The Alternative for Germany’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt is only the latest, dark chapter in a tragedy that has been decades in the making. That doesn’t mean it’s not a deeply alarming moment for Germany and for Europe. With 43.8% of the vote, the far-right AfD has achieved a clear electoral victory.. Germany’s other parties have to confront its advance, not normalise it, and they should certainly skip the pearl-clutching dramatics, which show them as being even more out of touch with reality than they already are. 

Blaming the voters who supported the AfD doesn’t explain this result. Nor does defending the political establishment that has failed to address the insecurities and grievances driving millions of Europeans to see the AfD as their only hope.

The collapse of the CDU to just 17.2% is a telling verdict on the politics of Friedrich Merz and the wider German establishment. Yet centrists will not answer their own failure by moving further towards the politics of exclusion, nationalism and fear.

People are right to be angry about declining living standards, insecure work, unaffordable housing, inadequate public services and a political system that too often appears to serve the interests of the few.  

The far right offers them migrants and minorities to blame. What they deserve is a democratic alternative capable of challenging the economic and political structures that have produced this insecurity, and through that challenge produce real, tangible improvements for their lives.

The lesson of Saxony-Anhalt is therefore clear: Germany’s democratic parties abandon the failed politics that let it flourish. They will not defeat the AfD by defending the status quo. They will defeat it by democratising  our institutions, rebuilding public services, tackling inequality and offering people a credible vision of a Europe that works for the many, not the few.

The alternative to the far right cannot be resignation. It must be democracy, solidarity and real political change, something that DiEM25 and MERA25 have relentlessly echoed since their foundation. The far-right will continue its march to power until those who claim to oppose them get serious about the solutions that actually can.

The alternative to the far right cannot be resignation. It must be democracy, solidarity and real political change. And we are not asking other parties to deliver that change while we stand on the sidelines. We are building it ourselves.

On September 20, MERA25 will stand in Berlin’s district elections in Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg with a programme that names those profiting from the insecurity facing people in their everyday lives: Vonovia from unaffordable rents, Rheinmetall from public money that should be serving society. We say clearly: expropriate the landlords. Guarantee the jobs. Put people’s living standards before corporate profits and militarisation.

Two boroughs are a small start, and we know it. But they are a start we can make, and we are making it. Berliners can meet our candidates on September 12.

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