Extract from ABC News
Analysis
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has had a record-breaking success in a state election. (Reuters: Fabrizio Bensch)
Europe has witnessed a steady series of incursions from the far-right of politics in recent years, from Austria and Hungary to France, the UK and Italy.
From an Australian perspective, these incursions seem to reflect the same trends we see in Australia with the resurgence of One Nation: a populist far-right party, trading particularly on anti-immigration sentiment and long-running simmering resentment over stalling living standards.
But the weekend win by Germany's AfD (Alternative for Germany) party in the state of Saxony-Anhalt has sent particular shivers across the continent and points to a political landscape that is much darker than the one being promised by One Nation.
The weekend win is troubling because Germany has been so particularly sensitive to the rise of the far-right in the past, and has tried to guard against it, because of its history.
Ulrich Siegmund, whose face is seen on the sign, was AfD's top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. (Reuters: Thilo Schmuelgen)
The AfD wants to stop the teaching of Germany's Nazi past and see school classes focus instead on the glory days of Prussia, the Napoleonic wars, German unification, the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck and the founding of the German Empire in 1871.
The party's branch in Saxony-Anhalt has been designated a "right wing extremist organisation" by the state's domestic intelligence service (which the party says it will abolish if it wins government).
That is not just because of what it called the party's "numerous Islamophobic, racist, and even anti-Semitic statements".
It is because it says the AfD aims to "abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form" and "continually strives to denigrate the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany, its institutions, and their representatives in order to fundamentally erode public trust in them".
The intelligence agency notes there have already been open calls within the AfD in the state "for a military coup against the German government".
Many of its policies, particularly its anti-immigrant stance, are echoes of those of other far-right parties across Europe.
But what is most alarming to other countries in western Europe is a central pledge of the AfD, which has a particularly strong support base in the old East German states, to pursue a rapprochement with Russia.
It wants to expand Russian-language instruction in schools, end sanctions against Russia imposed since the Ukraine war began in 2022, reject and even expel Ukrainian refugees, and cut support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Germany has been the largest bilateral supporter of Ukraine in Europe, not just providing billions of euros in financial support but also being a crucial conduit of weapons as the US has withdrawn from supplying them.
If the AfD's win on the weekend was to put pressure on the national government's pro-Ukrainian policies under current Chancellor Friedrich Merz, it could decisively change the balance of the war.
AfD's state win can have national impact
In a leaf out of Donald Trump's playbook, the party has promised mass deportations of migrants as well as more detention pending deportation, mandatory work for asylum-seekers, and a cut to all state funding for integration programs.
Children who do not have permanent residency in Germany would be stopped from attending regular schools, as would children with disabilities.
A proposal to allow "citizens watch" groups, essentially police auxiliary forces, to help crack down on "left wing extremism" has sent a particular chill through those who remember Germany's past.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has had a victory in state elections, prompting protests in Berlin. (Reuters: Maryam Majd)
They say the groups would be tantamount to vigilantes let loose in a legal system that would be reformed to allow more freedom of expression by limiting the enforcement of "so-called hate crimes" and cutting funding to pro-democracy education campaigns.
The AfD wants to change the school curriculum to stop the "perpetuation of a guilt complex" by educating children about the country's Nazi past.
Schools would also be banned from flying rainbow flags, as part of a general move against LGBTQ+ communities, but would be required to fly national flags and sing the national anthem.
It wants to boost the birthrate by introducing "welcome money" for couples who have children, reducing childcare costs, and offering free school meals.
The party itself is quite open about the fact it has seen this state election as the springboard to national power at the 2029 elections in the largest economy in Europe.
Its campaign slogan was "It starts here", and the party is leading the national polls with 28 per cent of the vote, compared to the CDU — Merz's Christian Democratic-based centrist party which has dominated post-war German politics — on 20 per cent.
Ulrich Siegmund says the party has "made history". (Reuters: Liesa Johannssen)
Even without any further parliamentary wins, its influence will be felt in the national parliament, the Bundestag, because the states have representation in the upper house, the Bundesrat, where the AfD can exert influence on policy areas on which it has particularly campaigned in the state election: education, culture and domestic security.
There is also anxiety about the security implications of a party with ties to Russia gaining access to intelligence briefs.
Many of the AfD's policies are not ones directly in the control of state governments. For example, it has been campaigning against climate change policies and the Paris climate agreement. But specifically in the very rural Saxony-Anhalt, it has been campaigning against wind turbines.
And the irony of its anti-immigrant policy is that Saxony-Anhalt has faced a major decline in its population since reunification in 1990. The many people who have left to find work elsewhere have left it with the oldest and most sharply declining population in the country.
It is therefore dependent on migrant workers to fill jobs in areas like healthcare.
AfD victory a 'serious moment in Europe'
The states do have some say over cultural policy. The AfD's targets include cutting funding from public broadcasters, which it argues are rife with "leftwing propaganda lackeys", as well as rejecting Bauhaus architecture, which had its roots in Saxony-Anhalt, as "too globalist".
"We have made history in this country," said Ulrich Siegmund, the party's 35-year-old leader in Saxony-Anhalt.
The win, and a staggering loss of support for Merz's party, have led to widespread speculation that the CDU may crumble internally as MPs from the old Eastern states either desert it for the AfD or pressure Berlin to change course.
The AfD's state election win has sparked protests in Berlin. (Reuters: Maryam Majd)
The AfD is also hostile to NATO, and the EU.
The AfD's win was welcomed by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who praised a "historic win for the pragmatic AfD", as well as by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
But France's Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, described the win as "a serious moment in Europe", warning that "nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution".
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that "in Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany".
Until now, the rise of the AfD has been largely a phenomenon confined to the old East.
There is a strange mix of nostalgia for the days of state supply of services and a blurred memory of the repression which accompanied the old regime, as well as a possible greater tolerance for authoritarian leaders that has not been displaced by the experience of democracy.
Ulrich Siegmund, the party's state leader, told the Financial Times that his parents' experience of communist propaganda and pervasive Stasi surveillance taught him to question authority from an early age.
"That is somehow culturally ingrained here," he says. "People simply won't let themselves be taken for a ride."
But the AfD is now leading national polls and has gained significant support in the old West too.
Not everything has been going the far-right's way in Europe recently.
Notably, we witnessed the downfall of Viktor Orbán in Hungary in April, replaced by the centre-right government of Péter Magyar, who has quickly moved to dismantle pro-Orban state media and reform the courts and constitution.
The right's Giorgia Meloni, who has just become the longest uninterrupted prime minister in Italy since World War II, has significantly moderated her positions to much more pragmatic ones since coming to office.
She has taken a more pro-European position, as well as firmed up her support for Ukraine and NATO, even though she has continued to support conservative identity politics and strict controls on migration.
But if the AfD is able to form government in Saxony-Anhalt — it is still a few seats short — and then secure wins in state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania later this month, it could embolden the right across Europe.
As we have seen in Trump's America, an unleashed political force prepared to break all the rules and that finds itself politically rewarded rather than punished, only becomes bolder.
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