The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) bypassed it Firewall - A wall of fire - which should prevent them from coming to power. Since the founding of the Federal Republic, more than 240 elections for provincial parliaments have been held, but for the first time since World War II, the possibility of an extreme right-wing party coming to power in one of the 16 German provinces is opening up.
The increasingly unpopular Christian Democratic Chancellor Friedrich Mertz promised to prevent the inroads of the far right. The reverse happened. In last year's elections, the AfD increased its support from 10 to 21 percent and finished as the second strongest political force in the country for the first time at the federal level.
Now they were more convincing: the AfD won a record 44 percent of the vote, leaving far behind Merz's conservative CDU with just 17,8 percent of the vote. Voters were very interested, and a turnout of 77 percent was recorded. The AfD needs 42 mandates for a majority, and according to the latest projections, it lacks three. Other parties reject a coalition with the AfD, and they claim that they are not in the mood for a minority government.
Saxony-Anhalt is small. Countries, but the earthquake is big. "We have made history in this country," AfD's 35-year-old co-president Ulrich Sigmund confirmed in Magdeburg. "People have shown absolutely clearly that they finally want political change and, above all, they have shown that they want it with us."
The success of the far-right AfD broke one of the country's most important political taboos. Another warning signal was sent to Europe, where the extreme right has the highest degree of political influence in the post-war period. Right-wingers claim that they offer an opportunity for radical change and that they are "saving" voters dissatisfied with immigration, public safety, the economy, and high energy prices.
WHAT AFD VICTORY ANNOUNCES
photo: ap photo...
From Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD plans to expel many immigrants and send refugee children to special school classes to make them understand that their stay in Germany is temporary. Rainbow flags, the trademark of LGBT communities, should be banned in schools. Children should learn less about Nazism and more about the positive aspects of national history. AfD wants to restore relations with Russia and would cancel aid to Ukraine.
Opponents point to the great danger of the rise of neo-Nazism. The magazine "Spiegel" declared the charismatic Sigmund "the most dangerous man in Germany". Hildegard Bentele, German member of the EP and member of the People's Group, said on the occasion: "As Christian Democrats, we are convinced that the only way to oppose the growth of the extreme right in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany and throughout Europe is to listen carefully to citizens, offer realistic solutions and present an optimistic vision of the future, based on our values."
Voters from the east of Germany no longer believe in such promises and thus only confirm a wider trend. Almost a quarter of voters in Europe today support far-right parties, which is almost five times more than in 1995. The situation has worsened especially in the last three years.
Voters' approach to key far-right issues like immigration hasn't changed much over time, but it has become more important in deciding who to vote for. At the same time, as they became bigger and more successful, these parties were accepted as "normal", and their narrative became enticing.
DIFFERENT SHADES OF BLACK
Today, more than 130 far-right parties are active in Europe, which uniformly advocate the thesis that states should be populated exclusively by the local world. All outsiders, especially members of other races, religions or sexual orientations, are perceived as a threat.
Right-wingers demand order. Their authoritarian approach to the state is a prerequisite for a stable and healthy society. With one, sometimes hard-to-recognize difference: while the extreme right wants to overthrow the existing order, the radical right mostly functions within democratic frameworks.
Right-wingers hold power or are in ruling coalitions in several states, and all public opinion polls indicate further growth in their popularity. Water in Austria, Belgium, Britain, France and Germany. The rightist Giorgio Meloni has just set the record for the longest government in Italy. Conservative populist nationalists participate in the governments of Finland, Croatia or the Czech Republic and support the minority government of Sweden.
Marine Le Pen's National Assembly is the largest party in the French parliament with 37 percent support. Their informal leader has a serious chance of winning the presidential elections in April/May next year.
In Britain and the Netherlands, the right-wing is gathering more and more voters who are attracted to their anti-immigration agenda, which is common to all extremists who advocate a Christian, white Europe. The Austrian Freedom Party jumped from 16 percent to 29 percent in the 2024 elections. The Chega party in Portugal rose from seven to 18 percent of support in the last election cycle alone.
At the same time, as a testimony to the fact that many are not looking for solutions among nationalists, populists, sovereigntists and the extreme right, Geert Wieders' Dutch Freedom Party lost nearly a third of its seats in the Parliament in the 2025 elections. In April of this year in Hungary, the creator of the global slogan of the right - "illiberal democracy" - Viktor Orbán was overthrown.
But the right is still growing. In the European Parliament, far-right groups such as Patriots for Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists together hold around 200 seats. They overtook the center and the center-left.
As much as they seem similar, these parties can be classified into four categories: parties that gain support from their ambivalent relationship with the fascist and Nazi past (Austria, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania); parties that are focused on Islamophobia (Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden); parties whose propaganda is directed against "threats" to national identity (Britain, Greece, Italy, Hungary) and parties that support fundamentalist Christian reactionary conservative agendas (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania).
Is the rise of the right an expression of the citizens' frustration and the somewhat ossified political establishment against which almost a third of European voters are directly opposed? Or are we witnessing a fundamental shift to the right?
Much depends on whether Europe will manage to build its own economic sovereignty and prevent the extreme right from taking root in regions destroyed by globalization and deindustrialization. The breakthrough of the AfD and similar parties hints at a tough battle over the issues of migration, border control, attitudes towards climate change, and the war in Ukraine.
SAD WEAKEN OR BREAK UP THE EU
photo: ap photoMORAL AND PRACTICAL SUPPORT OF AFD: Live involvement of Elon Musk during the AFD campaign
All this at a time when Europe is under pressure from both the East and the West. By supporting the extreme right, both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin want the same thing: to make the European Union as weak as possible.
Trump, without comment, "announced" himself on social networks by immediately posting the result of the AfD on his account. His Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, backed by Silicon Valley financiers, relies on far-right European allies.
Vice President JD Vance confirmed this in February 2025 when he provocatively met with Alice Weidel, co-chair of the AfD, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference and criticized German politicians for the Fire Wall. He argued that the marginalization of populist movements poses a greater danger than Russia or China.
Trump's policy towards Europe is defined by an aggressive "America First" approach, which forces European allies to take financial responsibility for the defense of their continent. In doing so, he systematically violated traditional transatlantic norms and reduced aid to Ukraine.
The US president is repeating threats to conquer Greenland, attacking the Pope and the Italian prime minister, and his trade and customs war with the EU is new evidence of a seriously corroded transatlantic alliance that has been eight decades in the making.
Even in his first term, Trump confirmed policies that were once considered extreme - from climate skepticism to anti-immigration rhetoric. In his second term, he perfected it by relying on white Christian supremacists and promoting the idea of an American church. Pseudo-academics open their own universities and organize conferences that spread far-right ideologies. Various think tanks are founded that popularize illiberal views. The media space has been dramatically changed in favor of extreme ideas. Many social networking platforms are operated by the far right.
The goal of the administration in Washington is quite clear: weaken or break the EU, seek regime change in favor of the extreme right. It is easier to favor American industry and commerce in a divided Europe.
The American national security strategy of 2025 clearly defines who are the allies in preserving the "common civilizational heritage of the West". The document calls on European nations to "cultured resistance" against the EU's liberal trajectories. The State Department has earmarked four million dollars for European right-wing media.
It is clear that Trump is trying to export his MAGA ideology (if it is an ideology at all) to Europe in the same way that his predecessors did in Southeast Asia, the Middle East or Latin America. However, the closeness of American and European sovereigntists has been damaged by Trump's trade and customs wars against the EU and has divided the transatlantic populist movement. Marine Le Pen is skeptical, realizing that "America first" leaves a minimum of space for European interests. Alice Weidel criticizes US tariffs that are destroying the European working class.
RUSSIA REARING THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL FABRIC
Putin's thoughts are similar to Trump's - and he would like to see a divided and weakened Europe in order to more easily realize his ambition of "Great Russia". His emissary Kirill Dmitriyev took over Trump's post and praised the "historic victory of the pragmatic AfD", which he previously described as "the party of hope and reason, the cooperation of truth and hope".
Russian policy towards the EU was marked as a strategic game, but because of the aggression against Ukraine, it turned into an open geopolitical confrontation. Responding to the 21 package of European sanctions, Moscow is trying to break the unity of the Union as the Kremlin estimates that with the current European leaders there is no chance of improving relations in the near future.
The tactic is to tear the European social fabric thread by thread. Putin believes that the EU is weak due to internal divisions and bureaucratic inefficiency, so he is looking for allies among far-right parties. That's how he got close to Trump. American far-right influencers are paid to praise the Kremlin's policies as well.
For years, the story has been spreading that the EU is a failed project, an area of various crises, and far-right politicians are being promoted who promise to return the European nations to their "former glory". Avoiding direct confrontation with NATO, Putin relies on hybrid warfare, cyber attacks, subversion, sabotage, and by spreading disinformation, he contaminates the media space.
While the aggression against Ukraine does not subside, Russia does not give up. The drones at Leipzig Airport are just one illustration. The second concerns Russian military-related accounts that recently, during the Ceuta migrant crisis, spread a far-right anti-immigration narrative that reached half a million people. Disinformation groups are much better organized today than they were a few years ago.
Russia is asserting itself as a partner to the German AfD, the Italian coalition partner Lega, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fitz. Sovereignty and religion are at the center of thinking in Moscow. It is no coincidence that Alexander Dugin, Putin's favorite ideologue, claimed last year that Trump's vision of the global order is the same as Putin's.
There is no place for Europe. Threats to liberal democracy coming from both East and West are magnified by corporate interests and accelerated by forces within Europe. Hence, a key question remains unanswered: how can Europe remain open and at the same time defend itself against the onslaught of its own extreme right and powerful forces that do not wish it well?
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