Seitenwechsel: Europe’s Right Makes Its Presence Felt

The alternative Halle book fair for excluded authors and media exceeded expectations despite protests from Antifa and local politicians.

You may also like

@InstitutILIADE on X, 8 November 2025

The alternative Halle book fair for excluded authors and media exceeded expectations despite protests from Antifa and local politicians.

On November 8th and 9th, 2025, the first edition of the alternative book fair Seitenwechsel (literally ‘turn the page’) was held in Halle-an-der-Saale (Saxony-Anhalt). Organised by Dresden bookseller and AfD politician Susanne Dagen, the event attracted nearly 6,000 visitors, dozens of publishers and media outlets excluded from the major fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig, and prominent speakers.

This unexpected success shook the ‘central bloc’ and Antifa and illustrated the vitality of a German right wing forced to organise itself on the margins of the institutions. The European Union, with its opaque functioning and bureaucratic reflexes, has ended up numbing Europeans’ curiosity about what is happening beyond their borders. Yet, from the plains of the Lüneburger Heide to the shores of Portugal—where a major conference on identity was held that same weekend—and from the suburbs of London to the theatre in Bratislava that hosted a conference of conservatives on the same date, the same dangers are apparent: mass migration, erosion of civil liberties, cancel culture.

A coordinated response is needed; it cannot ignore the continent’s most populous country, Germany, once the cradle of poetry and philosophy, now mired in a culture of liberal consensus born in 1945 and repugnant to any non-conformist ideas.

The electoral results are brutal: the combined votes of the right-wing CDU/CSU and AfD far exceed the absolute majority; the anti-immigration vote captured by Sahra Wagenknecht further swells this camp. But a cordon sanitaire, similar to that known to the French, blocks populists’ access to power.

The Right is therefore organising itself ‘outside the walls’—in the metapolitical arena.

Seitenwechsel was born out of this necessity: a fair in the heart of Saxony-Anhalt—a region that could swing to the Right in 2026—where conservative and identitarian publishers and independent booksellers came together, united by their rejection of the stranglehold on freedom of expression in Germany.

The success exceeded expectations. The aisles displaying the various stands were packed, and the debate rooms were crowded—some listeners even sat on the floor. Among the most popular stands were JungEuropa Verlag, Antaios, and the dynamic magazine Compact. The conferences attracted a record audience, who came to hear figures as diverse as intelligence historian Hans-Georg Maaßen, novelist Uwe Tellkamp, and essayist Benedikt Kaiser, whose book Der Hegemonie entgegen: Gramsci, Metapolitik und Neue Rechte will be translated into French and presented at the annual symposium of the Iliade Institute on April 11th, 2026.

This triumph did not fail to provoke the fury of opponents. A petition with 30,000 signatures, supported by a majority of the Halle city council—including the ‘apolitical’ mayor—called for the outright cancellation of the event. In vain. The organisers stood their ground, braving the climate of intellectual terror that reigns across the Rhine.

For it must be remembered that in Germany, Antifa, often infiltrated by the intelligence services, legally station themselves at the entrance to right-wing demonstrations to photograph faces and then launch campaigns of denunciation aimed at causing ordinary citizens to lose their jobs.

This harassment is encouraged at the highest level. On November 9, 2025, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Social Democrat Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier took a step further by calling for a ban on the AfD: “Anyone who opposes the liberal core of our Constitution cannot be a judge, a teacher or a soldier. Enemies of the Constitution can also be excluded from the offices of district administrator or mayor.” These words resonate as an institutional threat against all dissent.

A decisive battle is thus unfolding in Germany, as it is in France, for civil liberties and, more broadly, for the identity and sovereignty of Europeans on their own soil.

Seitenwechsel is not just a book fair: it is a Dammbruch, a breach in the dam. The ‘outside the walls’ right wing has shown that it can rally, publish, debate—and stand up for itself. The message is clear: the old continent has not yet had its final say.

Romain Petitjean is the coordinator of the Institut Iliade, a think tank dedicated to European civilisation.
Antoine Dresse is the head of the publishing division of the Institut Iliade and host of the YouTube channel EgoNon.

Leave a Reply

Our community starts with you

Subscribe to any plan available in our store to comment, connect and be part of the conversation!