The new mayor of Raguhn-Jessnitz, Hannes Loth, from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. DPA via Europa Press (DPA via Europa Press)
Just a week after winning its first election in a German district, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has won its first local election and will have a full-time mayor. The town of Raguhn-Jessnitz in the state of Saxony-Anhalt this Sunday also elected Hannes Loth, a leading AfD MP for the eastern German state, as a member of the state parliament.
Loth will leave his seat to devote himself to the community of 8,800, making him the first far-right mayor. Last year the training got another town hall, but it was a very small town where the mayor’s work is done on a voluntary basis, while the owner goes on with his usual work. Due to the illness of the previous municipal council, early elections were held in Raguhn-Jessnitz.
The German political class is watching with concern the advance of the far right, which is still very limited compared to other European countries. It is the second win in a few days, allowing the AfD to govern at the local level, despite strict hygiene measures taken by all other parties. Like last week in Sonneberg (Thuringia), all formations joined forces to support the other candidate, the independent Nils Naumann, but containment efforts were in vain. Loth won with 51% of the votes, with a turnout of 61.5%.
AfD leaders stressed on their Twitter accounts that Loth was their first mayor, although technically there had already been another, in Burladingen (Baden-Württemberg), a municipality of 12,000 people in the west of the country. There, Harry Ebert, who presented himself as an independent and has governed since 1999, joined the far-right party during his tenure in 2018. At the time, the city was considered the only stronghold of the extreme right. Ebert resigned in 2020 and the AfD has not touched power since then.
Hannes Loth, a 42-year-old farmer, is not only controversial because of his membership in a party suspected of extremism by German secret services. During the pandemic, he organized protests against the federal government’s restrictive policies while making money at the same time. While performing with his blue truck and calling out the masses first against Angela Merkel and later against Olaf Scholz, he ran several corona testing sites that brought him huge profits. In addition to his salary as a member of the state parliament, he declared private donations of between 80,000 and 120,000 euros to the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt.
Unlike Robert Stuhlmann, the new right-wing extremist District Administrator of the district of Sonneberg, Loth did not conduct a federal election campaign against the three-party government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals under Scholz, but concentrated on local issues. Among other things, he spoke about the resources of the municipal fire department and the centers for the elderly and other topics that fall within his area of responsibility. After the results were announced, the new mayor assured that he would also support those who did not vote for him. His opponent Nils Naumann said he didn’t care that the mayor came from the AfD. “It’s about facts and objectivity, not about the party,” he said.
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A study presented last week by the University of Leipzig shows that in the east of Germany, which was under the dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for 40 years, widespread right-wing extremist attitudes and disenchantment with democracy are widespread. The survey asked whether citizens agreed with statements such as “What Germany needs now is a strong party that represents the national community as a whole”. In this case 26.3% agreed and another 24.9% partly agreed. More than 20% of those questioned felt comfortable with the sentence: “Without the extermination of the Jews, Hitler would be considered a great statesman.”
The penetration of these attitudes as well as the disillusionment with the political system and the rejection of the ecological turnaround policy of the federal government mean that the AfD achieves 20% of the election intentions in some nationwide polls. This puts them in second place, only behind the CDU Christian Democrats and ahead of the SPD Social Democrats. In several eastern federated states, they are polled at over 30%, making them the force with the most votes. Three of them, Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, will elect new parliaments next year.
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