The significance of the far-right win in Thuringia

Merilyn Moos discusses the historical significance of results in the regional elections in Germany

In Germany’s regional elections in September, the  far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won its first regional election, garnering 32.8% of the vote and 32 seats in Thuringia – well ahead of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The AfD in Thuringia is led by Björn Höcke, leader of the most right wing faction of AfD. Significantly, under Hocke, the AfD in Thuringia did not aim to look like a more right-wing version of the CDU but rather flaunted its extremist politics, including its antisemitism. In the city of Zeitz, Stolpersteiner, pavement monuments commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, were dug up in October.

Thuringia was the only German state that was led by the left wing party Die Linke but this time they only got 13.1% of the vote (and 12 seats). It even came behind the new party that  split-off from Die Linke, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which gained 15.8% of the vote (and 15 seats). A new party led by a former member of Die Linke,  in typical social chauvinist fashion, it combines an appeal to working class economic interests with an emphasis on anti-immigrant rhetoric and tight immigration controls. For the first time since 1945, a German far-right party has won a regional election at a state-level.

The AfD almost gained control in neighbouring Saxony. The CDU, which has led the state since German reunification, just won against the AfD (31.9% against 30.7%). Across Germany, the AfD in June’s EU elections, scored a record 15.9% and was the biggest force in ‘eastern’ Germany.

How to explain this win

An immediate cause for the popularity of the far-right vote was the deadly stabbing in Solingen. The suspect was allegedly Muslim. The German government’s response has been to sharply tighten up on immigration controls, thereby validating racist and xenophobic sentiments.

More long-term, has been the effects of West Germany’s ‘take-over’ of East Germany thirty years ago. The AfD tapped into historical grievances stemming from social and economic inequalities faced by the east after reunification. The most extreme economic inequality following the take-over has been gradually lessened. The East German economy is growing more strongly than Germany as a whole. Its output is expected to increase by 1.1% in 2024, significantly more than in Germany as a whole (0.4%). This is a picture of ‘uneven’ development. Nevertheless, in Thuringia, there are significant fears about jobs: local industry is in the economic doldrums. For example, the Financial Times reports (25 October 2024) that Deguma in Thuringia, is planning on closing some of its electric car factories, because of competition from China, thus likely to increase unemployment.

But there are also ideological explanations. It has been argued that people who remember the East German state are very aware of the deterioration in state provision which existed back then, such as effective nurseries, making it easier for women to look after a family and to go to work. But one significant reason not to overestimate a hankering for the old ‘East Germany’ ways is that the largest vote by age-group were 18-25 year olds. One explanation for this is that both the AfD and the BSW, with their appeal to national interests, have criticised the German national government for its military aid to Ukraine.

The climate change denying AfD has also heavily criticised the German government for their stance on green transition.  In Görlitz, in Saxony, a stronghold of the far right, supporters demonstrate weekly against immigration, but more particularly ‘the Greens’. Green transition is seen as undermining local jobs. Indeed, Golitz is littered with workshops and factories. Local Green politicians have been attacked. Here we have a combination of ideological and economic factors encouraging support for the AfD and a rejection of all the main-stream parties.

Conclusion

The AfD victory in Thuringia has historical significance. It was in the Thuringian state election of 1930 that the Nazi Party had its first success, a testing ground for their national government three years later. Nor is what is happening here unusual, even if more developed than elsewhere. Tusk, the Polish PM, has suspended the right of asylum in Poland. Italy, under Meloni, the inheritor of the fascist mantle, uses Albania to ‘process’ asylum seekers. Brussels is itself considering draconian restrictions on immigration. Starmer boasts how his anti-immigration measures are going to be more efficient and effective than the Tories. Thus the ideological weather cock swings towards the extreme right, just as it did in the early 1930s. And we all know where that ended up.