In Germany, Ulrich Siegmund Is Bringing the AfD to the Cusp of Power
New York Times · LC · trust 43/100
Ulrich Siegmund, 35, once sold air fresheners. Now his far-right party is the favorite to win a state election in eastern Germany on Sunday.
Listen · 9:50 min Share full article Ulrich Siegmund, center, is the lead candidate for the far-right party Alternative for Germany in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. The party is projected to finish first. Credit... Annegret Hilse/Reuters By Christopher F. Schuetze
Reporting from Tangermünde and Magdeburg, Germany
Now, that lawmaker, Ulrich Siegmund, has harnessed his online popularity to come closer to power than any other far-right politician in Germany since the Nazi era ended in 1945.
Mr. Siegmund, 35, a former air freshener salesman, is the lead candidate for the Alternative for Germany party in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in eastern Germany where the party is projected to finish first in a statewide election on Sunday.
If the party, known by its German initials, AfD, wins an outright majority, Mr. Siegmund will become the first far-right politician to govern a German state since the re-establishment of the country’s democracy nearly eight decades ago. That would be a convulsive moment for Germany’s postwar political system, which was designed in the aftermath of World War II to prevent politicians deemed extremist from ever taking office.
To the political establishment in Berlin, Mr. Siegmund’s party is an outcast. The domestic intelligence agency has labeled it as “suspected extremist,” an accusation it rejects as politically motivated. The party has said that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed mass deportations of immigrants. Several of its leaders are close to Russia, and some have made dog whistle comments about the Nazi era, including by minimizing the Holocaust and repeating Nazi slogans.
Mr. Siegmund himself has said, in a podcast interview with Politico , that he could not “presume to judge” if the Holocaust was humanity’s worst-ever crime, “because I can’t possibly come to terms with the entirety of human history.” He also declined to condemn supporters who chanted his surname, Siegmund, in the style of the Nazi salute, “Sieg Heil.”
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