State elections | Il Manifesto for Saxony-Anhalt: The risky first time

AfD top candidate Ulrich Siegmund during the election campaign Photo: dpa/Hendrik Schmidt It is clear to everyone who won the elections in Saxony-Anhalt by a landslide: the AfD, led by a right-wing extremist candidate who struck a friendly and reassuring tone. But what really won in Magdeburg? Ultimately, parties win votes, but it is worries, fears and resentments that prepare the ground for this - and these sometimes seem to have more weight in eastern Germany than material interests. And they cross boundaries between political groups.

Have xenophobia and racism won? Or the need for cheap and readily available Russian gas? The fear of war and of being drawn into a conflict with Moscow? The dissatisfaction with the political system that revolves around the two historic western popular parties and the eternal return of the (now former) grand coalition? Has the need for recognition won?

The text was provided to "nd" by the left-wing Italian daily newspaper "Il Manifesto", with which we cooperate.

It is probably a mixture of all of these issues that the AfD took up and brought it to the threshold of the state government of a small, demographically aging, economically marginal federal state.

That's not enough to "make history," but it is the first time that the promise to keep the extreme right away from the levers of power - whether large or small - is unlikely to be kept. It was a promise that Germany had solemnly made not only to what was left of the war-torn country, but to the entire world.

The problem is that the creditors of this promise, especially the USA, no longer value it. On the contrary: they openly sympathize with Europe's extreme right and ignore their connections to the past. And this despite the fact that “Maga”, translated into German terms, means a revised return to fascist nationalism. France under Marine Le Pen, which is on the way to power, can only see the advance of the German right as an encouraging trend, even if a sovereignist rise of German power is unlikely to bring a peaceful night's sleep to French nationalism - and not only to it. As for the EU, there is little reason to trust in the steadfastness of the EPP under Manfred Weber and Ursula von der Leyen in trying to counter the influence of the more radical right on the continent's political balance.

One should not be under the illusion that a likely AfD government could be dealt with by declaring Saxony-Anhalt a “rogue state” and isolating it, as some are actually suggesting. Legal obstacles aside, the political impact would be extremely counterproductive. The AfD is firmly established as the strongest party in the country, and that can no longer be ignored.

Two options therefore emerge. The first is a collapse by the CDU that drives it into implicit or explicit subordination to the radical right and substantial cooperation with it at all levels. Chancellor Merz does not seem to fear this, as he considers his politics to be just right-wing enough. He is also betting that his party's increasingly bellicose anti-Russian positions will endure. The election catastrophe doesn't change that.

Secondly, there is the now openly stated willingness of Sahra Wagenknecht's party to enable the inauguration of the AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund as Prime Minister by abstaining from the vote. It would be the start of numerous opportunities for collaboration with the extreme right. The BSW has little to do with a Bolshevik workers' party, nor with a committed internationalist militancy. It excels neither in organizing social struggles nor in concrete pacifist support for Russian and Ukrainian deserters and conscientious objectors.

Like other red-brown groups, it is essentially an ideological party that emerged from a split and is primarily committed to combating any libertarian tendency within the left on the basis of the hackneyed opposition between social and civil rights. It prefers to position itself where the authoritarian and disciplinary features of 20th century socialism in its patriotic form can most easily be combined with the ordering reflexes of the right and its policy of unifying diversity.

Since the BSW has little hope of becoming a significant popular party, it is more suitable for politicizing maneuvers under the illusion of achieving some social results that can be exploited at the level of identity politics in exchange for favors.

Both development options lead to a strengthening of the radical right in Germany and to a profound change in the cultural climate and political life in Germany. The European construction would hardly survive this break. But we're not there yet.

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