Neo-Nazis Win in German Regional Election

The voters in the German lander of Saxony-Anhelt have decided that the 1930s are back. They voted yesterday in elections for the regional parliament, and they opted to give the helm to Alternative fur Deutschland. AfD is how Nazi is now spelled. The supporters of the party will claim this is a lie and libelous, but they are either deluded or evil. The party wants mass deportations of those who are not ethnically German, with some exceptions for those who have completely assimilated. They are pro-Russian, which says all that is needed. The truth is that the former Soviet zone of occupation never de-nazified, and the great grandchildren of Hitler are now in charge of the lander.

The Associated Press reported:

AfD won 43.8% of the vote, more than double its showing five years ago in Saxony-Anhalt, west of Berlin.

That was far ahead of Merz’s party, which polled 17.2% — losing about half its support — and won 15 seats. The center-left Social Democrats polled 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left Party 8.6%, winning eight seats apiece.

The BSW party [a breakaway group from the Left Party] took 5.3% and five seats.

Turnout was very high at 77.8%. AfD appeared to have won over many people who didn’t vote at all five years ago.

Given the outcome, there is a chance that the other parties can unite to prevent the AfD from taking power. There has been an agreement among the democratic parties that the AfD will not get support from any of them. That means that without a majority of the seats, the AfD will not govern. This happened 2 years ago in Thuringia; the AfD failed to take power because the CDU got support from others. So, the question becomes whether anyone will back the AfD. Of the 83 seats in the legislature, the AfD won 39 — a majority is 42. Three is not that big a number.

The BSW has 5 seats, and one suspects that its left-wing populism can co-exist with that of the AfD. Reuters reports:

The BSW shares the AfD’s hostility towards mass immigration, which it says undermines local workers’ rights, and also advocates for ending Germany’s support for Ukraine and restoring ties with Moscow.

Both parties characterise sanctions on Russia as needlessly ‌self-sabotaging, denying ⁠German businesses access to Russia’s vast cheap energy resources on which Germany’s export-driven economy was able to thrive for decades.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of the conservative CDU/CSU, understands just how bad this is for the other parties and Germany. He told the Bild newspaper, “This shakes our party to its very foundations. We cannot simply carry on as before, nor can I, nor can the federal government. We have a strong constitution; we have all the tools to defend the constitution against a right-wing extremist state government — but our party system is undergoing a tectonic shift,” he added.

There are three more elections to be held in Germany soon:

Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen): Municipal elections (Kommunalwahlen) are scheduled for September 13, 2026.
Berlin: The state parliament election (Wahl zum Abgeordnetenhaus) as well as borough elections are scheduled for September 20, 2026.
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: The state parliament election (Landtagswahl) is scheduled for September 20, 2026

The AfD is poised to do well in all of them. And the BSW cannot be trusted. InfoMigrants has stated “BSW says that ‘although the number of asylum seekers arriving is going down, it is still too high.’ Because of the high numbers of migrants Germany has “absorbed” explains BSW’s manifesto, ‘children are forced to learn in over-full classes, in which a large part of the class can’t even speak German’.”

Being competent in the lingua franca of a nation is an important factor in integration. History of immigrant nations like the US and Canada suggests the first generation arriving in a country does not really learn the local language beyond the basics. People over the age of 20 have a hard time learning new languages compared to people under 20. The second generation tends to be bilingual, learning the old language at home and the new one everywhere else. The third generation rarely speaks the old language with any fluency. Assimilation is slow.

It is unfortunate that some of the kids in Germany do not speak German. What is more troubling is that the parents of many school kids there do not know their history. The Associated Press stated

Among voters who didn’t back AfD, the reaction was one of deep dismay. Horst Walter Boerner, an 86-year-old from Magdeburg born during World War II, expressed shock.

“It’s terrible for us,” he said, saying the election was “fear-driven.” He said AfD’s victory was foreseeable because of the crowds it drew during the campaign, but he said “this should have never happened.”

No, it damned well should not have happened. Germany had done a wonderful job in addressing its past, far better than Japan has done over its militarism let alone the US and its racist past. That is now in danger. Pretending that this is just another protest movement that got lucky is a mistake.