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In December of 2024 as we were all preparing for Trump’s return to power in Washington, Germans were contemplating a power grab by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), their country’s extremist far-right party. Elon Musk is a fan, if that tells you anything.
In a “snap” election in February 2025 (the German parliamentary system is complicated) after the governing coalition lost its majority, German voters selected 630 members for the 21st Bundestag. AfD did not achieve majority status in 2025, but it did draw just over 20% of the vote. The controversial party has been accused of espousing anti-democratic and racist policies. Between fractured politics and its multiparty system, some analysts say AfD is now the most popular party in Germany.
Ahead of that election, I wrote to you about the party and about Musk’s efforts to encourage Germans to bring the it to power—he tweeted at the time that “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
But save Germany from what? Democracy? The decency that had led Germans to accept refugees from foreign wars and other crises? This was pre-DOGE when Musk was still popular in MAGA and his path of destruction through government infrastructure and employees in the U.S. had yet to be carved. But I thought it was alarming, a precursor of views he would espouse in our own country, and wrote to you about AfD and an article Musk published in the German newspaper, Die Welt. Tonight, I hope you’ll go back and reread that column. It’s here. Because you need to know about AfD.
This afternoon, news reports project that in German elections today, AfD is projected to finish first in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The projections say that unless it can find other parties to form a coalition with, it cannot become the first far-right party to govern a state since the Nazis. There is speculation about numerous possible combinations, including the possibility of AfD taking control.
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According to the New York Times, Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s candidate to lead the state, “told a cheering crowd on Sunday evening”…”We’ve made history, and we’re taking our country back…It all starts here in Saxony-Anhalt.” The party wants to “heavily restrict immigration, restore ties with Russia, quit the euro and promote unashamed German patriotism”.
Political scientists, historians, and citizens debate whether Donald Trump is the cause or the symptom in the U.S. It is well settled by now that we are not the only country that faces democratic backsliding in this era. But what’s happening in Germany, particularly because of our close alliance with that country and events in Ukraine, bears close watching. We usually stick to law and politics in the U.S. here at Civil Discourse, but we all understand that what is happening here doesn’t take place in a vacuum, and some international events are so important that they demand we pay attention.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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