This year has been exactly a decade since the entry of hannes loth in the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). He was one of the first to get on the bandwagon of a party that came to light in 2013 and that, in ten years, has turned German politics upside down. In his day it was said that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) would never have another political party on their right. AfD has shown that the opposite is possible.
Already in times of Angela Merkel and the agreements that it reached to allow the bailouts of the euro zone countries hardest hit by the financial crisis ―such as Portugal, Spain, Greece or Ireland―, the CDU left million disappointed in the conservative political family. That disappointment was the breeding ground that saw the birth of the AfD.
Subsequent crises, such as the 2015 refugee crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic or the energy crisis, and the inflation derived from Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine have not stopped tilting the AfD to the right while their electoral support grows. In 2016, just three years after the AfD was born and Loth became a member of that formation, this 42-year-old man won a seat in the regional Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt.
An election campaign poster for Hannes Loth (AfD) in Raguhn-Jeßnitz on July 3.
In that institution, this father of a family with a professional past in the agricultural industry has made a political career. In fact, as a regional parliamentarian, he has served as an expert on agricultural issues. But nobody knows him for that role. If Loth’s name and surname are now on everyone’s lips in Germany, it is because he has just become the mayor of the small town where he is from: Raguhn-Jessnitz. He is the first AfD politician to win a town hall in the ten years of his party’s life.
Last Sunday the second and decisive vote was held in his city to determine who would be mayor of that small town, in which some 9,000 people live. Loth got hold of him 51.1% of the votes107 more than his rival, the independent Nils Naumann.
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It’s been two days of electoral hangover and Loth seems almost to regret the consequences of his success. “It’s a little weird, because we’re a small town. The media interest is uncomfortable. The most difficult thing, really, is the media attention. Being so much in the spotlight is not necessarily good. Because it’s too much for the people here,” Loth admits to EL ESPAÑOL.
A mayor to fix streets
Loth says that he would like to be “more focused on solve people’s problems” by Raguhn-Jeßnitz. Those issues have focused Loth’s attention on his campaign and no other business for which his party is often criticized, for example: criticism of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine in the face of the illegal Russian war of aggression, euroscepticism, criticism of the government’s refugee policies, defense of nuclear energy or his aversion to Islam.
An AfD supporter makes the fascist salute at an anti-government protest on October 8, 2022 in Berlin.
Loth’s bet has paid off. “I have taken care to listen to the citizens, what worries them and the problems that I can take care of; things like fixing streets that are in poor condition or getting more citizen participation in city decisions”, explains Loth. In another recent unprecedented political success for the AfD, in which Robert Sesselman it was made with the presidency of the district of Sonneberg (east of the country), yes that they counted more the subjects of national politics. Sesselmann campaigned on issues where a district manager can do little, such as “kill the euro” or “close the borders”.
Loth, for his part, says that these types of problems did not play any role in his election last Sunday. He has not exploited in the campaign the highly questioned management of the country that the chancellor is carrying out Olaf Schölz and its tripartite government, also made up of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the environmentalists of Los Verdes and the liberals of the FDP. What it has taken advantage of is the absence of other conservative forces in Raguhn-Jeßnitz. The CDU, in the first of the mayoral elections, only took 6% of the votes.
The sign at the entrance to Hoyersdorf in Raguhn-Jeßnitz, a municipality in the German region of Saxony-Anhalt.
“The CDU is no longer conservative”
With data like this, it seems normal for Loth to see the Endangered Christian Democracy, not only in your city, but also in Germany. “The CDU is going to disappear little by little. It is a party that no longer conservative. It has been carried away by the left. Those who want to vote conservative vote for the AfD,” says Loth.
It is true that in the almost three decades that Merkel directed the CDU, it was characterized by adopting the SPD program, the party with which her CDU governed twelve of the sixteen years that the chancellor was in power. But after the 2021 election disasterAt the controls of the CDU is Friedrich Merz, a more conservative politician who has come to be called the “anti-Merkel”.
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Merz, however, has run into a party endowed with muscle memory that charges to the left. “I don’t know anyone who really wants to redirect the CDU in a conservative direction. Not even Friedrich Mertz“, according to Loth. It is assumed that Merz wanted “divide in half” the percentages of vote for AfD. Well then, just over a year and a half after Merz took the reins of the CDU, AfD is stronger than ever. Proof of this are victories like Loth’s at Raguhn-Jeßnitz or Sesselmann’s at Sonneberg.
AfD, in fact, has come to occupy the post of second political force with greater support from the population in polls of voting intention. It is even attributed to him 21% electoral support, remaining, like the CDU, ahead of the rest of the Bundestag parties: SPD, The Greens, Liberals and the ultra-leftists of Die Linke. In the last general elections, the AfD got 10.3% of the vote.
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Immune to Merz’s intentions, it also does not seem to affect the AfD that the Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution, the intelligence services of the Ministry of the Interior, have it under its control. spotlight for his right-wing radicalism at the federal level and in several Länder. This, in addition to being a good argument for any party wanting to ally politically with the AfD, means that the communications of Loth party politicians can be tapped.
In Raguhn-Jeßnitz, Loth says not fear the consequences of that surveillance. “I don’t know if I’m going to be monitored, the game is not yet monitored although they consider it ‘suspicious’,” says Loth. “In any case, I show what I do on social networks, everything I do I do transparently and that is one of my strong points,” he concludes.
