Editorial · Kommando 161 · · 3h
To Saxony-Anhalt: In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the streets are not taking cover from the AfD
Deutsch (original) · Auto-translated to English
On Monday evening, September 8, 2026, more than 2,000 people stood on the streets in twelve cities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - around 1,200 in Rostock alone, as well as Greifswald, Stralsund, Neubrandenburg, Waren, Parchim, Ludwigslust, Güstrow, Neustrelitz, Ribnitz-Damgarten and Boizenburg. The occasion was the AfD landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt three days earlier. The reason why there were so many now: On September 20th, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will also elect a new state parliament, and according to the infratest-dimap survey commissioned by NDR, the AfD is only three percentage points ahead of the SPD there.
This is no small side note. If a party that is partly considered right-wing extremist is on a par with the strongest government party in an eastern German state, that is an emergency, not the norm. And the emergency was not answered with press releases in Rostock, Greifswald and Stralsund, but with rallies, a singing campaign on the Neuer Markt and posters like “Remigrate to your knees”. This was not organized by a party apparatus, but by the “Moving Together” alliance - an alliance of the DGB, the Migrant Council and various non-party groups. It is precisely this extra-parliamentary structure that counts in the end, when parliaments and coalition negotiations have long since decided how far a fascist party can be accommodated.
It is also significant who else spoke up: employer associations. Sven Müller from the Association of Business Associations MV warned that the tourism and economic region could not survive without “cosmopolitanism” and international skilled workers. This is not an anti-fascist commitment, it is location logic - but it shows how much the AfD itself is perceived by parts of capital as a risk, not as a partner. For us this means: business associations are not allies, but their fear of instability is a symptom of how serious the situation is.
Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) stood in front of a good 200 demonstrators in Schwerin and said that the AfD's power fantasies would be stopped. This may be intended as an election campaign sentence, but it still correctly describes what is at stake: not about the distribution of seats, but about the question of whether a right-wing extremist movement will gain government power in another federal state. Parliamentary resistance alone did not prevent this in Saxony-Anhalt. What matters is that people take to the streets before the election is decided - not after, when horror turns to impotence.
We know how it turns out when a state election is treated as a supra-regional lesson and local mobilization still fails to materialize. Twelve cities on a Monday evening is a start, not a result. The real test comes on September 20th - and beyond, when it comes to whether these alliances will remain in place, regardless of the outcome of the election.
Sources
NDR: After the election in Saxony-Anhalt: protests against the AfD
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Source: Kommando 161