Saxony-Anhalt: Not an industrial accident, but the system at work

43.8 percent. The AfD, classified as right-wing extremist by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is by far the strongest force in the new state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. The CDU, which has been in power for 25 years, has lost over half of its votes and not a single direct mandate. The AfD won the seat outright in 38 of 41 constituencies. This is not a slip-up or a mood of protest that will go away on its own. This is a federal state that has lost its political substance to a party that openly dreams of “remigration.”

Anyone who is now asking about “the causes in the East” has missed the last ten years. Merz calls it the “heaviest electoral defeat in decades” and at the same time promises to continue the reform course – i.e. pension cuts, social cuts, the usual program of the Berlin traffic light successor – undeterred. It is precisely this refusal to change anything at all that is the engine that the AfD has been feeding with full hands for years. You can't treat people with an obsession with austerity and then be surprised that in the next election they will vote for those who promise to at least do everything differently - even if "different" here explicitly means fascist and racist.

Particularly cynical: The BSW, which barely made it into the state parliament with a wafer-thin 5.3 percent, has already signaled that it will help an AfD government gain a majority if necessary. This is the point of the whole “cross-front” rhetoric that has been selling itself for years as a supposedly left-wing alternative to warmongering and social cuts: In the end, you are ready to hold the stirrups to a right-wing extremist premiership. Anyone who has been flirting with Wagenknecht's project can now see live where it leads.

The classe politique always reacts with the same ritual: consternation, vigils, “never again is now” statements from bishops and business associations, who in the next breath warn of “locational disadvantages” instead of fascism. In Berlin, the evening after the election, thousands of people went to the Brandenburg Gate, in Essen over a thousand against the shift to the right - that is right and necessary, but it is not enough if the streets remain the only answer while the established parties exhaust themselves in Sunday speeches and do not touch their own austerity programs even an inch.

For us this means: no illusions in a “fire wall”, which has been visibly made of papier-mâché since Thuringia and now Saxony-Anhalt, and no hope for a parliamentary mechanism that will save us. Antifascist practice means: building the structures that actually protect those affected by fascist violence, securing migrant and queer communities, organizing solidarity that does not end on election night. Saxony-Anhalt is no exception to the rule - it is the rule if you let it run its course long enough.

Sources

tagesschau.de – Live blog for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt
Wikipedia - State election in Saxony-Anhalt 2026
The Guardian – far-right's big election victory sparks dismay