Alternative for Germany's radical platform in Saxony-Anhalt elections

This Sunday (September 5), the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt will hold a state parliamentary election. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to gain an absolute majority. The party announced that if it can govern in Saxony-Anhalt, it will achieve a political "big turn". The party seeks to govern alone and hopes to have its chief candidate Ulrich Siegmund as governor. The Alternative for Germany organization in the state has been identified by Germany's security services as a "confirmed right-wing extremist organization." In its governing platform, the Alternative for Germany proposed a series of far-reaching reform measures.

"Deport immediately!" This is the core promise of the Alternative for Germany if it wins the election in Saxony-Anhalt. The party made it clear in its election platform that its goal is to deport "as many illegal immigrants as possible."

In terms of refugee policy, the Alternative for Germany announced that it will tighten all aspects: strengthen deportation detention, require forced labor for asylum seekers, and cancel all funds used to promote the integration of immigrants into society. The party calls state-backed aid programs a "sanctuary industry." In addition, it wants to exclude children and teenagers who do not have permanent residence in Germany from mainstream schools. To coordinate the state's refugee policy, the state government will establish a "Special Reimmigration Coordination Office." "Remigration" was once chosen as the bad word of the year. The jury believed that the term was used by the far right to glorify their demands for forced deportation and mass deportation of immigrants.

Exactly which of the above measures the AfD state governments can implement is still controversial. For example, establishing special classes for refugees may violate relevant provisions of international and European law. As for who can and cannot be deported, this authority belongs to the federal government, not the individual federal states.

The Alternative for Germany opposes immigration to Germany. In its governing platform, the party calls for a "180-degree turn" in immigration policy. The explicit aim was therefore to reduce the number of immigrants in Saxony-Anhalt. However, the state has faced severe professional shortages for years, particularly in the health care and aged care sectors.

The Alternative for Germany hopes to alleviate the shortage of professional talents by attracting German professionals who have emigrated abroad to return home. To this end, the party intends to launch a "return plan": offering a so-called "return bonus" as incentives and support in finding housing and kindergarten places, all of which are only available to families returning to Saxony-Anhalt from abroad. It is still unclear how many returnees the Alternative for Germany expects to have and how much funding it plans to allocate for the "repatriation programme".

Saxony-Anhalt has been suffering from an outmigration for more than three decades: since the reunification of Germany in 1990, the state has experienced the largest population shrinkage of any federal state. Reint Gropp, a well-known economist and director of the Leibniz Institute of Economics in Halle, warned that if the Alternative for Germany comes to power, the shortage of professional talents will be further exacerbated: "Especially high-quality professionals have other options. If they feel that they are not welcome or fear hostility, they will choose other regions." He said in an interview with Germany's "Le Monde".

Germany's sixteen federal states have little authority over foreign and security policy but can influence political discussions. Once a member of the Alternative for Germany becomes the governor, his political influence will also increase significantly. In terms of policy towards Russia, the Alternative for Germany called for a closer alignment with Russia and an end to sanctions against Russia in its election platform. Since Russia launched an aggressive war against Ukraine in 2022, Germany has basically stopped importing oil from Russia.

Calls for an end to sanctions are largely symbolic, as the federal states must comply with the sanctions. But the AfD governors could send a different political signal in the influential Bundesrat.

In addition, the Alternative for Germany also hopes to expand Russian language teaching in schools and recruit Russian native speakers specifically for this purpose. In contrast, on the Ukrainian issue, the Alternative for Germany has a tougher attitude: the party demands a "repatriation offensive" for Ukrainian refugees. However, the state-level governments do not have the authority to make decisions regarding the policy of deporting Ukrainians from Germany, which falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Particularly controversial is the Alternative for Germany's proposal to create an auxiliary police force. In its platform for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany said regular police were "overstretched" in maintaining security: "We will therefore establish volunteer citizen police corps as the third pillar of the local security architecture."

Thomas Feltes, a leading jurist and criminologist at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, warns that this idea could cause problems: "It is the duty of the police to prevent danger and ensure that the public is protected. In this process, only the police can use violence," he wrote in a guest article in the German legal online magazine Legal Tribune Online. He believes that "citizen patrols" or citizen vigilante groups may even have a negative impact on public safety: "Where these groups operate, the fear of crime is only further fanned out, both among the participants and affects everyone else, not just the 'concerned' citizens."

A core element of the Alternative for Germany's governing platform is so-called identity politics. The party hopes to incorporate a positive image of Germany into its platform and promote a radically different view of history. The Alternative for Germany calls reflections on Germany's crimes during the Nazi era "perpetuating a guilt complex." Therefore, the party wants to revise the school syllabus.

The Alternative for Germany has also declared war on social diversity: the rainbow flag, a symbol of social diversity, will be banned from campus. The party rejected the Bauhaus architecture, which flourished in Saxony-Anhalt and became world-renowned, as "too globalist" and demanded a "patriotic cultural policy." At the same time, the party also hopes to reallocate funding in areas such as culture.

Particularly affected will be the numerous democratic projects that rely on state funding for their work: the Alternative for Germany explicitly opposes any further funding to these projects in its platform.