The German extreme right has achieved a very transcendental result of the entire post-war democracy. Alternative for Germany (AFD) won the regional elections in Saxony Anhalt with 43.8% of the votes, just three seats short of an absolute majority in the Landtag. For its part, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has sunk to 17%.
The journalist of The world order, Eduardo Saldaña, has analyzed in Julia in the wave What this victory means: “The result is one that makes history,” Julia Otero stressed, while Saldaña explained that the key is that “just half” of the CDU votes have gone to the extreme right. “It has to serve as a very serious warning to us,” he indicated.
The AfD has more than doubled its votes compared to 2021 (from 20.8% to 43.8%), while the CDU has lost almost 20 points, with a drop from 40 to 15 seats in the regional Parliament. After the victory, the party leader, Alice Weidel, was very forceful: “Mr Merz, your time is up.”
Is it a point of no return?
It should be noted that Weidel is a lesbian and married to an immigrant woman who does not even live in Germany. Saldaña has explained this with irony, alluding to the German leader’s own words, who says that she has been “with a person for 20 years.” A contradiction, taking into account what this party thinks about the LGTBI community.
Regarding whether what happened in Saxony-Anhalt is a “point of no return”, as Julia has indicated, the World Order journalist has been slightly hopeful, but has warned that it is a “warning” and has asked: “What can his victory mean for the German Christian Democrat right? Where can Merz or a potential successor turn?”
Thus, he recalled the German “cordon sanitaire”, that firewall that for years prevented pacts with the extreme right. “That is slowly falling,” he lamented. And it has raised the scenario of the German future. The CDU may be weakened and have no choice but to “rely on its far-right parties” and for them to become “king markers”, although without formally entering the Government.
AfD does not moderate its speeches like other far-right parties
In addition, Saldaña has launched another warning. “AFD is not moderating like Meloni”, but continues on its “radical line”, inspired by “the second term of Donald Trump, which seizes and maintains radicalism.” And, quoting an article from El País, he stressed that the French extreme right, after a meeting with AFD “came out very worried” because “they normalized and basically analyzed the Nazi period a little”, going so far as to say “that the people of the SS might not have been such bad people.”
Thus, and bringing up the results of the PISA report, the expert points out an obvious connection between the economic crisis and the rise of these parties, which are favored by these speeches. Also, people seem to forget what happened 80 years ago.
The polls go further, as the program host has pointed out, because they give Weidel and his party at the national level 28% of the votes, so the impact in Saxony-Anhalt would extend to the rest of the country.
