The AfD victory in Thuringia echoes the Nazi win there in 1930

Sunday night (1 September) was a huge success for the relatively young hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

For the first time since 1945, a German far-right party has won regional elections at a state-level. In the state of Thuringia, it received almost 33 percent of the vote, leaving the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) way behind with 23 percent.

In Saxony, it received 30.6 percent, just fractionally behind the CDU winners at 31.9 percent.

For some observers, the rise of the Alternative for Germany is specific to the country's former communist East. Since German reunification in 1990, the party that has won the most elections in Thuringia is Die Linke (The Left), which is often seen as a far-left populist protest party.

The Left has its roots in the former East German ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and became increasingly successful after 2004, following the electoral success of the CDU throughout the 1990s.

But this time, the Linke lost 18 percent of the votes, leaving it behind on the fourth place even behind its split-off BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), a new party established by a former prominent former Linke-member with strong far-right leanings in regard to immigration.

BSW went from nowhere to receiving almost 16 percent of the vote.

But there is more to be said regarding the electoral success of the AfD than the demise of the leftists, especially for Thuringia.

This victory has historical significance. It was in the Thuringian state election of 1930 that the Nazi Party had its first success. It became the second-largest party in the regional elections gaining 11 out of 53 seats, which allowed them to form a coalition government and appoint the first minister of the interior and education. This served as a first testing ground for many of their policies, before they came to power at the national level three years later.

Enter Björn Höcke, fascist

And indeed, Thuringia’s AfD is infamous for its regional leader, Björn Höcke, who is widely seen as one of Europe's most radical far-right ideologues.

The German government’s domestic secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, categorised his faction of the AfD to be a suspect right-wing extremist organisation, which puts it under the secret service’s surveillance.

In contrast to the AfD’s tactical policy to portray itself as a shield against antisemitism, Höcke is widely seen as being a racist and fascist. A court ruling decided that describing Höcke as fascist was not slanderous.

Due to his antisemitic positions, several high ranking leaders attempted to expel Höcke from the AfD, but failed. His success will probably benefit Höcke and his radical wing even more.

While theoretically, the AfD could form a coalition with either the CDU, or with the newly-founded BSW, no party publicly agrees to form a government with the AfD.

Fascists win youth vote

But this de facto cordon sanitaire might help the AfD in the long run to increase its electoral success, especially given the circumstances that it won most of the young votes between 18 and 25.

But the other problem is the lack of an alternative. Together, the Left, BSW, and the centre-left SPD don’t have enough seats to form a coalition.

And it is questionable whether the Christian Democrats would be willing to join foreces with a post-communist party like the Left and BSW, since the CDU has ruled out any coalition with the Left in the past.

Arithmetically, a coalition between the AfD and BSW would be possible, but is quite unlikely.

The victory of the AfD in Thuringia raises many questions, but is certainly a turning point in for Germany’s political landscape. Decisions to be made by many stakeholders might determine important new pathways for Germany’s political future.