Could the right-wing extremist AfD govern a German state for the first time?
Democracy, Conflict, & Governance Foreign Politics & Elections
民主、冲突与治理 外国政治与选举
On September 6, the 2.1 million citizens of the small eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt could set off a political earthquake with reverberations all the way to Berlin if, as current polls predict, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) wins the statewide election.
9 月 6 日，如果极右翼的德国另类选择党 (AfD) 在全州选举中获胜，那么德国东部小州萨克森-安哈特州的 210 万公民可能会引发一场政治地震，其影响会一直延伸到柏林。
An assessment by Germany’s domestic intelligence service that the national AfD is “confirmed right-wing extremist” is currently under judicial review , but a Saxony-Anhalt intelligence report says the classification of the party’s state chapter as confirmed extremist is final.
德国国内情报部门对国家选择党“确认为右翼极端分子”的评估目前正在接受司法审查，但萨克森-安哈尔特州情报报告称，将该党所在州分会定性为确认的极端分子是最终决定。
“Its leaders,” asserts the document, have made numerous “Islamophobic, racist, and antisemitic statements,” and it adds that the state party “wants to abolish representative democracy in its current state.” For the tens of millions of Germans for whom citizenship is indivisible from accepting responsibility for the mass atrocities perpetrated by their country under National Socialist rule, this is an appalling prospect.
该文件声称，“其领导人”发表了许多“仇视伊斯兰教、种族主义和反犹太主义的言论”，并补充说，该缔约国“希望废除目前状态下的代议制民主”。对于数以千万计的德国人来说，这是一个令人震惊的前景，因为他们的公民身份与承担国家社会主义统治下的大规模暴行的责任密不可分。
It is no less concerning for many of their European neighbors.
对于许多欧洲邻国来说，这同样令人担忧。
The AfD is currently polling at around 41% in Saxony-Anhalt.
目前，德国选择党 (AfD) 在萨克森-安哈特州的民意调查结果为 41% 左右。
An absolute majority of votes, and thus the position of minister-president for its top candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, is within reach.
获得绝对多数票，其头号候选人乌尔里希·西格蒙德 (Ulrich Siegmund) 的部长兼总统职位已指日可待。
The runners-up, the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Left Party (the far-left successor to the former East German communist party), are far behind at 23% and 11.5%.
排名第二的中右翼基督教民主党（CDU）和左翼党（前东德共产党的极左继承者）则以23%和11.5%的支持率远远落后。
But whether the AfD can govern alone will hinge on the performance of smaller parties, whose parliamentary seats will be redistributed if they fail to surmount the 5% threshold: the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), at 8.5%; the Greens, at 6%; the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), at 4%; and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), at 3%.
但德国选择党能否单独执政将取决于较小政党的表现，如果它们未能突破5%的门槛，议会席位将被重新分配：中左翼的社会民主党(SPD)为8.5%；中左翼的社会民主党(SPD)为8.5%；绿党，6%；极左翼的 Sahra Wagenknecht 联盟 (BSW)，占 4%；和自由民主党 (FDP)，为 3%。
Indeed, some national initiatives are encouraging Saxony-Anhalt’s voters to cast their ballots tactically for these parties to keep the AfD out of government.
事实上，一些国家倡议正在鼓励萨克森-安哈特州的选民在战术上为这些政党投票，以将德国选择党排除在政府之外。
(The academic vote simulator Projekt Zweitstimme has the probability of an AfD-only government at 33%.)
（学术投票模拟器 Projekt Zweitstimme 得出只有 AfD 政府的可能性为 33%。）
Should the AfD fail to achieve an outright majority, the task of organizing a CDU-led governing majority faces almost insurmountable difficulties.
如果选择党未能获得绝对多数，那么组织一个由基民盟领导的执政多数的任务将面临几乎难以克服的困难。
All the other parties—except BSW, whose leader has offered to play kingmaker for an AfD-led government—maintain a “firewall,” or “Brandmauer,” against any form of cooperation with the AfD.
所有其他政党——除了BSW（其领导人已提出为德国选择党领导的政府扮演造王者角色）——都保持着“防火墙”或“布兰德莫尔”，反对与德国选择党进行任何形式的合作。
(The ban is functionally moot in many municipalities and districts.) The CDU has tied its hands even more by also excluding any coalition with the Left Party.
（该禁令在许多城市和地区实际上没有实际意义。）基民盟还排除与左翼党的任何联盟，从而进一步束缚了自己的手脚。
The clock will be ticking, as state law dictates that a new legislature must be constituted within 30 days of the election.
时间紧迫，因为州法律规定必须在选举后 30 天内组建新的立法机构。
Even if the CDU, which has headed several coalition governments in Saxony-Anhalt over the past 24 years, manages to pull together a coalition or rally the votes for a minority government led by incumbent Minister-President Sven Schulze—whether by relying on votes from the Left Party or poaching AfD state parliamentarians—stable, productive government will likely remain elusive.
即使在过去24年里领导萨克森-安哈特州多个联合政府的基民盟能够组建一个联盟或为现任部长兼总统斯文·舒尔茨领导的少数派政府集选——无论是依靠左翼党的选票还是挖走德国选择党的州议员——稳定、富有成效的政府可能仍然难以实现。
Profound disagreements on policy issues would guarantee severe tensions in such a cooperation.
政策问题上的深刻分歧将导致这种合作的严重紧张。
The state AfD leadership projects optimism that it will govern Saxony-Anhalt.
德国选择党领导层对其治理萨克森-安哈特州表示乐观。
The 35-year-old Siegmund, a glib salesman with a degree in business psychology who once cofounded a company for room fragrances, has run a remarkably successful campaign.
35 岁的西格蒙德是一位拥有商业心理学学位的能言善辩的推销员，曾与人共同创办了一家室内香水公司，他的营销活动非常成功。
He has built it on discipline, personal charm, and friendly evasiveness when prodded on policy questions.
他的纪律、个人魅力以及在被问到政策问题时友好地回避是其基础。
His chief ideologue and deputy Hans-Thomas Tillschneider is rather less polished.
他的首席理论家兼副手汉斯·托马斯·蒂尔施奈德 (Hans-Thomas Tillschneider) 则不太成熟。
After he tried to quash a video clip that showed a Russian army mug in his office, more clips and posts surfaced: other Russian memorabilia , Tillschneider waving a Russian flag, Tillschneider yelling “our enemies don’t sit in Moscow, they sit in Magdeburg and Berlin!”
在他试图取消一段在他办公室里展示俄罗斯军队马克杯的视频片段后，更多的片段和帖子浮出水面：其他俄罗斯纪念品，蒂尔施奈德挥舞着俄罗斯国旗，蒂尔施奈德大喊“我们的敌人不坐在莫斯科，他们坐在马格德堡和柏林！”
Both Siegmund and Tillschneider have refused to disavow the AfD’s links to extremist movements like the Identitarian Movement (Identitäre Bewegung) or the Saxon Separatists (Sächsische Separatisten).
齐格蒙德和蒂尔施奈德都拒绝否认德国选择党与身份认同运动（Identitäre Bewegung）或撒克逊分离主义者（Sächsische Separatisten）等极端主义运动的联系。
Some of their own staffers once belonged to a neo-Nazi group.
他们自己的一些员工曾经属于新纳粹组织。
“Sieg!
“齐格！
Mund!” is a frequent refrain at AfD rallies across Saxony-Anhalt (Siegmund, for his part, claims to hear no resemblance to a certain historical slogan).
蒙德！”这是萨克森-安哈特州德国选择党集会上经常出现的口号（齐格蒙德则声称自己没有听到与某个历史口号有任何相似之处）。
When an AfD member of the European Parliament chased down and beat a 14-year-old boy who had sabotaged a campaign poster in August with a baseball bat, neither Siegmund nor the state AfD condemned the act.
8 月份，一名欧洲议会 AfD 成员追赶并殴打一名用棒球棒破坏竞选海报的 14 岁男孩，西格蒙德和国家 AfD 都没有谴责这一行为。
Siegmund’s pitch to voters is that the AfD will restore the country to “Germany, but normal.” Yet his party’s ideas about governance are anything but.
齐格蒙德向选民宣传的是，德国选择党将使国家恢复“德国，但正常”。然而，他的政党关于治理的想法却并非如此。
The AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt chapter published a stunningly radical 258-page “government program” in March, which The New York Times called “partly unworkable, far exceeding the power of a state government.” Many of its proposals would be familiar to MAGA voters: segregation or deportation of refugees, abolition of funding for public broadcasters, total overhaul of schools and law enforcement, no more wind farms, rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, rejection of historical guilt, overtures to Russia.
德国选择党萨克森-安哈尔特州分会在 3 月份发表了一份长达 258 页的极其激进的“政府计划”，《纽约时报》称其“部分不可行，远远超出了州政府的权力”。它的许多提议对 MAGA 选民来说是熟悉的：隔离或驱逐难民、取消对公共广播公司的资助、对学校和执法部门进行全面改革、不再建设风电场、取消 LGBTQ+ 权利、拒绝历史罪责、向俄罗斯示好。
It condemns the Bauhaus school of design—whose roots in Saxony-Anhalt trace back to the 1920s—in coded language reminiscent of Nazi-era attacks on “rootless cosmopolitans.”
它谴责了包豪斯设计学院——其根源可以追溯到 20 年代的萨克森-安哈尔特州——其隐晦的语言让人想起纳粹时代对“无根的世界主义者”的攻击。
The Halle Institute for Economic Research says that implementing the AfD party platform would cost 2.2 billion euros (about $2.5 billion) in excess of what the state budget provides annually.
哈雷经济研究所表示，实施 AfD 政党平台将花费 22 亿欧元（约合 25 亿美元），超出国家每年提供的预算。
Legal experts writing on the Verfassungsblog platform have argued that some of the program’s key components, such as its chapter on migration, would be unconstitutional .
在 Verfassungsblog 平台上撰文的法律专家认为，该计划的一些关键组成部分，例如有关移民的章节，将是违宪的。
Insiders have raised doubts that an AfD government could fill the 150 to 200 state leadership positions necessary to govern, despite the creation of a training school for AfD cadres in 2025.
尽管在 2025 年为 AfD 干部培训学校设立，但内部人士对 AfD 政府能否填补执政所需的 150 至 200 个国家领导职位表示怀疑。
Why the AfD—one of Europe’s most blatantly far-right parties, which is openly bent on changing the country’s constitutional order and has zero experience in democratic governance—has such appeal is a subject of intense debate in Germany.
德国选择党——欧洲最公然的极右政党之一，公开致力于改变国家的宪法秩序，并且在民主治理方面的经验为零——为何具有如此大的吸引力，这是德国激烈争论的话题。
It is the largest opposition party in the national legislature and leads the polls nationwide at 29% .
它是国家立法机构中最大的反对党，在全国民调中以 29% 的领先优势。
Its support is strongest in the former East Germany, but its origins are in the western states, where its appeal is growing.
它的支持在前东德最为强烈，但其起源于西部各州，并且其吸引力正在不断增长。
And while it was long considered a protest party, ideological conviction increasingly drives its voters.
尽管长期以来它一直被认为是一个抗议政党，但意识形态信念越来越多地驱动着它的选民。
Analysts point to a range of factors: former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “triangulation” and liberalization of the CDU, which left the right uncovered; economic inequality, weak civic infrastructure, and declining party identification; and resentment of what some critics call West Germany’s “colonization” of the former East after reunification in 1990.
分析人士指出了一系列因素：前总理安格拉·默克尔的“三角测量”和基民盟的自由化，让右翼没有受到保护；经济不平等、公民基础设施薄弱以及政党认同感下降；以及对 1990 年统一后一些批评家所说的西德对前东德的“殖民化”的不满。
Ulrich Siegmund himself—in a calculated appeal to Ostalgie (nostalgia for preunification East Germany)—is promising voters that an AfD government will bring back “our good old, safe Germany.” Numerous interviewers have asked him how this vision comports with Soviet occupation, the cruelty of the Communist Stasi police, or the rise of neo-Nazi skinheads who terrorized rural villages after the fall of the Berlin Wall, often armed with baseball bats ( Baseballschlägerjahre ), to no avail.
乌尔里希·齐格蒙德本人在精心策划的向 Ostalgie（东德统一前的怀旧情绪）中向选民承诺，选择党政府将带回“我们古老而安全的德国”。许多采访者问他，这种愿景与苏联的占领、共产主义史塔西警察的残酷，或者柏林墙倒塌后新纳粹光头党的崛起是否相符，这些新纳粹光头党经常手持棒球棒（Baseballschlägerjahre），对乡村进行恐怖袭击，但都无济于事。
Another area of fierce contention is what could be done to defend the state’s democratic institutions against unconstitutional attack.
另一个激烈争论的领域是如何保护国家的民主制度免受违宪攻击。
Central to Germany’s constitution (the Basic Law) is the principle of militant democracy: the constitutional order must not remain neutral when faced with forces trying to abolish it.
德国宪法（《基本法》）的核心是激进民主原则：宪法秩序在面对试图废除它的势力时不得保持中立。
A much-discussed possible safeguard provided for by the Basic Law would be an outright party ban, but the political and legal hurdles are extremely high.
《基本法》提供的一项备受讨论的可能保障措施是彻底禁止政党，但政治和法律障碍非常高。
There are also only two cases of a successful ban in postwar German history, both in the 1950s.
战后德国历史上也只有两起成功禁令的案例，均是在 20 世纪 50 年代。
Lawyers and practitioners across the country have been wargaming other ways to safeguard institutions and democratic processes in the case of the AfD gaining a foot in the door of power—or an AfD-run state attempting to block the passage of NATO troops moving to Europe’s eastern flank in case of a security contingency.
全国各地的律师和从业者一直在谋划其他方法来保护机构和民主进程，以防德国选择党踏入权力之门，或者德国选择党控制的国家试图阻止北约军队在安全紧急情况下进入欧洲东翼。
There are two further state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin on September 20, where the AfD polls at 37% and 18% , respectively; it has little to no chance of gaining power in either.
9 月 20 日，梅克伦堡-前波美拉尼亚州和柏林还将举行两场州选举，德国选择党的得票率分别为 37% 和 18%；它几乎没有机会在这两方面获得权力。
But if support for the CDU and SPD—who form the governing coalition in Berlin led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz—erodes in all three states, that could have national consequences.
但如果对基民盟和社民党（德国总理弗里德里希·梅尔茨领导的柏林执政联盟）的支持在这三个州都受到削弱，可能会产生全国性的后果。
Calls abound within the SPD for cochairs Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas, both of whom hold cabinet positions, to relinquish the party leadership in this case.
社民党内部普遍呼吁担任内阁职务的联合主席拉尔斯·克林贝尔（Lars Klingbeil）和巴尔贝尔·巴斯（Bärbel Bas）在此案中放弃党的领导权。
There have also been speculations within the CDU that Merz’s chancellorship might come into jeopardy.
基民盟内部也有人猜测默茨的总理职位可能会受到威胁。
The chancellor—who once promised to cut AfD support in half but instead has seen it double—is consistently unpopular ; so much so that his eastern German peers, including Schulze in Saxony-Anhalt, are keeping him at arm’s length.
这位财政大臣曾承诺将德国选择党的支持率削减一半，但实际情况却是支持率增加了一倍，他一直不受欢迎。以至于他的东德同行，包括萨克森-安哈尔特州的舒尔茨，都与他保持着一定的距离。
Meanwhile, the national AfD leadership is reveling in its prospects.
与此同时，德国选择党领导层对其前景充满信心。
Cochair Alice Weidel said in a prime-time television interview that her party seeks to rule the entire country, and that Saxony-Anhalt is “ only the beginning .” Indeed, the AfD is looking at a win-win—whether it cuts its teeth on state-level governance now and uses Saxony-Anhalt as a laboratory for radical change in the rest of the country, or whether it further twists the knife on establishment parties forced into unwieldy, ideologically disparate coalitions to keep it from power.
联合主席爱丽丝·韦德尔在黄金时段电视采访中表示，她的政党寻求统治整个国家，而萨克森-安哈尔特州“只是一个开始”。事实上，德国选择党正在寻求双赢——无论是现在就在国家层面的治理上努力，并利用萨克森-安哈尔特州作为全国其他地区彻底变革的实验室，还是进一步对被迫结成笨拙、意识形态不同的联盟以阻止其掌权的建制派政党施加进一步的压力。
Either outcome is likely to make Germany more introverted and less capable of decisive political action, at a time when its neighbors in Europe need it to be exactly the opposite.
这两种结果都可能使德国变得更加内向，并削弱其采取果断政治行动的能力，而此时其欧洲邻国却恰恰相反。