Berlin Is Jolted by Big Wins for Germany’s Rising Anti-Immigrant Party in State Elections

The writing was on the Berlin wall — well, not exactly, but it was abundantly clear that Germany’s far-right AfD would perform well in state elections in the former East German states of Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday, and it did. It is a feat without precedent for the far right in eastern Germany. The Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won just over 33 percent of the votes in Thuringia, making it the leading party there. It finished second in Saxony with 30.5 percent of the vote, putting it a hair’s width behind the Christian Democratic party, which took 31.7 percent of votes.Angered by what they perceive as government inaction on immigration and a rising tide of crime often directly linked to it, voters sharply rebuked the three parties in Chancellor Scholz’s governing coalition, which took well below 15 percent of the vote between them.The far right will not govern in the two eastern states for the time being because no other party is willing to form an alliance with it yet. The symbolic victory it scored, though, is large. The new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, garnered 15.6 percent in Thuringia and 11.7 percent in Saxony. The BSW shares some ideological ground with the AfD — tough on illegal immigration, soft on continuing aid to Ukraine — but its founder, Ms .Wagenknecht, has so far refused to work with the AfD’s man in Thuringia, the hard right Björn Höcke.As parties from the left and the right will now scramble to form working coalitions, the fertile German landscape is erupting with all manner of prognostications, some dire but none banal.For the Düsseldorf-based financial newspaper Handelsblatt, “the earthquake in Thuringia will cause an aftershock in Berlin.” It adds that “the issues of immigration and internal security dominated” and that if the government wants to regain some of the support it lost after its election in 2021, it will have to deliver in these areas. The newspaper ascertained that the election results in Saxony and Thuringia “are extreme in the real sense” and that “federal politicians should not dismiss them as a purely East German phenomenon, but rather take them as a warning and take them seriously.”“The election is a big failure for the governing coalition,” the liberal Der Spiegel wailed, “but also for liberal democracy — AfD and BSW won, two parties that have absolutely nothing to do with the liberal point of view.”For the tabloid Bild, it’s all good, more or less: “There is no bad election result,” the paper commented, noting that opinion polls “had warmed up Germany” for what transpired. “This is it and there is no other way…elections mean competition,” it proffered. Germany’s N-TV took a less charitable view: “The AfD is making history in Thuringia, but not a good one,” a report on the news channel’s website said, adding “It is the first time since the end of Nazi rule that far-right extremists will again form the largest parliamentary group in the German parliament.”Less alarmist was the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which cited a “historic victory” for the AfD in Thuringia, while Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung evoked a “worrying result for the democrats — and especially for Olaf Scholz.” Simmering anger against the government turned into a high boil last month after a knife attack by a Syrian refugee in a German town left three people dead. The Christian Democrats have called for a complete overhaul of Germany’s immigration policies. However, even if Herr Scholz follows through on pledges to deport more asylum seekers who fail to pass muster and even if he does more to crack down on violent immigrant crime — as elsewhere in Europe, easier said than done — time is not on his side. Germany’s national election is now just over a year away. On Sunday, the turnout in the elections was high — 73.6 percent compared to less than 65 percent the last time elections were held in Thuringia and Saxony.In the meantime an election in another eastern state, Brandenburg, is coming up on September 22. That state is led by Herr Scholz’s Social Democratic Party — for the time being.

Berlin Is Jolted by Big Wins for Germany’s Rising Anti-Immigrant Party in State Elections

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