How the extreme right mobilized the new Germany

“You are not only changing the future of Saxony and Thuringia, but are bringing about political change throughout Germany!” On the morning of election Sunday, the co-chair of the Alternative for Germany, Alice Weidel, had a clear message: the election in the new federal states was an opportunity to send a signal to the entire Federal Republic.

In this respect, she was certainly right. In both elections, the AfD won almost a third of the votes. In Thuringia, it came first – the first victory of a nationalist party in the history of the Federal Republic. In Saxony, it was narrowly beaten by the Christian Democrats, who are leading the nationwide polls ahead of the 2025 federal election.

The result was a disaster for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's federal government, even considering its poor position in the country to date. His Social Democrats received 8 percent in Thuringia and 6 percent in Saxony; Finance Minister Christian Lindner's Free Democrats fell to just 1 percent in both states, and the Greens were also eliminated from the Thuringian state parliament.

The AfD's success was widely expected following its success in these same states in the last elections. And many experts saw its continued rise as a result of the failures of reunification or the authoritarian mores that were supposedly entrenched in the former East. But what is perhaps even more worrying is that the AfD is now finding greater support among young and early middle-aged voters who grew up in an already reunified Germany.

Nevertheless, the geographical divide is clear: data on the best-placed parties in each constituency in the EU elections in June showed an almost exact split along pre-1990 borders, with the AfD leading in the former Eastern Bloc countries. While the AfD also had a strong showing in wealthier, western countriesit performs about twice as well in the eastern “new federal states”. As sociologist Steffen Mau explains, this is less a residual difference than the emergence of a distinct eastern political identity.

The AfD's call for a second “Wende” – a renewed attempt at the revolution of 1989-90 – shows how little this has to do with nostalgia for the socialist era. Rather, it is shaped by a sense of being a “second-class citizen” – which AfD rhetoric portrays as all the more unfair because immigrants are given preferential treatment. The resentment of being “left behind” is exacerbated by the migration patterns of Germans themselves, as the pull of cities thins out the younger population in small towns in the east.

But even if it is often said that the East has not yet “caught up” with democratic modernity, its politics are following a path that has been well-trodden in Europe since the 1990s. In France and Italy, social democracy has withered and the far right has taken hold. In Spain and Portugal – once said to be “inoculated” by recent memories of dictatorship – the far right is a fixture in parliament. In many ways, the volatility of East Germany's politics and its identitarian trend are “normal”.

To understand this, we could draw parallels between German reunification and the last three decades of European integration. These include the external limits of social policy through budget cuts, the reliance on a low-wage growth model in poorer regions, and high levels of internal migration. These ills are not always the direct motivation for far-right voter turnout. But they have undermined the social partnership and strong trade union movement on which the inclusiveness of the West German social model has long relied.

This is also linked to the difficulty of reproducing the party systems once built on this basis. While Scholz's Social Democrats have more members over 80 than under 30, some of their competitors manage without them at all. Sahra Wagenknecht followed the same path as Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia or Geert Wilders' Freedom Party and led a one-woman party to a strong result in Sunday's election, winning most of the votes from the left-wing party Die Linke.

The assumptions made so far are in flux. If the major parties (and some While the AfD is treated as a pariah in the media, this divide is not so clear in society. The fact that the Thuringian AfD is under state surveillance for “extremism” or that its leader Björn Höcke was convicted for using a Nazi slogan has not fundamentally reduced its support. The scandal at the beginning of the year surrounding the discussion by leading right-wing extremists about the “remigration” of Germans from ethnic minorities weakened the AfD's poll ratings, but not permanently.

There are still obstacles. The Christian Democrats have made it clear for now that they will not form coalitions with the AfD in Saxony or Thuringia. Even among the European far-right, the AfD is the more radical wing, especially given its unwillingness to join in on aid to Ukraine. But it can also shape the national debate as a loud opposition force, especially on the issue of migration. Social Democratic Chancellor Scholz said this week that asylum seekers should only be entitled to “bed, bread and soap.”

The “return migration scandal” sparked nationwide anti-AfD protests – from the mass rallies in Berlin to the courageous demonstrations in smaller, more closely packed cities in the east – to show that this party “does not represent Germany.” But it represents a significant minority force. And even the majority of the population has increasingly strong positions on immigration and national identity. The far right stays away from high office. But as in so much of Europe, it is moving closer.