Americans who somewhat pay attention to what’s happening abroad, beyond the usual tunnel vision, are commenting pretty superficially for the most part on the massive electoral win by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt. Some are linking it to MAGA and saying that the AfD’s victory can partially be attributed to the support of JD Vance and Elon Musk. This is the first time a far-right party has won a state election in Germany since the Nazi era, and its huge lead will allow it to control the state government. The German media is also playing up the idea of a political earthquake.
It is significant. Not only has the AfD won a state election, but it’s done so with a huge margin. It’s also significant because control of the state government will allow it to use that government as a laboratory for policy-making and practices that could later be exported as a blueprint elsewhere. It gives the party momentum, resources and greater visibility. It greatly empowers the far right in Germany and across Europe. On the upside, it also puts the party under pressure to deliver, and usually the far-right doesn’t do well on that, as we’re seeing also with Trump. But an incredible amount of damage can be done until that becomes clear.
So yes, it’s significant, but it’s not a shock. The AfD has been on the rise for years and has been represented—at times significantly—in state legislatures for years; it has also been in the Bundestag for a decade. I lived and worked in Sachsen-Anhalt for a summer a few years ago. I was surprised that the AfD wasn’t already fully in control there at the time. Of course, I expect it to get worse now, especially for the asylum seekers and refugees “distributed” there, having to interact with German bureaucracy—a system that is already violent on a good day.
The idea that this victory represents the “re-emergence of fascism”—let alone its re-emergence for the first time since World War II—is laughable. Fascism never left Germany. You see it in mainstream parties like the CDU (the conservatives) and SPD (the social democrats), which dehumanize and even demonize migrants; in border policies that have contributed to the deaths and disappearances of some 35,000 migrants, mostly Africans, in the Mediterranean in the past 12 years; in virulent Islamophobia; in the murderous deals Germany makes with African, Middle Eastern and Eastern European regimes, using them as proxies to violently contain and repress migration into the EU; in the systemic racism of German institutions; in the bone-breaking, coercive policing of Palestine activism; in the enforcement of anti-terror laws and policies, and in who they target; in the extent to which large swaths of the police and military apparatus are infested with fascists; and in the mentalities and attitudes of many ordinary people, unfortunately.
It’s always strange, honestly, to see how the American Left talks about Germany. It often reproduces the German fantasy of Germany, for example, the idea that Germany broke with its Nazi past through Erinnerungskultur (remembrance culture), and that the US should do the same with its own past of slavery and genocide. It also treats the AfD’s rise as exceptional, or fascism as limited to electoral politics.
If Germany is exceptionally good at something, it is making fascism look like a moment of temporary insanity when it is anything but.
Is the AfD victory noteworthy? Yes. Is it a shock? No. Does it represent the totality of the fascist threat? Not even a little. It’s one manifestation of a much larger political culture that is growing in the US, in Europe and in many other regions. And no, Germany does not need JD Vance and Elon Musk to show it how to do fascism. It co-authored the playbook and still issues updated editions regularly.
The lesson we should take from what just happened here is the same lesson we should take from the US: by the time fascism shows up unmasked on the ballot box, it is already quite advanced. You have to fight it everywhere, all the time—including when Trump and the AfD are not in power. There is an anti-fascist principle about confronting fascism that applies everywhere: you can never let fascists occupy public space without confronting them there. Public space is a neighborhood park and it’s the radio. It’s a cafe and it’s a church. It’s the police station and the local paper. It’s the school and the jobcenter.
People who are the direct targets of fascism have further concerns. Many of my friends here in Germany who are minorities, migrants, asylees, refugees and activists, are not shocked. But for some time now, and more than before, they’ve been having the same conversation that I sometimes have with a dear friend in the US: What does collective safety require nowadays? How do we sustain ourselves and on another in these times, knowing it will get much worse before it gets better? What archives and practices do we already have? What has been passed down to us from those before us? How do we resist being segmented not only by borders (of all types) but also by screens?
