AfD, the far right, and the lessons Germany's mainstream forgot

On 6 September, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won a landslide victory in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, securing nearly 44% of the vote and 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats. The result marked the first time since the Second World War that a far-right party has won a state election in Germany.

The party fell just three seats short of an outright majority, meaning it cannot govern alone and will need support from another party or lawmakers to form a government. However, other MPs, specifically from the Büdnis Sahra Wagenknecht Party (BSW) will most likely give the AfD the seats it needs to run the state.

The election should not be viewed in isolation. It is the latest and perhaps most alarming indication of how Germany’s political mainstream has increasingly adopted positions once associated primarily with the far right, particularly on migration, asylum and national identity.

Their 258-page manifesto, titled Das Land Zuerst (The Country First), details a fundamental shift in the country’s immigration system. It promises large scale deportations of immigrations and asylum seekers, and advocates for a “remigration program,” that might even affect German resident holders or those who do not sound or look German.

AfD leader Alice Weidel has been explicit about the party’s intentions. She has said that if elected to government, their first 100 days would bring about the deportations and a closed German border, adding that “if it has to be called remigration, then let it be called remigration.”

Years in the making

The AfD’s policies range from encouraging Germans to have more children through financial incentives, such as a €2,000 birth bonus (although only applying to German citizen heterosexual families), to bringing back coal mining, and restoring friendly relations with Russia to provide cheaper access to energy.

They also want to change their school curriculum to focus less on the Holocaust and more on the country’s history pre-World War Two, and severely restrict abortion access.

While many attribute the AfD’s rise to worsening economic conditions, including rising energy prices, fewer job opportunities, and stagnating wages, these factors alone do not explain the party’s growing support. The political conditions that have allowed the AfD to flourish have been developing for years.

Last year, many of us warned that the mainstream parties’ shift towards increasingly anti-migrant and xenophobic rhetoric could ultimately backfire. Rather than isolating the far right, mainstream politicians have increasingly attempted to compete with it by adopting policies that restrict migrants’ rights and treating migration as the defining political crisis of the country.

Under the former Socialist Democrat Prime Minister Olaf Scholz in January 2025, the German Bundestag passed the Repatriation Improvement Act, one of the most significant recent efforts to accelerate deportations by extending maximum deportation detention from 10 to 28 days, as well as significantly reducing the benefits of refugees and asylum seekers.

Meanwhile Freidrich Merz, while claiming that he and the Christian Democratic Party must isolate the AfD so they do not “carry out an ethnic cleansing of the country,” Merz’s own government representatives admitted that they needed to be even tougher on migration.

“Perhaps it was also a mistake by the CDU that in recent years it had not addressed the issue [of migration] enough,” Minister President Sven Schulze said.

The politicisation of migration became emboldened especially following the December 2024 attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, in which six people were ultimately killed and around 300 injured. The suspect was a Saudi national who had lived in Germany for years and had publicly expressed strongly anti-Islamic and far-right views, including support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Despite the attacker being an anti-Islam, AfD supporter himself, the media, political parties and AfD themselves became emboldened with anti-Muslim, anti-migrant rhetoric.

Weidel declared that “Magdeburg would not have been possible without uncontrolled immigration” and called for “a restrictive migration policy and consistent deportations.” AfD supporters subsequently gathered in Magdeburg, with protesters reported chanting “Deport, deport, deport.”

Integration

Instead of attempting to rectify emboldened far-right ideologues, Merz presented his policy platforms to revoke German citizenship from dual nationals, especially pro-Palestinian demonstrators, people he considers “terror supporters,” and those who he believes commit severe crimes.

And in fact, some months later a naturalised Palestinian man, Abdullah A., had his citizenship revoked over alleged support of Palestinian fighters on his social media.

Now, directly after the AfD win, the CDU is reportedly moving to tighten citizenship rules even further. According to a recent report, senior CDU figures are drafting proposals that would effectively reverse key elements of the citizenship reform introduced by the previous government, including the normalisation of dual citizenship.

This follows a historic 2025 total of 332,500 naturalisations in Germany, after a 2024 citizenship reform under Olaf Scholz reduced the standard residency requirement to five years and allowed naturalised citizens to retain their previous nationality.

The reported plan includes renouncing previous citizenship, passing a language examination, covering living costs entirely from their own income, and disavowing “all forms of antisemitism."

Already, this country’s politicians are looking for ways to make it harder for individuals to integrate into German society by forcing people to give up their passports from their country of origin.

The danger does not stop with only the AfD winning elections, as we are already seeing dangerous signs that the far-right party is willing to use the machinery of the state to escalate violence where it deems necessary.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, gave the people a glimpse of his viciousness when he did not condemn building arms manufacturers in his state because he wants to reserve the arms for his own “remigration offensive.”

Inspired by Trump’s America

I am reminded of the United States, of the armed, masked ICE officers abducting immigrants from their homes, on their way to drop off their children, and at their places of work while killing them or the protestors who object to their abductions. The images of detention centres and imprisoning migrant children, and the act of disappearing and separating families, might be closer to Germany’s front doors than we think.

In fact, the AfD mirrors important elements of the MAGA movement: far-right politics wrapped in the language of economic populism, alleged restoration of a national homeland, and allegedly against investment in foreign wars. Like Trump and his movement, the AfD presents itself as a defender of ordinary citizens against elitist, lying bureaucrats and progressive institutions and establishments.

They promise tax reductions, economic benefits, and making Germany German again.

It is also important to note that the AfD, while entrenched in an antisemitic history, is vehemently pro-Israel and, in fact, tells Jewish constituents that it is their party that would treat them the best because of its commitment to stand firm against pro-Palestinians, leftists, and “those who hate Israel.”

Germany’s memory culture and mainstream political discourse have allowed a far-right party to simply claim that they are not antisemitic due to the fact that they are simply Zionist.

The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt is a warning about what happens when xenophobia becomes mainstream political currency, when deportation is presented as the solution to social and economic problems, and when mainstream politicians compete with the far-right by adopting its rhetoric and policies.

Offering a softer, more palatable version of the same politics only risks legitimising the far right without necessarily winning its voters. If voters want tougher deportation policies, they may ultimately choose the politicians they believe will follow through, rather than those who express similar sentiments in a palatable, politically acceptable vocabulary.

Hebh Jamal is a Palestinian American journalist based in Germany. 

Follow Hebh on X and Instagram: @hebh_jamal

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.