"Do you see any neo-Nazis here?" With a bottle of beer in his hand, which he intends to drink before going through the security check, Enrico Ehlers points to young children accompanying their parents at the entrance to an AfD rally, in a fenced plot next to the River Elbe, in Magdeburg.
The atmosphere is more like the entrance to a show. The face of Ulrich Siegmund, the main name of the party, appears in different formats. The most obvious of these is one that resembles Barack Obama's 2008 campaign "Hope" poster. Another praises the candidate as "Germany's most dangerous man", the title of a cover of Der Spiegel magazine subverted into a kind of campaign asset.
On the eve of a decisive election in his city, Ehlers finds it curious that journalists from all over the world are at the demonstration. After all, Germany's biggest problems are no mystery in his opinion: immigration, work, unemployment, taxes, gasoline.
What is the solution to this? "I have no idea. I can't solve any of this. Neither can you. This has to be done by the government, by the party. By the party at the top."
The party is the AfD, Alternative for Germany, which promises that "everything is possible" in its slogan. Up there is the Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, at stake this Sunday (6), with the potential to house the first far-right government in the country since the end of the Second World War.
To do so, Siegmund needs a "safe majority", as he has described in interviews, something larger than the 39 seats that opinion polls point to as certain for the party. German police are working with the prospect of protests and violence from activists and extremist groups if a result is not achieved.
Parliamentary mathematics is conditioned by the 5% barrier clause. With more parties in the House, it becomes more difficult for the AfD to nominate Siegmund as minister-president of the state, a position equivalent to governor. “Topic for Monday”, says the candidate.
Given the evident symbolic weight of an eventual populist government, around a century after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, the behavior of what is seen by critics as its current equivalent is surprising.
Created by economists in 2013, in the wake of the euro crisis, the AfD is notable for gaining traction with controversial issues and for having no shame in repeating the past. He surfed the anti-immigration wave, triggered by Angela Merkel's 2015 open-door policy, as well as the contestation of flags associated with the left, such as environmentalism, energy transition and minority rights.
Siegmund is one of the products of this opportunistic logic. His presence in the party grew during the pandemic, when he went viral with criticism of the restrictions imposed by the government.
The AfD replicates patterns of European populism, but stands out from its peers for abdicating, at least until now, any type of softening in political practice or discourse.
As Marine Le Pen did, in France, who moved away from the figure of her own father, a convinced anti-Semite, to become more palatable to centrist voters; or like Giorgia Meloni, record holder for remaining prime minister, embracing causes that she contested as a candidate, such as Europeanism.
In Germany, on the contrary, the AfD is doubling down on radicalism.
In 2024, Siegmund was caught discussing re-immigration with businesspeople at a secret meeting in Potsdam. Two years later, Alice Weidel, co-leader of the party, shouted the term during a speech delivered by Elon Musk, on the eve of the federal election — the acronym reached the second largest bench in the Bundestag, the German federal Parliament.
What was once a scandal is now part of the government program.
Among the proposals are not only mass deportation, but also the prohibition of teachers from expressing opinions in the classroom, the dismissal of foreign health professionals, the end of the broadcasting tax, which supports public TV, and the exit from the euro and the European Union.
The last two items alone would cost the country €690 billion (R$4.06 trillion) in the first five years of a possible separation, according to the German Economic Institute. Or 2.5 million jobs. Expelling immigrants would leave the country without a quarter of its truck drivers and chefs. Without half the doctors.
A large part of public opinion and different sectors are mobilizing against the party. Perhaps belatedly, observe analysts.
"The old politicians had several decades to change something, but they basically did nothing or just said empty words. Yes, the AfD politicians could also be saying empty words, but I prefer something new to the old one that never worked," says the 23-year-old electrician, who arrives at the rally by bicycle.
He prefers to omit his name, but responds with ease. What's new with the AfD, so reactionary? "Someone who cares or who seems to care more than others. Someone with plans."
Much of it far-fetched, the AfD's plan has a declared purpose — to erase Germany's past. Or at least the part that, according to the party, seems to act as a burden on the current generation, that of the totalitarian experiment that deluded the idea of a superior country.
Erase the past to free yourself from the guilt of what happened or the guilt of thinking the same way, a century later? The promise, perhaps on purpose, does not seem clear.
