The Voters Knew Exactly What They Were Choosing

The most widely repeated consolation about 6 September is that the AfD won in spite of its programme — that a state punished Berlin, and the far right happened to be the instrument. Christian Wolff, writing in Vorwärts, refuses it, and the refusal is the beginning of any serious response. "Wir müssen endlich aufhören mit der Entmündigung der Wähler*innen," he writes: we have to stop treating voters as incapable, as though they were forced. "Nein, AfD-Wähler*innen sind Täter*innen und keine Opfer." They are not victims. The party won because of its programme, not despite it.

The programme was not hidden. Cultural homogeneity, the exclusion of migrants, the dismantling of public broadcasting, the running down of the democratic-initiative sector, exit from the euro and from the European Union. Everyone who voted could read it, and a record share of the electorate turned out to do so. What that produces is the figure that ought to organise everything else: the parties inside the democratic spectrum now hold roughly half the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. Wolff calls it "eine verhängnisvolle Entwicklung" — a fateful development. There is no version of it that is regional.

On the night, the AfD extended a hand to all democratic forces and demanded the dismantling of public broadcasting in the same breath. Both halves were meant.

Which is why the offer being made in Magdeburg should be read for what it is rather than what it sounds like. Asked how he would treat the people who had not voted for him, Ulrich Siegmund said his party wanted to make policy for everyone and was reaching out — and then called for the destruction of the public broadcasters on the ground that they conduct propaganda against the AfD. A hand extended on condition that the institutions capable of contradicting you are abolished is not an offer of coalition. It is a description of the destination.

The arithmetic leaves less room than the rhetoric suggests. CDU, SPD and Greens hold thirty-one of eighty-three seats. Die Linke's eight are barred by the Union's own incompatibility resolution. The BSW's five have said they will not elect the CDU's Sven Schulze and will abstain if Siegmund goes to a third ballot, where abstentions do not count and a simple majority is enough. The people who can prevent an AfD minister-president are therefore not the ones making speeches about the firewall. That does not make the firewall wrong. It makes it, for the moment, not the thing that is load-bearing.

The most widely repeated consolation about 6 September is that the AfD won in spite of its programme — that a state punished Berlin, and the far right happened to be the instrument to hand. Christian Wolff, writing in Vorwärts, refuses it, and the refusal is where any serious response has to begin. "Wir müssen endlich aufhören mit der Entmündigung der Wähler*innen," he writes: we have to stop treating voters as incapable, as though they had been forced. "Nein, AfD-Wähler*innen sind Täter*innen und keine Opfer." They are not victims. The party won because of its programme, not despite it, and the alternative reading survives only as long as nobody looks at the turnout.

The programme was not hidden and was not obscure. Cultural homogeneity, the exclusion of migrants, the dismantling of public broadcasting, the running down of the democratic-initiative sector, exit from the euro and from the European Union. Everyone who voted could read it, and a record share of the electorate turned out to do so — the highest participation the state has recorded. What that produces is the figure that ought to organise everything else: the parties inside the democratic spectrum now hold roughly half the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. Wolff calls it "eine verhängnisvolle Entwicklung", a fateful development. It is the finding, and there is no version of it that is merely regional.

On the night, the AfD extended a hand to all democratic forces and demanded the dismantling of public broadcasting in the same breath. Both halves were meant.

Which is why the offer being made in Magdeburg should be read for what it is rather than what it sounds like. Asked how he would treat the people who had not voted for him, Ulrich Siegmund said his party wanted to make policy for everyone and was reaching out — and then called for the destruction of the public broadcasters on the ground that they conduct propaganda against his party. A hand extended on condition that the institutions capable of contradicting you are abolished is not an offer of coalition. It is a description of the destination, delivered in the register of an invitation.

The objection worth answering is the one that says all of this is a way of avoiding the material question: that the east has been hollowed out, that Saxony-Anhalt's unemployment runs nearly two points above the national rate, that its insolvencies rose more than twice as fast last year, and that a party which speaks to that is bound to win. Some of it is plainly true. But the same state has a foreign-national share of about 7.9 per cent against roughly 14.9 nationally, and migration has topped its voters' list of concerns for more than a decade. A grievance that grows as the thing it names shrinks is not being caused by the thing it names. Fixing the trains and the clinics is necessary and is owed; treating it as a sufficient answer to this result is a way of not hearing what was said.

The arithmetic leaves less room than the rhetoric suggests. CDU, SPD and Greens hold thirty-one of eighty-three seats between them. Die Linke's eight are barred by the Union's own incompatibility resolution, which the Union shows no sign of lifting. The BSW's five have said they will not elect the CDU's Sven Schulze and will abstain if Ulrich Siegmund goes to a third ballot, where abstentions do not count and a simple majority of votes cast is enough. The people who can prevent an AfD minister-president are therefore not the ones making speeches about the firewall.

That does not make the firewall wrong; it makes it, for the moment, not the thing that is load-bearing. What is load-bearing is whether the parties that still hold about half the state can agree on anything at all before the Landtag meets — and whether the CDU is willing to pay, in the currency of its own resolutions, for the outcome it says it wants. Reiner Haseloff, who held the state for the Union for fifteen years and is the last man who kept the AfD out of first place there, spent the morning after the count settling accounts with federal governments, parts of the political centre and the media for losing contact with the people they govern, while ruling out any approach to the AfD and warning specifically against an AfD understanding with the BSW. He is not a hopeful witness. He is a well-placed one.