Every day, without exception, Saxony-Anhalt loses inhabitants enough to fill a city bus. A territory with just over two million people, this state of the former East Germany has seen its population decrease by 25% since reunification. And if it weren’t for immigration in the last decade, this demographic hemorrhage would have turned into an apocalypse, with a drop of more than 35%. The equivalent in Catalonia would mean having gone from 6 million inhabitants in 1987 to just over four million now. The state ranks last in per capita income in Germany, and the gap separating it from the richest, the city-state of Hamburg, is much greater than that between Extremadura and Madrid, the two Spanish territories equivalent in terms of wealth. It also has the highest unemployment rate.
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Despite its undeniable demographic crisis, the majority of voters in Saxony-Anhalt chose Ulrich Siegmund’s party in the recent elections, whose primary goal is to expel immigrants. What explains this rejection of a vital injection for sustaining basic social activity? In some districts, the foreign population among medical staff in hospitals and clinics reaches 30%. The same occurs in tourist areas, where Ukrainian, Syrian, Azerbaijani, or Romanian immigrants are concentrated. It is not very attractive to be a citizen of the leading European power if you live in industrious Halle.
It is possible that the vote expresses frustration at seeing the economic progress of newcomers, in contrast to the chronic stagnation of locals, trapped in a spiral of helpless social legacy and demotivation, masked by false narratives about immigrant violence, loss of cultural identity, and diversion of aid to non-authentic Germans.
A feeling of shipwreck without a future, of being second-class Germans, transformed into hatred and allowing the leaders of Alternative for Germany (AfD)
– chaired by Alice Weidel, granddaughter of an SS member who was a military judge suspected of responsibility for thousands of executions – to defend discourses about the treatment of immigrants that barely differ from those used by the Nazis in the 1930s to talk about Jews. Key words, like a secret code for insiders, with complicit meaning for those close, sinister for those considered targets: remigration, deportation, foreigners alien to German culture…
The demographic and economic patterns of this state are also seen in areas of Catalonia
This indifference of voters could indicate that perhaps the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) should not have implemented an effective denazification policy after World War II; even less intense than that of the western part. Even today, it remains controversial among historians to what extent the German population was enthusiastic about the Third Reich and how much was due to fierce repression.
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Although the AfD is the most voted party among workers, in its broadest definition, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, its program barely flirts with populist economic proposals to address voters who mostly declare economic difficulties and are very worried about inflation, unlike voters of other parties, who say they are doing better.
The far-right opposes state intervention in the economy, advocates drastic cuts to social programs, rejects tax increases on the richest, and does not want to hear about rent controls. A deep distrust of the state emerges in the vote for the AfD. Two important points: it supports rearmament, a central element of any nationalist program with a strong tradition in Germany and linked to a sector of big business, and it proposes that public pensions be complemented with capitalization plans, of interest to big finance. A set of proposals with a marked ultraliberal bent that must have played some role in the growing erosion of middle-class votes for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU as elections are held. The local complement: rejection of support for Ukraine and alignment with Russia, until before the war a supplier of cheap gas for the state’s main industry, threatened with extinction.
The German state loses every day a population equivalent to the passengers of a bus
What happened in the Saxony-Anhalt elections expresses the very poor socioeconomic conditions suffered by that territory and which are quite common with those of the other four that were part of East Germany. And the frustration with established parties, unable to improve things after long decades in government. But also that it is very early to consider this the start of an unbeatable march on Berlin. Not all of Germany is Saxony-Anhalt. But they undoubtedly set the trend in German and also European politics.
Frustration is not exclusive to any European territory, from France to Italy. In Catalonia, for example, it is a latent impulse since the last major financial crisis, which exposed the weakness of its economic bases and revealed a reality of downward social mobility and loss of status among broad sectors of the population. In part, that was the start of the procés, whose failed closure did not heal the wound. The grievance against Madrid is now complemented by fear of an identity erasure due to immigration present like the devil of modern times. Underlying this is a scenario of difficult living conditions, comparative grievances, deterioration of public services, loss of control over one’s own existence, and cultural fear. A driving force that feeds movements like the Catalan Alliance of Sílvia Orriols, the mayor of Ripoll, also in demographic and industrial decline, like other regions of the country, and which offers simple answers to complex problems. A headache for the political class governing Catalonia; and for the economic elites. With permission from Donald Trump and Elon Musk, of course.
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