The Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party has entered a stunning new phase in its trajectory toward state and federal power after finishing first in the Saxony-Anhalt election on September 6.

Although it did not win an absolute majority, the AfD is close to becoming the first far-right party to govern a German state since the Nazi era. This is nothing less than a seismic shift in German politics, a development that unsettles mainstream conservatives, liberals, neighboring nations, and Germany’s Jewish community.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, articulated his fears when he denounced the AfD’s lead politician in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, as a “declared enemy of our open society” and urged a boycott of the party.

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, a nation Germany invaded and brutalized in 1939, said that “only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD.”

US President Donald Trump, however, adopted what seemed like a pro-AfD stance after posting a screenshot of the election results on his Truth Social platform. Prior to last year’s German federal election, US Vice President JD Vance endorsed the AfD in a move criticized in Germany as political interference.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, was on the same page as Trump and Vance. He praised the AfD’s electoral breakthrough and called it a “pragmatic” party of “hope and reason.”

The AfD, which fosters a sense of German national pride and rejects the country’s “guilt complex” over the Holocaust, is already Germany’s most popular party on the national level, with 28 percent of the electorate supporting it, according to surveys.

The AfD won 43.8 percent of the seats in Saxony Anhalt, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ Christian Democratic Union winning only 17.2 percent. Merz admitted he was “deeply shocked” by the AfD’s success.

The Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party fared poorly as well, respectively garnering 9.3 percent, 8.9 percent and 8.6 percent of voters’ support.

Having won 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament, the AfD is only three seats short of an outright majority, an outcome that would enable Siegmund, 35, to become Saxony-Anhalt’s premier.

The AFD is clearly on a roll.

Two years ago, it won the largest number of seats in the neighboring state of Thuringia, just falling short of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)