{"id":56874,"date":"2026-07-17T23:28:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T23:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/56874\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T23:28:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T23:28:21","slug":"far-right-alternative-for-germany-sets-out-blueprint-for-power-in-saxony-anhalt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/56874\/","title":{"rendered":"Far-right Alternative for Germany sets out blueprint for power in Saxony-Anhalt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) already considers itself in power in Saxony-Anhalt. The state party congress, which met recently in the state capital Magdeburg, was entirely geared towards this goal. Before the delegates lay a 138-page \u201cgovernment programme\u201d that provides a sense of what the far right intends to do in office. Party leader Alice Weidel has already described the lead candidate for the state election on September 6, Ulrich Siegmund, as \u201cour state premier.\u201d<\/p>\n

AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund (right) on the Markus Lanz talk show [Photo by ZDF Screenshot]<\/p>\n

The AfD has a real chance of taking power in Saxony-Anhalt, in eastern Germany. It is polling above 40 percent, well ahead of the present governing coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU), Social Democrats (SPD) and Liberal Democrats (FDP). With the exception of the Left Party split-off, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), all parties have so far ruled out governing in coalition with the far right. But a change to this position has long been under discussion. Should several parties fail to clear the 5 percent threshold required for entry into the state legislature, it is mathematically possible that the AfD could win an absolute majority even if it only polls just above 40 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

The AfD\u2019s \u201cgovernment programme\u201d opens with fierce attacks on the \u201clegacy parties,\u201d which it holds responsible for rising prices, taxes and levies, falling pensions, unsafe streets and public spaces, the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, crumbling schools and hospitals and numerous other real and alleged grievances. \u201cIf we [the AfD] no longer exist, democracy is dead. Then we will have the dictatorship of the legacy parties.\u201d the preamble declares.<\/p>\n

However, the AfD\u2019s programme does not stand in opposition to the policies of the establishment parties\u2014it drives those policies to their brutal extreme. \u201cDeportation and remigration offensive,\u201d encouraging families to have more children against \u201cthe extinction of the German people,\u201d \u201ca strong state that upholds law-and-order,\u201d commemoration of the \u201cmilitary sacrifices\u201d of the First and Second World Wars, a school system that does away with \u201cnamby-pamby teaching\u201d and places its faith in \u201cauthority,\u201d the alignment of culture and science with \u201cGerman\u201d values and traditions, rejection of \u201cglobalist climate ideology,\u201d withdrawal from public broadcasting, \u201csound public finances\u201d and strict adherence to the \u201cdebt brake\u201d\u2014these are the key watchwords.<\/p>\n

The AfD underpins its \u201cgovernment programme\u201d with a nationalist and fascist ideology that could have come straight from Nazi textbooks. Should the party come to power in Magdeburg, it will use the levers of state power to align the police, domestic intelligence service, judiciary, culture and education with this agenda.<\/p>\n

In doing so, it will be creating the authoritarian state that the ruling class needs in order to push through its policy of war and social counter-revolution against growing resistance. Opposition to the war drive and social counter-revolution is enormous and can barely be kept under control by the trade union bureaucracy any longer. That is why the federal government is increasingly resorting to authoritarian measures and drawing the AfD ever further into the fold.<\/p>\n

The AfD\u2019s government programme is evidently modelled on Donald Trump, whose close associates Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have publicly endorsed the AfD on several occasions. Trump too posed as an opponent of the political establishment during his election campaign, only to surround himself with the five richest men in the world at his inauguration, build an ICE apparatus of terror against the working class reminiscent of the Gestapo, and drive the military budget to historically unprecedented levels. His peace rhetoric has given way to a brutal war policy that openly threatens Iran with genocide.<\/p>\n

The AfD\u2019s programme also exposes the bankruptcy of the Left Party\u2019s course and its counterproductive character. It claims it wants to \u201ccombat\u201d the AfD through \u201cthe unity of all democrats\u201d but in practice, this means collaborating with the very parties that are paving the way for the AfD. They are doing so through social cuts, massive rearmament spending, the expansion of state repression, the rigorous deportation of refugees and ongoing discussions about coalitions with the far right.<\/p>\n

The Left Party itself bears primary responsibility for the rise of the AfD. In 1994, Saxony-Anhalt was the first federal state where it supported an SPD-Green minority government, which in the wake of reunification, offloaded the devastating social consequences of deindustrialisation onto the working class. This \u201cMagdeburg model\u201d lasted eight years. In neighbouring Thuringia too, where the Left Party provided the state premier in the person of Bodo Ramelow from 2014 for 10 years, the AfD is now also polling at 40 percent.<\/p>\n

The cynical politics of the Left Party, which under cover of left-wing phrases put into practice the right-wing policies of the ruling class, has given a boost to the far-right demagogues of the AfD. They thrive on the claim that the \u201clegacy parties\u201d form a conspiracy and\u2014regardless of election outcomes\u2014all pursue the same goal.<\/p>\n

The rise of the AfD can only be combated by an independent movement of the working class directed against social cuts, war and fascism and their root cause, capitalism. Such a movement would rapidly pull the ground from under the AfD\u2019s feet and expose it for what it is: a brutal representative of the interests of capital.<\/p>\n

Let us examine the AfD\u2019s government programme more closely.<\/p>\n

Raising the birth rate and a 180-degree immigration about-turn<\/p>\n

In the language of Nazi racial policy, pride of place goes to concerns about the low birth rate among German families, which at 1.31 children per woman in Saxony-Anhalt is even below the national average of 1.5. The AfD proposes to address this with a \u201cbaby bonus\u201d of \u20ac2,000 for the first two children and \u20ac4,000 for each subsequent child\u2014but only if one parent holds German citizenship and both have had a fixed place of residence in Saxony-Anhalt for at least one year.<\/p>\n

The foundation of the AfD\u2019s family policy is its rejection of what it calls the \u201cperversely left-wing, radically feminist and individualist spirit\u201d that, it claims, is corroding \u201ctraditional family and gender roles.\u201d While the AfD stops short of calling for an outright ban on abortion, which has been legal in eastern Germany since 1972, it opposes \u201cany regulation of abortion outside the criminal code with all the associated political implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

While promoting German births, the programme calls for \u201ca 180-degree reversal of immigration policy.\u201d The capacity of the state and municipalities to absorb immigrants is, it claims, \u201cexhausted in terms of security policy, identity policy and financial policy.\u201d \u201cIllegal, culturally alien and anti-indigenous mass immigration\u201d must be ended and a \u201cdeportation and remigration offensive\u201d launched without delay.<\/p>\n

This is plainly designed to stoke racial antagonisms. The most vulnerable members of society are made scapegoats for the social crisis. At 10 percent, the proportion of residents with an immigrant background in Saxony-Anhalt, is among the lowest in all Germany. The largest group, at nearly 40,000 people, are refugees from Ukraine, followed by Syrians and Poles.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Education, culture and science\u2014back to the 19th century<\/p>\n

The AfD places particular emphasis on education, culture and science. It sees these areas as levers for anchoring its far-right ideology in public life. Because they fall largely under state-level authority, a state government can impose its agenda in them far more quickly and directly than in areas controlled by the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much one can do in the field of education and cultural policy\u2014more than in almost any other area of state politics,\u201d says Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, AfD Saxony-Anhalt\u2019s spokesman on education policy and one of the main authors of the election programme.<\/p>\n

The Romanian-born ethnic German and holder of a doctorate in Islamic studies is one of the leading figures on the extreme right of the AfD. He was a member of the now-dissolved far-right \u201cFl\u00fcgel\u201d (\u201cWing\u201d) faction of the party and spokesman of the likewise dissolved \u201cPatriotic Platform.\u201d He maintains close contact with other far-right outfits\u2014the \u201cIdentitarian Movement,\u201d the campaign network \u201cOne Percent for Our Country,\u201d G\u00f6tz Kubitschek\u2019s \u201cInstitute for State Policy\u201d and the monthly magazine\u00a0Compact.<\/p>\n

The AfD seeks to overcome what it calls German \u201cnational masochism,\u201d the \u201cperpetuation of a guilt complex\u201d and a \u201clack of self-confidence\u201d through \u201ca new patriotic cultural policy,\u201d a \u201cpatriotic turn in every sphere\u201d and the restoration of \u201cnational pride.\u201d It blames this condition on the \u201c1968 movement in West Germany,\u201d which, it claims, initiated \u201ca tradition of destroying tradition\u201d \u201chollowed out our cultural heritage\u201d and \u201cblocked the possibilities of forming a stable national identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AfD envisages an education system that reverses all the pedagogical advances of the last 150 years. Schools are to become institutions of Prussian discipline once more, producing loyal subjects for the state and disciplined soldiers for the army.<\/p>\n

\u201cHomework, front-of-class teaching, regular classroom exercises, rote learning, performance testing and extensive reading\u201d are to restore the school system to health, it claims. \u201cThe teacher is not merely a \u2018learning facilitator,\u2019 but an authority figure and mediator.\u201d Digital media have no place in the classroom; they are \u201cthe cause of educational decline.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the AfD wants to weaken compulsory schooling. Parents are to have the final say in all matters of children\u2019s education and upbringing and \u201ca free choice between school and home education.\u201d The AfD is here aligning itself with an internationally coordinated offensive against the public education system, behind which stand far-right networks worth billions\u2014such as the Heritage Foundation and Christian fundamentalist organisations.<\/p>\n

The AfD also wants to end the inclusion of children with disabilities in schools and nurseries. The shared education of children with and without disabilities is to be discontinued. According to the AfD, the \u201cexperiment of inclusion\u201d has failed. Children with disabilities \u201cparalyse\u201d the progress of lessons in mainstream schools.<\/p>\n

If the programme has so far failed to succeed, it is above all due to the shortage of teachers and social workers and to underfunding\u2014for which the ruthless austerity policies of federal and state governments bear responsibility. But for the AfD it is a matter of excluding the disabled.<\/p>\n

The AfD intends to thoroughly \u201crevise\u201d school curricula. The antimilitarist attitude deeply embedded in the population since the two world wars is to be eroded so that Germany can once again become \u201cfit for war.\u201d Memories of National Socialism (Nazism) are to be driven out of history lessons and replaced by ethnic nationalism. Fascist historical myths are to be dusted off and made the basis of history teaching.<\/p>\n

Teaching is to be oriented around the motto: \u201cMore Bismarck, less Hitler.\u201d What this means is \u201cBack to the Kaiserreich\u201d (German Empire) with its policy of suppressing the labour movement, waging imperialist war and pursuing colonialism. Teaching is to place \u201ca clear emphasis on the emergence and success story\u201d of the nation state founded in 1871 by blood and iron, which \u201cset standards in science, culture and business that can still serve as inspiration and model for us today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cultural life is also to be censored and reshaped accordingly. \u201cPromote patriotism\u2014no state funding for anti-German art and culture,\u201d reads one subheading, reminiscent of the Nazi slogan of \u201cdegenerate art.\u201d Above all, the Bauhaus in Dessau\u2014the most important cultural monument of international significance in Saxony-Anhalt\u2014is in the firing line. The AfD had already campaigned vigorously against it in 2024, describing it as an \u201caberration of modernism<\/a>.\u201d Here too it follows the tradition of the Nazis, who first drove the pioneering architecture and design school out of Weimar and then banned it altogether.<\/p>\n

The universities are also to be thoroughly restructured. In higher education policy, the AfD wants to return to the authoritarian, hierarchical university model of the 1950s. Student representation rights, which are already under considerable pressure, are to be curtailed still further, in order to reassert the absolute dominance of the professoriate as the core of research and teaching.<\/p>\n

In the natural sciences\u2014whose breathtaking advances in the 21st century are inseparably bound up with the international networking and collaboration of tens of thousands of researchers\u2014the AfD wants to nationalise, or rather provincialise.<\/p>\n

\u201cGerman science has lost its authenticity and with it the secret of its intellectual success,\u201d the AfD laments. \u201cInstead of German distinctiveness, it offers a pale imitation of the Anglo-Saxon system, which is found the world over but is authentic only in Britain and the United States.\u201d The AfD will \u201cput an end to this state of affairs in Saxony-Anhalt and liberate German science back to itself through fundamental reforms.\u201d What profoundly reactionary nonsense.<\/p>\n

In education and culture, too, the AfD is merely taking to an extreme the course that the establishment parties have long since begun.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As far back as 2014, the leadership of Berlin\u2019s Humboldt University and almost all the media sided with the far-right historian J\u00f6rg Baberowski when he rehabilitated Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte, and asserted that Hitler was \u201cnot cruel.\u201d Since then, the playing-down of Nazi crimes and the rewriting of the history of the Second World War have taken on ever greater dimensions. Students, teachers and artists who criticise the genocide against the Palestinians are subjected to pressure, expelled or banned from performing.<\/p>\n

Construction of a police state<\/p>\n

A central place in the AfD\u2019s government programme is occupied by the strengthening of the police and intelligence service. The chapter on \u201cInternal Security\u201d states: \u201cGuaranteeing internal security is the primary purpose of the state, taking precedence over all social tasks and desiderata. The state exists to maintain order. \u2026 The AfD therefore attaches the highest importance to internal security. We are committed to a strong state that upholds law-and-order and provides every citizen with security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Security thus takes priority over democracy: \u201cSecurity is the basic prerequisite for everything: civil liberty, economic opportunity, democratic participation. Without security, nothing else counts.\u201d This is the ideology of a police state that only tolerates \u201cdemocracy\u201d for as long as it does not stand in the way of the capitalist interests it represents.<\/p>\n

Among other things, the AfD promises: \u201cMore police officers,\u201d \u201cNo general suspicion in cases of firearms use,\u201d \u201cTo introduce tasers,\u201d \u201cDeport criminal foreigners,\u201d \u201cIncrease deportation [detention] places tenfold,\u201d \u201c\u2018Antifa\u2019 to be kept in check\u201d and \u201cIntroduce a voluntary citizens\u2019 watch,\u201d For young people, a \u201cwarning-shot detention\u201d of up to four weeks is to be introduced, \u201cwhich is a correctional measure aimed at instilling discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judiciary is also to be restructured to take a harder line against crime and \u201cviolence-prone left-wing extremism\u201d: \u201cPunishment must follow hard on the heels of the offence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Verfassungsschutz\u00a0(domestic intelligence service) is criticised for classifying and monitoring the AfD state association as \u201cdemonstrably far-right extremist.\u201d It is not, however, to be abolished, but \u201creformed into a domestic intelligence service devoted to the classic intelligence remit: investigating activities threatening the state, counterterrorism and counterespionage\u2014in secret!\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: the\u00a0Verfassungsschutz\u00a0is to be strengthened and deployed in the AfD\u2019s service to combat social opposition and left-wing opponents.<\/p>\n

Energy and economic policy<\/p>\n

The AfD calls for a \u201c180-degree reversal of energy policy,\u201d a return to fossil fuels and a halt to the expansion of wind power and the coal phase-out. Not even the increasingly catastrophic heat waves are enough to deter the far right from sacrificing humanity\u2019s future to the profit interests of the energy corporations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AfD fundamentally rejects the globalist climate ideology and the attendant policy of prosperity destruction,\u201d the programme states. \u201cAn AfD-led state government will not attempt to save the world\u2019s climate in Saxony-Anhalt.\u201d<\/p>\n

On fiscal policy, the AfD champions a \u201clean state\u201d and the debt brake. It will therefore continue and intensify the existing austerity course.<\/p>\n

It proposes to solve the rise in care costs by shifting the burden of caring for elderly people back onto families: \u201cCare is by its nature an expression of the concern of loving relatives. We will support the family so that it can better fulfil its proper function of relieving the burden on the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/p>\n

In June 1933, Leon Trotsky wrote in his outstanding \u201cPortrait of National Socialism\u201d that fascism had come to power \u201con the back of the petty bourgeoisie,\u201d to whom it had promised all manner of things. \u201cBut fascism, once in power, is anything but a government of the petty bourgeoisie,\u201d he wrote. It raises itself \u201cabove the nation as the purest embodiment of imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This could be applied to the AfD today as well. It exploits the frustration and anger of the petty bourgeoisie\u2014and of many workers too\u2014at the policies of the establishment parties, whilst itself representing those policies in their purest form. What drives it\u2014and all bourgeois parties\u2014is not subjective motives but the deep crisis of world capitalism, to which the ruling class has only one answer: conducting war abroad for the violent redivision of the world and dictatorship at home to suppress the working class.<\/p>\n

A takeover of government by the AfD in Magdeburg would without doubt be a grave danger. But this danger can be halted neither through collaboration with the other parties of government, nor through protest alone, and certainly not through a ban on the AfD. The latter would only strengthen the state apparatus of repression, which is itself riddled with far-right elements. At the party congress, AfD state chairman Martin Reichardt boasted: \u201cWe are reaching [polling] shares of over 30 percent in schools, in government offices, in the police.\u201d And it would create a precedent for the banning of left-wing organisations.<\/p>\n

The danger of fascism and war can only be halted by the independent intervention of the most powerful social force on this planet, the international working class, which is coming into increasing conflict with capitalism. To be victorious, it needs a socialist perspective and leadership. Building that is the goal of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) and the International Committee of the Fourth International.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the WSWS email newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) already considers itself in power in Saxony-Anhalt. The state party congress, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[452,1749,2433,5,42623,44907,44908],"class_list":["post-56874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-afd","tag-far-right","tag-fascism","tag-germany","tag-magdeburg","tag-siegmund","tag-weidel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}