Far Right Extremists Rise Again in Germany – The Tuesday AM Quickie 9/8/26
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ON THE SHOW TODAY
9/8: Sam and Emma will be in the studio today. Their guest is Hanno Hauenstein, a Berlin-based independent journalist who contributes to The Guardian and The Intercept and publishes the newsletter Nullpunkt. Hanno will discuss the recent electoral gains by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party.
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Today you’ll read about an attack on Ohio’s Democratic nominee for governor, the prohibitively high cost of “affordable” housing, and how Texas Attorney General and Republican nominee for US Senate Ken Paxton is hiding the truth about his money.
THE BIG NEWS
Far Right Extremists Rise Again in Germany
Anti-fascists everywhere are reeling after far-right extremists in Germany notched their biggest victory in a state election since the Third Reich, CNN, DW, the Guardian and the New York Times reported. The racist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, pro-Putin Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won 44 percent of the vote in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and secured 39 of 83 state parliamentary seats, putting them much closer to enacting their manifesto, a 258-page document that outlines a total redesign of the nation. Among other fascist reforms, the party wants “the immediate deportation of irregular migrants, the expansion of mass detention facilities and the return of non-ethnic-German citizens to their country of origin – a policy it refers to as ‘remigration’”; to institute a “new, patriotic cultural policy” that promotes German national identity; and to ban the rainbow flag in schools. The manifesto also says it would limit how much schools may teach about Germany’s Nazi past, information that puts the other goals I listed into their appropriate context, which is the Holocaust. The party’s goals chime with those laid out by Trump and other international fascists, like Elon Musk, who congratulated the AfD on social media, writing, “Well done!” AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, responded by thanking Musk for his support.
Thousands of Germans immediately took to the street in protest of the election results. In Berlin, organizers estimated 14,000 people gathered outside the Brandenburg Gate. Protesters chanted “everyone united against fascism” and carrying signs that warned of the AfD’s murderous policies: “Stop AfD Nazis,” “Fascism is not an alternative,” and “Don't make the 2020s into the 1920s,” a reference to the period when Adolf Hitler was rising to power.
The victory does not guarantee that the party will govern; it must either attempt to rule as a minority or find a political party with which to form a coalition. For years, mainstream parties refused to work with the far-right – a policy they said was a “firewall” preventing fascists from overtaking the country again. After their win on Sunday, AfD leaders blamed fake news and unfair media coverage for the policy and called on politicians of various parties to abandon the firewall concept and help AfD run the state.