Resisting the far right: We say no to the normalization of the far right

On September 6, 2026, the AfD won Sachsen-Anhalt’s state election with 43.8% of the vote. This is the strongest result in any German state to date, putting a party built on ethnonationalism within reach of governing power in Germany for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD’s branches in several eastern states – including Sachsen-Anhalt – as “gesichert rechtsextrem” (confirmed right-wing extremist). This is a formal legal designation that allows the state to use surveillance and other tools reserved for groups deemed a threat to the constitutional order. This is not a label critics have attached informally; it is an official finding by the state itself!

The AfD’s rise has been especially pronounced in the former East Germany regions shaped by decades of economic restructuring, population decline, vanishing rural infrastructure since unification and frustration with current politics. This regional disparity is real, and it matters. But the AfD’s political offer in response to it is not investment or structural reform – it is the identification of scapegoats: migrants, the European Union, and the broader project of a pluralistic, multicultural Germany and Europe.

This is not the alternative Germany or Europe needs. Europe faces real challenges: humane migration policy, regional inequality, an affordability crisis, eroded public trust. None of these are solved by ethnonationalism, historical revisionism, or excluding minorities from society. A party that treats pluralistic Europe as a problem to dismantle offers no real answer to the frustrations fueling its own rise.

Sachsen-Anhalt is not an isolated story, from France to Italy to the Netherlands, far-right movements are gaining ground across the continent. This international dimension is not abstract: within hours of the result, US tech billionaire Elon Musk publicly congratulated the AfD on X, having called the party “the only hope for Germany” ahead of the vote – a reminder that this is not only a domestic German story, but one being actively cheered on by influential figures abroad.

This is a test of whether democracy can respond to people’s frustrations as credibly as authoritarian movements currently exploit them. As European Alternatives, we stand for a different alternative: one rooted in solidarity across difference, the protection of minority rights, and democratic renewal without surrendering to the politics of exclusion and hate.