A month after Germany’s far-right AfD scored a decisive victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, the party’s candidate Tobias Rausch has been elected as parliament speaker there too.
Not since World War Two has a far-right party secured the post of speaker, and protesters outside the building in Magdeburg held up banners saying, “Never again is now”.
Although the AfD fell three seats short of a majority in last month’s election, Rausch, 35, comfortably won Tuesday’s vote with the support of 9 MPs from other parties.
“The days of political firewalls should be a thing of the past,” Rausch said after the vote, rejecting a post-war consensus in German politics not to work with the far right.
This was the first time since last month’s state vote that Saxony-Anhalt’s newly elected representatives had gathered in parliament, and regional Greens party leader Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz said “a line has been crossed” with the election of a far-right speaker of parliament, and it was a watershed moment.
“We will not let ourselves be intimidated, and we will not sit by when rights are curtailed either here or for people in the state,” she said.
The AfD is considered pro-Russian and anti-immigrant, with plans to segregate child refugees in schools, as well as intolerant towards the LGBT community.
Within Saxony-Anhalt it is also classed as “right-wing extremist” by domestic intelligence, a description rejected by party leaders. Until now its members have sat on the right fringe of the state parliament, but ahead of Tuesday’s inaugural session it successfully argued that it should now sit in the centre.
