Now AfD is truly an Alternative for Germany (AfD), as its name suggests. The far-right and anti-immigration party, in fact, obtained a large and “historic” victory in the eastern state of Thuringia: almost a third of the votes, with a nine-point advantage over the CDU, Merkel’s conservative party, and far ahead of the three German government parties. Who, faced with this result, spoke through Chancellor Olaf Scholz, sadly admitting that “these are bitter results”.
Although Scholz called on the other mainstream parties to form regional governments without the far Right – and this is likely to happen in Thuringia, because it is highly unlikely that the other parties will cooperate with the AfD – the result nevertheless gives the far Right its first clear victory in a parliamentary election since the Second World War.
Around five million East Germans were eligible to vote on Sunday: according to a survey by public broadcaster ZDF, as many as 36 percent of young people under 30 in Thuringia voted for the AfD, significantly more than any other party. Overall, Alternative fur Deutschland thus obtained 32.8 percent, compared to 23.6 percent for the CDU and the excellent 15.8 percent for BSW, the personal party of Sahra Wagenknecht (the acronym is the initials of her name), which is positioned on the extreme wing of the left and which surpassed both the German left of the Linke (stopped at 13.1 percent) and, above all, Scholz’s SPD, which instead collected a paltry 6 percent.
Wagenknecht’s story is also useful to understand why, as AfD co-leader Alice Weidel claims, “the result in Thuringia is a requiem” for the three parties that govern Germany. Defined as “sovereignist” and “red-brown” by the media, she instead prefers to present herself as a “left-wing conservative”, emphasizing her left-wing ideas on social spending, which however are counterbalanced by her deep-rooted anti-Americanism, anti-immigration policies and dangerous pro-Russian sympathies (she deserted the Bundestag during the last visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last June, for example). In other words, the issues that AfD also supports and on which the two parties could decide to “collaborate” in the future, as BSW sources declare, although Sahra Wagenknecht has so far ruled out participating in any coalition with the far right.
Protagonist of a split from the Linke – and personally also from the Social Democrats, where her ex-husband Oskar Lafontaine was a militant, before moving to the Linke herself – Wagenknecht seems to have found an innovative political formula that is not unpopular with Germans, which can be summarized as “a left that pleases the right”, which she can now exploit for the federal elections of September 2025, where BSW intends to consolidate the positive trend and demonstrate that the party is here to stay. At the national level, the young party (it was born only in January 2024) has so far achieved 9% of the consensus, but for the general elections Wagenknecht is working to obtain double figures, as happened in Thuringia and previously in Saxony, where it tripled the result of the Linke.
Critics describe the “red-brown” leader as cold and calculating, but social issues such as higher pensions and a higher minimum wage inevitably have an impact on the German electorate – increasingly disoriented by the economic crisis the country is spiraling into – along with skepticism about support for war (any war) and especially about economic sanctions against Russia, which are damaging Germany more than any other European country.
If these issues bring BSW closer to AfD – that is, the two parties that enjoy the novelty factor compared to tradition and the dynamism of their political positions – however, in perspective, Sahra Wagenknecht’s personal party has considerable advantages over the extreme right: unlike AfD, in fact, BSW is in no way close to neo-Nazi positions, it has the face of a woman, but above all it is openly in favor of German constitutional democracy and therefore rejects both the exit from the European Union and from NATO. Advantages not to be underestimated, which make Wagenknecht a expendable and reliable face in the eyes of those moderate Germans who are frightened by the disastrous policies of the current government, who do not want to vote for the “fascists” but still fear uncontrolled immigration and the bearer of violence, refuse a conflict against one of Germany’s most important economic partners, and lament Germany’s diminished role in Europe, as well as a policy too unbalanced in favor of the United States.
When Sahra Wagenknecht says things like “the categories of left and right are no longer comprehensible” she finds favor with many Germans, and this simplistic, if we want populist attitude, makes her seem like a pragmatic woman without dogmas and without political-ideological constraints, someone who says what she thinks. Which seems to be what Germans ask of politics today.
So, exactly one year before the next federal elections – the previous rounds have already highlighted all the shortcomings of the government coalition – if the far-right AfD confirms itself as a healthy party, firmly in second place in all national polls, the greatest attention should actually be paid to the party that could potentially grow the most, namely the Bsw. In the meantime, the next stop to demonstrate the value of the Sahra Wagenknecht “brand” will be Brandenburg, where the vote will take place in three weeks.
