Saxony-Anhalt and AfD: Just let them rule!

M anuela Segger, AfD voter, says in a video linked by the New York Times: “Either it will be good or it won’t be quite so good, then we will vote her out again.” Which raises the question: Would it be better if the AfD, together with the former room fragrance salesman Ulrich Siegmund, came into government responsibility in small Saxony-Anhalt?

Would it be better than if democratic parties, which actually represent very different perspectives, freeze in a forced common defensive posture while their different identities dissolve in the process?

AfD voters are often classified, psychologized, pathologized and treated as objects by the non-AfD voting bourgeois elites. According to the political scientist Philip Manow, the milieus in Europe are divided into the socially better off “integration friends” and the “integration skeptics”, who mostly, but not always, come from weaker milieus. If that's true, then AfD voters could only be assigned to the latter without immediately despising them.

The AfD voters would thus get out of the object role, but would then also not be able to shirk the responsibility of being responsible for a right-wing extremist state government that does not make their lives better. Because what would happen if tolerated refugees lost their work permits under an AfD government, if migrants avoided the small federal state and the population then had to do without doctors, nurses, delivery people, waitresses?

After the elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, there is a threat of an AfD government for the first time. The taz reports what is at stake - and who is now defending democracy. All texts about the series can be found here.

What kind of local protest would arise if the first well-integrated child with Down syndrome was taken out of his regular class and placed in a special school? An AfD government would also be a test for civil society in Saxony-Anhalt and the surrounding area. Maybe we should give it a chance. Despite the high risks.