Just a week after winning its first administration of a German district, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has managed to win a municipal election for the first time and will have a full-time mayor. The town of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, elected this Sunday Hannes Loth, a leading member of the AfD in this country from East Germany, as he is also a deputy in the regional Parliament.
Loth will leave his seat to dedicate himself to the municipality, with 8,800 inhabitants, which makes him the first far-right mayor. Last year the training already got another Town Hall, but it was a very small town in which the mayor’s work is done voluntarily while the owner continues to carry out his usual work. Early elections were held in Raguhn-Jessnitz due to the illness of the previous councilor.
The German political class is watching with concern the advance of the ultra-right, which is still very limited when compared to other European countries. This is the second victory in just a few days that allows the AfD to govern at the local level, despite the strict sanitary cordon applied by all other parties. As happened in Sonneberg (Thuringia) last week, on this occasion all the formations also came together to support the other candidate, the independent Nils Naumann, but the containment effort was in vain. Loth won with 51% of the vote, with a turnout of 61.5%.
The AfD leaders highlighted on their Twitter accounts that Loth is their first mayor, although technically there has already been another, in Burladingen (Baden-Württemberg), a municipality of 12,000 inhabitants in the west of the country. There Harry Ebert, who had presented himself as an independent and ruled since 1999, joined the far-right party in 2018, while in office. The town was then known as the only stronghold of the extreme right. Ebert resigned in 2020 and since then the AfD has not touched power.
Hannes Loth, a 42-year-old farmer, is a controversial figure for more than just his membership in a party suspected of extremism by German intelligence services. During the pandemic, he organized protests against the federal government’s restriction policy, while at the same time making money from it. While he appeared with his blue truck and harangued the masses against Angela Merkel, first, and Olaf Scholz, later, he operated several coronavirus testing points that brought him huge profits. In addition to his salary as a regional deputy, he declared private benefits of between 80,000 and 120,000 euros to the Saxony-Anhalt Parliament.
Unlike Robert Sesselmann, the new far-right administrator of the Sonneberg district, Loth did not run a federal campaign against the tripartite government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals headed by Scholz, but instead focused on local issues. He spoke about the resources of the municipal fire brigade and the centers for the elderly, among other issues that will be his responsibility. The new mayor assured after knowing the results that he will also work for those who have not voted for him. His opponent, Nils Naumann, said he did not care that the mayor was from the AfD. “It’s about facts and objectivity, not the party,” he said.
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A study presented last week by the University of Leipzig shows that far-right attitudes and disenchantment with democracy are widespread in the eastern Land that was under the dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for 40 years. The survey asked if citizens agreed with statements such as: “What Germany needs now is a strong party that represents the national community as a whole.” In this case, 26.3% agreed, with another 24.9% partially agreeing. More than 20% of those surveyed felt comfortable with the phrase: “Without the extermination of the Jews, Hitler would be seen as a great statesman.”
The penetration of these attitudes, added to the disenchantment with the political system and the rejection of the federal government’s ecological transition policies, are causing the AfD to reach 20% of voting intentions throughout the country in some polls. This puts them in second place, behind only the CDU Christian Democrats and ahead of the SPD Social Democrats. In several federated states of the east, the polls place them above 30% and as the most voted force. Three of them, Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, elect new parliaments next year.
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