Mainstream politicians express alarm while lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt welcomes congratulations from Elon Musk

While falling just short of an absolute majority, the AfD surged into first place in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on Sunday, exit polls ⁠showed, putting the far right within reach ​of power at ‌the state level for ‌the first time since the second world war.

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.

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOP
      1·
      15 hours ago

      Fascism is what happens when the working class existentially gives up on leftist movements being able to help them because neoliberalism and/or status quo managers wholy and completely failed to provide them a decent life.

        • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOP
          1·
          15 hours ago

          Do me a favor and try educating yourself about the history of fascism before you confidently assert incorrect things about it.

            • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOP
              1·
              15 hours ago

              Ok, here you go, here is your homework!

              The con of neoliberalism is now widely understood across the political spectrum. It is harder and harder to hide its predatory nature, including its demands for huge public subsidies (Amazon, for example, recently sought and received multibillion-dollar tax breaks from New York and Virginia to set up distribution centers in those states). This has forced the ruling elites to make alliances with right-wing demagogues who use the crude tactics of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, bigotry and misogyny to channel the public’s growing rage and frustration away from the elites and toward the vulnerable. These demagogues accelerate the pillage by the global elites while at the same time promising to protect working men and women. Donald Trump’s administration, for example, has abolished numerous regulations, from greenhouse gas emissions to net neutrality, and slashed taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, wiping out an estimated $1.5 trillion in government revenue over the next decade, while embracing authoritarian language and forms of control.

              …

              Neoliberal rhetoric, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, can effectively “split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power.”

              https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/neoliberalisms-dark-path-to-fascism