Magdeburg, Germany, 6th September 2026. State elections were looming over Germany, an important day for nation’s democratic future. Center-left parties appeared visibly anxious and terrified at the eastern Germany state of Saxony-Anhalt. State media announced the exit poll just after eight in the evening. Alternative for Germany (AfD) has marked historical victory by securing 43.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony Anhalt, more than double its result five years earlier, and falls three seats sort of governing a German state alone for the first time since 1945.

The AfD gained immense support by adopting the xenophobic and Islamophobic position following the refugee crisis in 2015, when Angela Merkel opened the Germany’s border and allowed more than a million refugees fleeing Syria’s war, and she brilliantly handled the situation by saying, in words that became a slogan and then a target, ‘wir schaffen das’, we will manage this. 

The AfD was originally a fringe Euroskeptic party at that time, opposing the euro far more than immigration. But within a year it has transformed its entire manifesto, and didn’t look back.

The party’s entire modern identity, it’s rhetoric of cultural alienness, and arguments to preserve Germany’s cultural heritage, preserving ethnicity based on bloodline, presenting Islam as a civilizational and existential threat, signifies the return of political horrors that were suppressed by post-WWII liberal democracy and the Bretton Woods Institutions. 

The party’s entire modern identity, it’s rhetoric of cultural alienness, and arguments to preserve Germany’s cultural heritage, preserving ethnicity based on bloodline, presenting Islam as a civilizational and existential threat, signifies the return of political horrors that were suppressed by post-WWII liberal democracy and the Bretton Woods Institutions. 

To understand this dynamic, we must first recognize that the German state policy is guided by a doctrine of Staatsräson (reason of state), an old political concept going back to Machiavelli and German statecraft. Modernly, this doctrine mentions that ‘protecting the security and existence of the State of Israel is a non-negotiable, fundamental pillar of Germany’s post-WWII identity’. Consequently, since 2015, and peaking drastically in 2023 after Hamas attack, pro-Palestinian solidarity has been considered an attack of Germany’s core post-war understanding. In this........

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