But 44% of the vote for a party that is officially classified as “extreme right” is not normal. It is a black day for European democracy, even if it occurs in a small east German state.

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While Saxony-Anhalt (and Germany itself) may have dodged the worst outcome because the AfD won’t automatically fulfil its ambition of forming the first far-right state government in Germany since the Nazi era, there is no reason to assume it will be so lucky at the next election. Neither will other German states, such as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in two weeks’ time, or other countries, such as France next year. No country is immune from the far right and, perhaps even more worryingly, no far-right party or politician is too extreme for political success (as the US has shown). We must therefore update our analyses and strategies.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/07/esuu-s07.html

The Nazis achieved a better result in a state election on only two occasions before Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933—in May 1932 in Oldenburg, with 48.4 percent, and June 1932 in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, with 49 percent. In Anhalt (part of what is now Saxony-Anhalt), the Nazis secured 40.7 percent in April 1932 and formed one of the first Nazi-led state governments. In the Reichstag election in November 1932, the last before Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, the Nazis received 33.1 percent. Since the end of the Third Reich, no far-right party has ever again achieved a comparably high election result.

This result does not mean that every AfD voter is a Nazi. The AfD is not a fascist mass party. It is a product of the shift to the right across the entire bourgeois political spectrum and owes its rise to the degeneration of the trade unions and the parties that once claimed to represent the interests of the workers. They have betrayed the workers so often and so thoroughly that the AfD has been able to capitalise on the outrage and frustration this has caused.