Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is polling at approximately 40 percent in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, raising the prospect of a historic single-party majority government and highlighting deep divisions in German society that analysts say have been decades in the making. The party, which has been classified as "confirmed right-wing extremist" by the state's domestic intelligence agency, is campaigning on a platform that includes recriminalising abortion, banning rainbow flags in schools, stripping funding from left-wing organisations, and abolishing the constitutional right to asylum.

For observers who grew up in eastern Germany during the turbulent years following reunification in 1990, the rise of the AfD is neither surprising nor sudden. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a disorienting identity vacuum for many young people, particularly in rural areas where right-wing groups moved quickly to distribute propaganda materials at youth centres and schools. The neo-Nazi gangs of the so-called "baseball bat years" — a reference to the violent far-right street culture of the 1990s — have grown up, settled into ordinary lives, and in many cases found a political home in the AfD. Saxony-Anhalt's AfD lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, runs his campaign's online shop through a company operated by a man identified by the state's intelligence services as "one of the central figures of the far-right scene," with ties to both the neo-Nazi NPD youth wing and the Identitarian Movement.

The wider political culture in Germany is also coming under scrutiny. Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed concern in a recent television interview that the tone in parliament had reached a level of personal hostility previously associated only with the AfD and the hard left. Cultural sociologist Armin Nassehi has argued that substantive policy debates have given way to identity-driven culture wars in which everything becomes a proxy for moral positioning. A new anthology of essays by former left-wing intellectuals — including journalists and academics who once helped build Germany's progressive movement — documents a growing sense of alienation from a left they describe as dogmatic, intolerant, and disconnected from reality.

Why this matters: Germany's political centre faces pressure from both flanks. Critics on the left argue that the AfD's growth is the direct result of unresolved historical trauma — particularly the failure of institutions, police, and media to adequately confront far-right violence in eastern Germany after reunification. Critics on the right and centre argue that a moralising left has helped fuel the backlash by dismissing legitimate concerns and shutting down debate. What both sets of critics agree on is that the AfD's polling numbers reflect something more than a protest vote — they represent a consolidation of a political identity that has been quietly forming for thirty years, and that without serious reckoning, risks carrying a new generation along with it.