AfD poised for historic East German win, raising fears over impact on Jews

Germany’s far right is approaching a potential breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt, where an AfD victory could produce the country’s first far-right state government since World War II. The election is scheduled for Sept. 6, and the party is seeking an absolute majority that would allow it to govern alone under lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund.

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On the official level, [the AfD] only occasionally mobilizes open antisemitism. Yet it does, on various levels, use antisemitic tropes, antisemitic ideas, antisemitism as part of a larger worldview.

The Alternative for Germany is polling above 40%, roughly 20 points ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, which has led the eastern state since 2002. A win would break through a barrier maintained by mainstream parties that have refused to cooperate with the AfD and have kept it out of federal and state governments since its founding in 2013.

The party’s proposed program calls for a sweeping nationalist reshaping of society. It includes expanding deportations, placing refugees in group shelters, ending support for public broadcasters, defunding what it calls “anti-German art,” and teaching children less about Germany’s Nazi past. The Saxony-Anhalt branch also says Germany must move beyond its “guilt complex” over the Holocaust and argues that commemorating Nazi crimes has made national pride broadly disreputable.

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globalist, cosmopolitan elites and shadowy financial powers

Lars Rensmann, a political science professor at the University of Passau who wrote an American Jewish Committee report on antisemitism in the AfD, said the party generally avoids relying on openly antisemitic rhetoric. Instead, he said, its leaders invoke coded stereotypes about “globalist, cosmopolitan elites and shadowy financial powers.” These forces, along with migrants, are portrayed as an external threat to Germany’s national identity.

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Alles für Deutschland

The AfD officially distances itself from neo-Nazi groups and rejects accusations of extremism. Yet its leaders have repeatedly used banned Nazi slogans, including “Alles für Deutschland,” or “Everything for Germany.” Björn Höcke, the party chairman in neighbouring Thuringia, has advocated a “large-scale remigration project” and used “Volkstod,” or “death of the people,” a term associated with Nazi propaganda. The article says the party’s support for Israel forms part of its response to accusations of antisemitism, but the possible election result has renewed questions about what an AfD-led state government would mean for Jews.

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a large-scale remigration project