The AfD Wins Big in Sachsen-Anhalt! Goose Step's the New Step to Do!

The right extremist, neo-Nazi Alternativ für Deutschland won 44% of the vote in Sachsen-Anhalt on Sunday.

It was both feared AND expected.

Sachsen-Anhalt has not fared well since German reunification in 1990.

Neither have the other German Länder that comprised the former East Germany, which is where the AfD have made inroads in the past five years.

The people there have felt let down by the government of the unified Germany, believing that they had better lives under the Russian puppet state that was Communist East Germany.

Several people on German news programs have stated that at least there were jobs then. You might not have liked them, but at least you had them and got paid for them.

That is one of the factors behind the AfD's rise in Eastern Germany, and especially on Sunday in Sachsen-Anhalt.

Since German reunification, many of Sachsen-Anhalt's outdated factories were closed down.

Others were absorbed by bigger companies in the western part of Germany and their operations moved there.

This cost Sachsen-Anhalt tens of thousands of jobs as well as tax revenue to maintain its infrastructure.

Leaving with the employment opportunities were tens of thousands of young men and women in search of them, resulting in an increasingly elderly population of pensioners who are hard-pressed to make do with inadequate incomes during the cost-of-living crisis that has swept the Earth since the COVID pandemic.

The successive governments since reunification, in their opinion, have not addressed these problems, treating the former East Germans as poor relations or country bumpkins.

Hence their nostalgia for the "good old days" of Communist East Germany.

Added to this mixture of discontent is the subject of immigration, legal or otherwise, and the violent crimes rightly or wrongly attributed to immigrants.

These immigrants also threaten the national identity of Germans, bringing religions and customs that are alien to them, so they choose to believe.

The AfD has traded on these fears, highlighting them and basing their national agenda on redressing them.

Which accounted for their numbers at the polls on Sunday.

However, winning control of only one of the 17 German Länder would not give them control of the national government, but it would give the AfD control of Sachsen-Anhalt's education programs, police enforcement and the media.

Their leaders have already stated that the schools will downplay the Nazi era and the Holocaust, concentrating on the "positive" aspects of German history.

They also wish to make the Russian language mandatory in the schools, hearkening back to East Germany's "good old days" as a Russian puppet state, as well as work to closer relations with Putin's Russia!

They further wish to separate "German" students from non-German students in the schools, without defining what constitutes a "German" student from the rest.

The AfD also plans to "repatriate" illegal immigrants, criminal immigrants and "other undesirables" en masse (though they haven't actually defined what "other undesirables" means or the criteria of their undesirability.

To do so, they plan to build "transit camps" where the police will dump illegals and their families until they are "repatriated."

This is to be paid for by the people of Sachsen-Anhalt, who are already hard-pressed to maintain their infrastructure.

The AfD further plans to roll back Gay and Lesbian rights, which they regard as a perversion and abnormal, detrimental to "family life."

This strikes me as incredibly odd, as the most well-known AfD leader is an out of the closet Lesbian, Dr. Alice Weidel.

Weidel herself is married to an Asian immigrant woman. They adopted two children.

And they live in Switzerland! Safely away from the AfD!

Hardly the "typical German family" that the AfD wishes to "protect!" Or their belief in "Germany for the Germans."

Whatever being German is supposed to mean.

Which stinks of hypocrisy.

The problem with the AfD's "victory" in Sachsen-Anhalt is that, even with 44% of the vote, they would need to have 51% to form a government.

They would need to form a coalition government with one of the five other parties that met the 5% threshold to be a part of government. The Free Democratic Party didn't make the threshold, and it's been in its death throes for years, so they don't count.

Yet each of these parties has already stated that they would not, under any circumstances, form a coalition government with the AfD.

If this so-called "firewall" holds and the AfD cannot form a government on its own, that means an extremely unlikely and fragile coalition would have to be hammered out by the five other parties.

That would be ridiculous, putting the unpopular CDU and SPD with Die Linke, the Greens and BSW.

Such a coalition would not be long for this world.

The question is simply which one of the five lesser parties will crack, shatter the firewall and lose their integrity to form a government with the AfD?

Sachsen-Anhalt cannot go without a government.

When irresistible force meets immovable object, something's got to give.

It's going to get ugly and not nearly as amusing as "Springtime for Hitler!"