups of men clap and cheer as speakers promise that with their support, the AfD will “take our country back”. Several have tattoos of Nordic runes or wear clothing by neo-Nazi-coded brands.
“I think it’s the propaganda,” Erik says when asked what explains the AfD's success in the area. “The social democrats (SPD) haven't done shit in the last years. The christian democrats (CDU) haven't done shit. And the GDR was crap too.” Since reunification, Saxony-Anhalt has mainly been governed by CDU/SPD coalitions.
Outside another campaign event in the town of Haldensleben, a retired train driver watches the queue forming to get in from a distance. He’s votes AfD out of protest. “I’ve lived under socialism, and I’ve lived under capitalism. And I can tell you, I don’t want to go back. I know they’re complete airheads, but I’m going to vote for them anyway. Purely out of anger.”
Nearby, a local woman watches neighbours and acquaintances file in. “I don't get what everyone's problem is. We're doing fine!”
So why that anger?
“Demographics is the most important factor in the AfD's success,” says economist Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).
The decline is mainly visible in the countryside. When young people leave, schools, pubs, and football clubs go with them. “There are places where there’s no bakery left, no doctor, and the bus runs once a day. It raises the question: who's actually doing anything for me here?” says Henriette Quade, an independent member of Saxony-Anhalt's state parliament and co-founder of Halle gegen Rechts, an initiative against right-wing extremism.
Enter: the AfD, with charismatic candidates and a campaign promising that “everything is possible”.
“The [neo-]Nazis always used those gaps. The NPD [a neo-Nazi party] had a targeted strategy in the countryside and held children's festivals. The AfD is doing the same, with free sausages and beer,” Quade says.
“It has to do with a lack of prospects,” Fratzscher says of demographic decline. “Social infrastructure gets dismantled. Where people have actively moved away, the AfD's share is especially high.”
Siegmund and his team have been touring all corners of the state. “I guess many people come because there isn’t much else going on and everyone else is going,” Erik says.
An AfD victory would prompt him to leave too. “I’m going to stay until I finish high school, but after that, I’ll have to see. If the AfD wins, things could get pretty bad here.”
“What we're seeing isn't specific to Saxony-Anhalt at all,” Quade says. “The world is getting more confusing every day. The more complicated the world gets, the stronger the search for simple solutions and certainty. But that doesn't exist in a democracy, or in a globalised world. That's where the AfD has a unique selling point, because that's exactly what it promises.”
The paradox: the party's policies would actively harm the regions most left behind, Fratzscher found in his research. “The AfD would worsen the demographic problem. It wants to kick out foreigners, and is xenophobic, which scares off German companies and citizens.”
In Haldensleben, children stream out of the AfD’s event venue holding ice cream and balloons. A young woman, whose phone case reading “White Lives Matter” pokes out of her back pocket, is handing out merch. Two teenage girls race around collecting as many lanyards and tote bags as they can. Asked what they like about the party, they say “I don’t know, everything!” and run on.
An older woman leaving the venue says “I was self-employed, and now I'm being punished for it with my pension – though I never put money aside myself. I can't complain. But I'm against war. We're spending so much money on Ukraine while people here are doing badly. I think we should give them [the AfD] a chance.”
The AfD plays on lasting sentiments that the former West screwed the East over after reunification. In Klein Wanzleben, a speaker tells the crowd: “We in the East have developed a sense of when something is being forced on us.”
Some scars of that era are still visible:
“Until 1990, Magdeburg was a city of heavy industry. Everyone had at least one family member who worked in one of those factories,” says Nicolas Spohn, a political scientist at the Otto von Guericke University in the state’s capital of Magdeburg, himself born and raised in the city.
“But then came reunification, and many people lost their jobs as the industry was privatised and the vast majority sold to West German companies. That experience of not being in control of your own fate sticks with people emotionally,” he says. “It's the ground in which parties like the AfD take root.”
But Fratzscher points out that while East German regions still trail the West, things have improved. “The first ten years after reunification were really difficult, but since then employment numbers are looking better, median income is up.”
Today, “it's a mental question,” he says. “Germany was successful in the 2000s and 2010s. We felt like we were the stars, and now we're shocked that the economy isn't doing well. But this pessimism is exaggerated, and ultimately benefits opposition parties. The biggest winner is the AfD.”
Yet the AfD’s plans don't address the root causes of people's concerns. “None of their promises are properly financed,” Fratzscher says.
Quade puts part of the blame for the AfD's success on centrist parties. “The normalisation of extreme-right positions has not been stopped by those in power. Debates in parliament have fully moved on to AfD talking points, especially on migration,” she says.
Victim support services report growing cases of racist, antisemitic, sexist, ableist, and queerphobic violence in Saxony-Anhalt. “The tenor of political debate has always had a massive impact on those within the extreme right who are willing to use violence, because it lets them see themselves as enforcers of a so-called popular will,” Quade says.
“I think the biggest problem is that the so-called firewall was never seriously drawn,” she adds. “For ten years, the CDU has let themselves be driven by the AfD, adopting its demands, especially in migration.”
Spohn points out that there are many district or city councils in which “there's no getting around it anymore. You wouldn't get a single kindergarten renovated if you refused to work with the AfD.”
The result is an AfD programme for Saxony-Anhalt that includes abolishing the fundamental right to asylum (impossible at the state level), creating segregated school classes for migrant and disabled children, and reforming curricula to include “more Bismarck, less Hitler”.
The party also wants to stop new renewable energy and go back to building coal power instead (even though Saxony-Anhalt generates 60% of its electricity through renewables), replace the public broadcaster, and introduce “welcome bonus” payments per child born, but only if at least one parent is a German citizen.
Back in Klein Wanzleben, four more young women join Erik and his mom on the street opposite the AfD event. One is wearing a t-shirt reading “FCK NZS”. “We're here for basic decency. We won't leave our home to these people. We’re more than this,” she says.