Germany’s conservatives: ready to rerun 1933?

The recent election in the small eastern German state (Bundesland in German) of Saxony-Anhalt made world news when the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party won the largest percentage of the votes and nearly won a majority. This is the party supported by such luminaries as J.D. Vance (part of tech oligarch Peter Thiel’s stable of politicians) and Elon Musk.

Deutsche Welle has this English-language report (1):

The SPD, which is a junior coalition partner in the current national government headed by the CDU, is actively protesting against political cooperation with the AfD (2):

The AfD is distinctly pro-Russia in their foreign policy orientation, and their national Parliamentary caucus is solidly in support of Netanyahu’s government in Israel and endorses the current US-Israel war against Iran. Netanyahu has actively cultivated the AfD and other far-right parties like the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria on Islamophobic grounds. The Parliamentary caucus’ current statement says, “The conflict between Israel and Iran must not be imported into Germany. Foreigners who use this conflict to stir up religious or ethnic conflicts must be consistently expelled from Germany.” (3)

There is definitely a parallel to the German politics of the 1930s, when Hitler’s Nazi Party came into power with the support of German conservatives. It was the old reactionary President Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) who appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. The Catholic Center Party provided the votes necessary in the German Parliament for Hitler’s Enabling Act, which effectively ended parliamentary democracy there. (The final season of the Babylon Berlin that was recently released deals with that final period of German democracy.)

Germany’s main conservative party today is the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), and since Angela Merkel left office, they have copied the route taken by conservatives in Britain, France, Italy and some other European democracies of trying to co-opt issues stressed by the far-right parties, including the key one of anti-immigrant xenophobia. The result has been remarkably consistent: that approach by the conservatives strengthens the far-right parties.

The CDU has for years endorsed the concept of a “firewall” against far-right parties including the AfD because of their de facto hostility to democracy and the rule of law, though the AfD has been careful to stay within Germany’s legal limits for parties participating in elections. (Saxony-Anhalt’s internal security ministry has labeled the group “rightwing extremist,” a designation indicates that it’s at least bordering on illegal conduct.) J.D. Vance infamously criticized the concept of the “firewall” at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, indicating the Trump Administration encouragement for the AfD and similar parties.

J.D. must be happy at the latest turn by the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt. The state parliament (Landtag) just elected AfD representative Tobias Rausch to be the Landtag president, making him the first AfD official to achieve such a position in Germany. Even more notably, the CDU was careful to show their approval:

Confident of victory, the flowers for Tobias Rausch are ready on the table of the AfD parliamentary group. Then the result: 48 members of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt voted for him. Enough for Rausch. He is the first state parliament president of the AfD nationwide since this Tuesday. The 48 votes are more than expected in advance. Rausch receives standing applause from his parliamentary group. The BSW [Bundnis Sarah Wagenknecht, another small far-right party] also applauds. Otherwise, there is silence.

In the front row of the CDU parliamentary group, Sven Schulze reaches next to himself a little later, picks up a bouquet of flowers and stands up. The acting [state] prime minister is in the plenary hall that day as chairman of the CDU parliamentary group. As such, he takes steps to Rausch, hands him the bouquet and quickly pushes past the photographers. The SPD [Social Democrats], on the other hand, presented Rausch with a Basic Law and a white rose for election. [White Rose was the name of a now-famous World War II era student resistance group at the University of Munich.)]

Before the secret ballot, only the BSW had announced that it would vote for the AfD candidate. Together, the two parties have 44 votes. After four more MPs voted for the AfD, Schulze's CDU parliamentary group is now coming into focus. It had announced in advance that it would abstain from the election. According to information from the taz, two MPs in the parliamentary group stated that they would vote against Rausch. Accordingly, there should have been 12 abstentions. In the end, there were only five. (4)

taz used this photo of the new Landtag president, in which he looks like a Marvel Universe movie villain:

The news reports I’ve seen don’t say explicitly from which party the four decisive votes besides the AfD and the BSD came. Lars Klingbeil, one of the two national chairs of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has suggested the other four votes came from the CDU. The vote was a secret vote, though the votes were otherwise consistent with the AfD and the BSW voting for Rausch.

Notes:

(1) Far-right AfD wins first state parliament speaker post in Germany. DW News YouTube channel 10/06/2026. (Accessed: 2026-10-07).

(2) Germany's conservatives face scrutiny after far-right AfD candidate wins top post. DW News YouTube channel 10/08/2026. (Accessed: 2026-11-08).

(3) Positionierung der AfD Fraktion zum Israelisch-Iranischen Krieg. (Accessed: 2026-10-07). My translation to English.

(4) Joswig, Gareth & Muschenich, David (2026): Rechtsextremer Durchmarsch. taz 10/06/2026. (Accessed: 2026-10-07). My translation to English.