A former German air fragrance salesman rises to prominence via TikTok and becomes the far-right AfD’s chief candidate in Saxony-Anhalt

During the COVID-19 epidemic, an unknown former air fragrance salesman in Germany criticized epidemic prevention regulations on the short video platform TikTok. With his friendly tone and photogenic smile, he successfully attracted millions of views.

Today, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund has turned his online popularity into substantial political influence. As the chief candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt, he is stepping closer to the core of power and is expected to become the first far-right politician to hold state-level power since the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945.

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The New York Times reported on the 6th that this political star with more than 850,000 fans on TikTok is good at packaging tough policies with an optimistic and sunny persona. The authoritative German news magazine "Der Spiegel" called him "Germany's most dangerous man" in a cover story in August, but he and his supporters regarded this as a badge of honor.

Sigmund's political agenda includes mass deportations of immigrants, cutting funding for public broadcasting, banning LGBTQ rainbow flags in schools, and advocating for more Russian language instruction. However, under the surface of cordiality, he once refused to judge whether the Nazi Holocaust was the most serious crime in human history during an interview, nor did he condemn his supporters for chanting his last name in a Nazi salute. It was also revealed that there are members in his campaign team who are involved with extremist and neo-Nazi groups.

The report pointed out that Sigmund’s campaign strategy accurately captured the relative deprivation of voters in the former East Germany. Although he was born after the reunification of the two Germanys, he tried his best to play on the "East German nostalgia" (Ostalgie). He often rode a classic East German-era "Simson" motorcycle painted in the party's representative color aqua blue to the countryside to pray for votes. He even acquiesced in singing the East German-era national anthem at rally occasions. The local unemployment rate is as high as 8%, causing many voters who think they have been abandoned by mainstream society to project their expectations for the future on the vision painted by Sigmund.

Scholars have observed that Sigmund is familiar with online community operations, and campaigning activities are often carefully designed to shoot short videos, rather than simply serving the masses at the scene.

Although Berlin's political circles and mainstream parties criticized Sigmund's political views as unrealistic and pointed out that he was just "selling false hope," his unique way of combining xenophobic arguments with an inclusive tone did successfully transcend the traditional far-right stratosphere. The rise of Sigmund not only highlighted the imbalance of regional development after German reunification, but also posed an unprecedented severe challenge to the democratic firewall established by Germany after the war to prevent extremism.