A giant campaign banner with an image of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz is seen on the Konrad Adenauer Building, the CDU’s headquarters, near a lamppost with an election poster of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin on February 9, 2025.
Odd ANDERSEN / AFP
Officials are so convinced of their righteousness that they don’t mind discussing these options in public.
The establishment’s supposed love of democracy ends exactly when democracy—as expressed by the popular vote—stops loving the establishment.
And so, with the AfD looking increasingly likely to gain power in one or more German states after next year’s elections—especially in Saxony-Anhalt, where it recently crossed the 40% mark in a regional poll for the first time—mainstream figures are preparing to make it as difficult as possible for the party to govern. That is, if they can’t simply strip the AfD of its hard-won power altogether.
Politicians are considering destroying documents before the opposition enters office, and even handing state power to (mainstream) federal officials. And they are so convinced of their righteousness that they don’t mind discussing these options in public.
SPD Bundestag member Sebastian Fiedler said over the weekend that “if the scenario becomes reality after all and the AfD achieves an absolute majority in a federal state … we have a massive security problem!”
The Democrats can prevent it.
He added, “I’d rather hit the delete button” than hand over sensitive data—such as police and domestic intelligence information—to “extremists.”
The AfD has, of course, seen through this phoney ‘pro-democracy’ rhetoric, responding that when officials “openly toy with the possibility of breaking laws to combat an undesirable party, that is not protecting democracy, but rather yet another abuse of democracy by the SPD.”
Party spokesman Ringo Mühlmann added that far from being a “trivial offense,” withholding or deleting data would be a flat-out crime.
But this hasn’t put officials off. In fact, some have gone further, with Junge Freiheitpointing to discussions around the possibility of an AfD-run state government being stripped of its power “for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic,” meaning the state would instead be governed by a representative of the federal government, “a so-called state commissioner.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
