The week in review: The shift to the right is taking hold

Three state elections in six months, the same picture three times: Saxony-Anhalt, now Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. Anyone who believed that the shift to the right was a special problem in East Germany that could be addressed with a little more social work and a few talk show appearances got an answer this week. She was clear.

Schwerin falls

InMecklenburg-Western PomeraniaAccording to projections, the AfD under Leif-Erik Holm will get 37.0% and become the strongest force in the country for the first time - an increase of over 20 points compared to the last election. The CDU falls to 5.5%, as do the Greens, and the BSW is shaking at 5.0%. After 28 years of SPD government, Schwerin is threatened with a complete break. The Left is gaining ground and is becoming the only relevant counterweight in the state parliament, without which mathematically nothing works without involving the AfD.

Berlin: close, but no consolation

InBerlinThe Left under Elif Eralp is clearly ahead of the CDU, a historic success for a party that just a few years ago had to worry about returning to the Bundestag. But anyone who reads this as a pure success story overlooks the other number on the same page: the AfD doubles its result by 2023 to 15.8% - in the capital, not in the eastern German provinces, as the bourgeois features section would like to have you believe. The SPD slips to its historically weakest result in Berlin, the BSW is trembling around the five percent hurdle.

Merz's non-reaction

And then kickedFriedrich Merzin front of the microphones and called the whole thing a "disaster" - only to make it clear in the next sentence that nothing is changing in his course. No resignation, no course correction, no consequence. Saxony-Anhalt, MV, Berlin: the same pattern everywhere. A union that adopts the cultural framework of the extreme right - "ethnic cleansing" here, gas price giveaways there - does not make the copy any more attractive than the original. It just makes the original more socially acceptable. Merz wanted to halve the AfD. In the end, only your own credibility was halved.

The report that surprises no one

Published at the same timeFederal Office for the Protection of the Constitutionits annual report 2025: 58,700 people with right-wing extremist potential, 15,600 of whom are classified as violence-oriented - numbers that have only known one direction for years. The scene now specifically organizes children, through family reunions, traditional events and youth camps. According to the report, a group called “Last Defense Wave” is planning attacks on refugee shelters and left-wing organizational spaces. And yet the AfD, whose membership has grown to 70,000 in 2025, remains only a “suspected case” for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. None of this is a surprise to us. It is confirmation of what has been here since this desk was founded.

Facts and opinion, clearly separated

Fact:According to projections, the AfD is the strongest force in MV, in Berlin it doubles its result, and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution counts 58,700 right-wing extremists.Our position:This is not a natural event, but the result of a CDU strategy that adopts right-wing narratives instead of fighting them, and a security apparatus that names the danger and yet does not act. Anyone who believes that the shift to the right can be stopped with even more right-wing rhetoric has learned nothing from MV, Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin.

What remains this week is not despair, but a mission. The state will not save us, as each of these reports shows again and again. Organizing from below, solidarity that doesn't rely on talk show phrases - that's what counts when parliaments are overturning and authorities are watching. We won't budge a meter.