AfD frontrunner in Saxony-Anhalt draws upbeat campaign, but staff's neo-Nazi past raises questions
Ahead of the Saxony-Anhalt state election, AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund's poll numbers sit around 40 percent, but his campaign is shadowed by revelations that several of his parliamentary staffers once belonged to a banned neo-Nazi youth group.
Germany's eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt is heading toward a state election in which AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund has run what observers describe as an unusually upbeat, positive campaign, one credited with mobilizing even voters who typically stay home. Polls currently put the party at around 40 percent support, though it remains uncertain whether that will be enough to secure an absolute majority — the only outcome the party has said it would accept.
At the same time, the campaign is drawing scrutiny over the backgrounds of staff working alongside Siegmund. According to reporting, at least four employees of the AfD's state parliamentary group were previously active members of Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend, a neo-Nazi youth organization that has since been banned. Among those named are the parliamentary group's chief of staff, Patrick Harr, and its legal counsel, Laurens Nothdurft. Neither the staffers in question nor Siegmund himself has publicly distanced themselves from this past affiliation.
Rifts within the AfD's youth wing
Separately, the AfD's youth organization, Generation Deutschland, recently held its federal congress in Magdeburg, where notable policy divisions with the parent party surfaced. Chairman Jean-Pascal Hohm openly contradicted party leader Alice Weidel on European policy, even as the youth wing pushed radical demands for the deportation of millions of people.
These developments are discussed in "Inside AfD," a weekly podcast hosted by POLITICO's Pauline von Pezold and WELT journalist Frederik Schindler, which examines the inner workings of Germany's most controversial political party.
