The “far right” is on the march in Germany with an electoral victory for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). And the mainstream media alarms are ringing at maximum decibels.
“The far-right Alternative for Germany party surged to a resounding victory in a regional election Sunday, but fell a little short of winning a majority in its quest to form the country’s first far-right state government since World War II,” is how CBS News reported the news this week.
The AfD won in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt with almost 44 percent of the vote, another sign of the party’s continued rising popularity. Germans are increasingly seeing past the media propaganda and ignoring the warning from its domestic spy agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which classifies the AfD as an extremist organization.
The Numbers
If it weren’t for women and people over 70, the AfD would have obtained an absolute majority. The party did well with younger people and men. A majority (52 percent) of 35- to 59-year-olds voted for the AfD. It also did very well with workers and the self-employed, notching 59 percent of the votes from that group. And it racked up 65 percent of the votes among “those who, according to their own assessment, are in a poor financial situation,” per a German-language post-election analysis.
If it weren’t for the “firewall” cooperation among other political groups, the AfD would likely have more power in German politics. Among those alliances is the one comprising Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. Whereas the AfD won 43.8 percent of the vote on Sunday — that is more than double what it gained five years ago in the state — Merz’s party lost about half its support.
In response to these results, Merz vowed to work on his “much-criticized communication style,” as the folks at The New York Times put it. As if that’s the problem. Interestingly, Merz doesn’t seem too interested in making policy changes. Instead, it appears his party’s strategy is to talk AfD supporters into dropping their standards. “There is this yearning for disruption, for fundamental change,” Merz said. But implementing it will require “compromises.” What’s really needed is “to emphasize, explain and advocate for that more strongly.”
What Voters Want
AfD supporters would beg to differ. A post-election analysis summarized the concerns of AfD voters this way:
AfD supporters are particularly shaped by material and identity-related concerns. Concerns about being overrun by foreigners (91 percent) and that “the way we live in Germany is changing too much“ (85 percent) are not so strong in any other following. Eighty-nine percent fear that prices could rise so sharply that they can no longer pay their bills and another 80 percent believe that they can no longer maintain their standard of living. Given that the AfD is particularly successful with voters who do not have a higher education qualification and describe themselves as workers, it is reasonable to assume that these concerns are linked to actual material shortages. Likewise, there is the feeling of being disadvantaged. Sixty-six percent of AfD supporters say they receive much less/slightly less than their fair share. This is accompanied by the feeling that East Germans are, in many places, still second-class citizens. With an approval rating of 83 percent, this feeling is particularly formative for supporters of the AfD.
The Platform
The AfD’s platform is not much different from that of other emerging populist parties in Europe. At the top of their wish list is secure borders. Germany has the most refugees and “asylum seekers” of any European country, with nearly 3 million. Germany’s foreign count rose from “0.65 million refugees and asylum-seekers in 2010 to 2.95 million in 2025, with a peak of 3.10 million in 2024,” according to a Rockwool Foundation analysis.
The AfD not only wants secure borders, but it wants to close the welfare spigots that draw foreigners, it seeks to tighten asylum laws, and it would like to see Germany withdraw from the European Union’s asylum system. They want their government to run asylum procedures outside Germany, to reject EU relocation quotas, and turn people without papers back at the German border.
The AfD also opposes the green initiatives that have increased the energy bills of Germans and proposes common-sense energy policies. According to the AfD platform:
Subsidies and support programs for “climate protection“ and the EEG surcharge must be abolished without replacement. We will herald the end of the expensive “energy transition“ and the exit from EU “climate policy.“ For affordable and reliable energy, Germany must return to nuclear power and maintain its coal-fired power plants.
On that same front, the political party wants to abolish the CO2 tax reduce energy taxes.
Perhaps one of the AfD’s biggest sins is that it is not a big fan of German intervention in the Ukraine-Russia war. It believes Germany should stay neutral, end financial and military support for Ukraine, lift sanctions on Russia, and restore the Nord Stream pipeline that used to transfer energy from Russia to Germany before someone (America?) blew it up.
And what’s a right-wing populist platform without a dig at taxes? The AfD wants lower taxes across the board. It wants lower income, consumption, and corporate taxes.
Far Right?
In addition to its growing number of supporters, among those who back the AfD is the world’s richest man. “You are lying by calling AfD ‘far-right’,” Elon Musk said in response to mainstream media’s incessant screeching.
The “far-right” label appears to be a coordinated attack by Western media as a whole. It seems the intent is to convince the world that there is something extreme about rational policy positions. It’s as if a memo went out to the Mockingbird Media outlets ordering them to use the term as often as possible. “A Far-Right Win Puts New Pressure on Germany’s Leader,” announced The New York Times. “Far-right win leaves Germany’s Merz shaken as AfD plots path to power,” reads a Reuters headline. “Mass deportations and separate schools for refugees: The far-right AfD’s vision for Germany,” screeches CNN. “AfD party’s landslide win in eastern Germany tests country’s ‘firewall’ against the far right,” reads an Associated Press headline.
Establishment Fears
The mainstream fear is palpable. And if you ask the folks at the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, the rise of the AfD threatens to upend the unity among the powerful nations of Europe. This is especially problematic since Germany is in the middle of a military buildup likely intended to confront Russia. “In 2025, Germany spent more on defense than any other European country in absolute terms,” wrote CFR senior fellow Liana Fix earlier this year. “Its military budget today ranks fourth in the world, just after Russia’s.” But what happens with all that budding power in the hands of a party that is more loyal to Germany than the international order? Fix again:
Today’s Germany has pledged to use its outsize armed power to help all of Europe. But left unchecked, German military dominance might eventually foster divisions within the continent. France remains uneasy about the fact that its neighbor is becoming a major military power — as are many people in Poland.… Such nightmarish outcomes are especially likely if Germany ends up being governed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is rising in the polls. The intensely nationalistic party has long been critical of the European Union and NATO, and some of its members have made revanchist claims about the territory of neighboring countries.
And herein lies another problem (for the globalists), likely the biggest problem, with the AfD: They’re not internationalists.
The rise of the AfD is part of a worldwide rise in nationalistic, common-sense populism. But will the German government and its accomplices in the EU and NATO allow this party to continue on its inevitable path to total victory? Or will they eventually ban it under the guise of preventing the resurrection of the Nazis? Perhaps that’s the reason every headline about this organization uses the term “far right.” Perhaps they’re pre-programming people for an outright ban. There have already been several such efforts proposed.
