Germany on the Brink: AfD Joins the Grown-Ups’ Table – and the Establishment’s Teeth Are Grinding

By Nicolas Faure

Fueled by a massive wave of popular discontent and an East-West divide as gaping as Germany’s post-Scholz budget, the AfD is riding high in the polls across the former GDR. Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia – once solid strongholds of the traditional parties, those closed circles of professional babblers – are falling one by one to the battering rams of an electorate that has decided it’s done voting for people who despise it.

Alternative für Deutschland is climbing, climbing… and the ruling parties are watching the ceiling crack. In the eastern Länder, where federal propaganda has less impact than gas bills, the AfD is breaking records. Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia – everywhere, voters are abandoning the shadow theatre of the old parties and casting their ballots, without shame or apology, for the ones they were told should be buried alive. While the CDU rehashes its Merkel-era slogans, the SPD is still apologizing for existing, and the Greens dream of a quota-controlled botanical Germany, the AfD actually speaks to the people – really speaks. The result? Everything gets shaken up. And the political professionals are discovering, with horror, what they’ve spent years trying to avoid: the people.

In Brandenburg, the AfD towers over the rest with 32%, while the SPD flaps around like a headless chicken at 23%. The CDU – once the paragon of stability – clings to a sinking 14% like a punctured lifebuoy. The Greens and their „bikes for everyone“ dreams hover just above the 5% threshold, Die Linke looks like a museum exhibit, and BSW tries to make noise with anti-imperialist moans echoing into the void. No government can form without the AfD – but better to choke under grotesque coalitions than to reach out to those dreadful “nationals” who still dare to say “Germany” without blushing.

In Saxony, the same circus: the AfD topped the 2024 local elections. In Chemnitz, Dresden, Leipzig, voters clearly missed the usual moral lecture. Despite televised sermons, hysterical press campaigns, and a conveyor belt of character assassinations, the ballots tell a different story. And it’s starting to stain the holy stage of Republican Virtue.

Nationally, the AfD is polling at 23%, enough to send shivers down ZDF studios. But in the East, it’s another ballgame: 32 to 34% across the board, with momentum that feels as inevitable as the return of winter. And what does the system offer in response? Patchwork coalitions: CDU flirting with the Greens, SPD hopping into bed with anyone anti-fascist enough, all gift-wrapped in recycled democratic paper labeled “Republican Front”.

Worst of all for the establishment? The electoral calendar. In 2025, three key elections hit like slaps across the flabby cheeks of the ruling class:

• 7 September 2025 – Saxony
• 14 September 2025 – Thuringia
• 21 September 2025 – Brandenburg

Three eastern Länder. Three political time bombs. And if the so-called “firewall” holds, it’s the institutions themselves that might grind to a halt.

But the spring is broken. Eastern voters no longer buy into the federal fairy tales. Far from Berlin’s ring road, the reality bites: insecurity, uncontrolled immigration, deserted hospitals, abandoned rural towns. And lo and behold, the AfD talks about all of it. Worse still – they make it a priority. Naturally, this scandalizes the silk-gloved salons of polite society. “Populists!” “Demagogues!” “Fascists!”… When the rhetoric becomes incantation, it’s because there’s nothing left to say.

They’ve tried everything. Crude smears, gotcha interviews, “fight hate” campaigns, unnatural alliances, and of course, the trusty old cordon sanitaire. None of it works. The AfD isn’t going away – it’s settling in. Worse – from the “progressive” point of view – it’s convincing. And not just the forgotten and the furious: middle-class professionals, young workers, educated citizens. People who’ve had enough of being treated like collaborators-in-waiting just because they criticize immigration, woke ideology, or the EU’s abstract technocracy. So naturally, the system panics. Calls for unity echo through the chancelleries, desperate efforts are made to slap a fresh marketing label on the stale soup of centrism. But it may be too late.

Because what’s at stake in 2025 isn’t just a series of regional elections. It’s a dam breaking. An electorate that no longer obeys the media cues. That votes as it speaks – freely, fearlessly, without guilt. And while the seasoned architects of political failure try to salvage the furniture, the AfD is pushing open the door to power… and may soon be sitting in a chair others thought was theirs for life.

Source: https://resistancerepublicaine.com/2025/06/30/lallemagne-bascule-lafd-sinvite-a-la-table-des-grands-et-ca-grince-des-dents/