The AfD’s Victory in Germany – When Life Is Like the Hunger Games, the Far Right Will Always Win

Germany’s far right is now closer to power than at any time since Adolf Hitler. But instead of fixing the country’s broken economic model, the monstrously unpopular Chancellor Merz has doubled down.

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Magdeburg, Germany, Sept. 6: (L-R) Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the Bundestag AfD faction, Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate, and Tino Chrupalla, co-chairman of the faction celebrate the win. Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images

The lights are going out across Europe. The surge of the AfD in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt is just the latest manifestation of an ever-escalating far-right threat.

It’s not just the headline figure which should chill you: the AfD vote more than doubled to 43.8%, up from 20.8% five years ago. It’s that the polls underestimated its support because this racist party mobilised disengaged Germans who previously did not vote. Turnout surged by nearly 18 percentage points – predominantly because of the sheer enthusiasm to vote for a party whose regional branch is classified by domestic intelligence as “far-right extremist”.

Notably, support was lowest among those over 70. The oldest among them remember what happened the last time the far right held power in Germany: their country was reduced to rubble after launching a genocidal war of annihilation that left tens of millions dead. But more than half of middle-aged voters opted for the far right, as did more than four in 10 of the youngest voters. Germany’s far right is now closer to tasting power than at any time since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker as Soviet forces advanced on Berlin.

And there are more AfD electoral triumphs looming in elections due the weekend after next. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD are in the lead on 35% – more than double what they achieved in 2021. Even in cosmopolitan Berlin, they’re on 18% – nearly twice the vote they received six years ago.

Reasonable questions surely include: Why is Germany back on its bullshit? Was the lesson not delivered clearly enough last time? Yet we cannot divorce this from the broader onward march of the far right across the West.