By Ulf Poschardt
Why The Levant Files is Republishing This Piece Today
The Levant Files has chosen to republish this article today because its themes resonate strongly with current events, arriving simultaneously with the far-right Alternative for Germany's (AfD) historic electoral victory, specifically highlighting the political earthquake in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. It provides a distinct, highly critical perspective on the reaction of established political structures to this major shift in the political landscape that affects not only Germany itself but whole Europe and consequently the Levant.
The Suicide of the Political Elites
The political culture of the Berlin Republic is nearing its end. The disastrous election outcome for the country's elites reveals how far they have decoupled themselves from reality.
The political culture of the Berlin Republic is nearing its end. The disastrous election outcome for the cultural, political, and media elites revealed a quiet despair within themselves. In talk shows and live interviews, one witnessed their staggering, their sinking into rhetorical clichés and empty shells of insignificance. Some clueless individuals, like the General Secretary of the SPD, seek refuge in an ambitionlessness that has tipped into the grotesque when they sugarcoat a single-digit result. Others, like the new CDU General Secretary, are on the verge of crying, and Ms. Brantner from the Greens stuck to her eternally smart-alecky, canned slogans.
The party leader of the Left, the most untalented among the talent-free in this party, insulted Tino Chrupalla, and even the uncharismatic AfD boss was easily able to counter it. The media frontrunners of "our democracy" and the supposed "democratic center" helplessly clucked the same rhetoric they had already regurgitated before.
The speechlessness on election night and the morning after was dressed up in many words. But for most spectators of this spectacle, it is evident that the perceptual apparatus of these elites is no longer functioning. They have long since disconnected themselves from political and social reality – and developed into a self-referential system of moral arrogance and economic incompetence.
Political Suicide of the Center
The elites resemble those high-rise suicidals who jump from the roof and, at the level of the 43rd floor, tell themselves that everything has gone well so far. The past ten years were a political suicide of the democratic center in installments. Admonishers and critics were ridiculed just as much as those voices from their own ranks who pointed out that things could not go on like this – neither with migration, nor with the economy, nor with public broadcasting, nor with the NGOs, nor with the lack of reforms. Andreas Rödder, who was dead right with his strategy of "red lines," was thrown to the media mainstream by opportunists within his own ranks.
The great thing about democracy is that such political, cultural, and social aberrations are eventually drastically corrected. One must imagine the plump representatives of these elites almost prototypically like the lead candidate of the Greens, who, in her cheerful simple-mindedness and kindergarten outfits, represents that upper middle class in Germany which, given its qualifications, has always had it much too good when in doubt.
The Greens may feel like the winners of these elections because, once again, through an almost penetrating monoculture supported by NGOs and public broadcasters, they have managed to sell their fun program and their merciless forty-year culture war against simple and normal people as the counter-model to the AfD. On Sunday evening, the big-city elites from the Green sphere were seen protesting in front of the Saxony-Anhalt state representation – for an AfD ban, naturally. Because the principle of "our democracy," as these people apparently believe, is that they get to decide who makes which democratic decisions. They still haven't gotten it. And their arrogance doesn't crumble even the day after. For them, the rule is: For us and our supporters, things can just carry on. The A15 civil servant positions are safe for now.
Only the outgoing Minister President Sven Schulze proved to be a fair loser and congratulated the election winner Ulrich Siegmund. Siegmund set new standards for the AfD with his election campaign, but also with his cheerful sovereignty. Against bourgeois evasiveness, he activated a post-bourgeois stoicism in dealing with the sometimes abysmal attacks from public broadcasters. He let the darling of the Berlin Republic, Mr. Köster from the "Heute-Show," run into a wall with a grin.
On behalf of his electorate, Siegmund plays the big-city arrogance back at the milieu that has its conceit financed by exactly those it rhetorically spits upon. Köster remains in his role's prose. He believes he is defending "our democracy" because it is his. Yet he is one of its gravediggers. Siegmund has turned Köster into a campaigner: for the AfD.
Siegmund is the more modern, more cosmopolitan representative of the East German provinces: His English is good in interviews, his suits fit perfectly, and even rhetorically he hardly allows himself any tasteless slip-ups. Just how radical the AfD has truly become is only revealed by its fringes. In any case, Siegmund has not adopted their ultra-radical sound. The fact that he was able to win the elections so clearly with this approach will certainly act as a signal within the AfD. Hard times are likely ahead for the uncharismatic character masks in this party. That includes party leader Alice Weidel.
The Chancellor is named Friedrich Merz. He is the CDU chairman, and he will not be either for very much longer. The grumbling within the party is growing louder, and the last party soldiers are turning away from him in disappointment. His track record of failure is unprecedented, and nobody believes his talk of reforms, delivered as recently as Saturday evening, anymore. Not even his closest circle. In order not to dismantle the campaigners in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the Union is now at 8 percent, and in Berlin, where the brave and smart Stefan Evers is at least in the lead, the criticism of the Chancellor and CDU chairman will probably only get really loud afterwards.
Counterfactual Babble About Reforms
The Union is crawling toward political insignificance if it just carries on now. Even worse, however, is the continuation of the counterfactual babble about the reforms that are supposedly coming at some point. The last contingent of the loyalists on election night offered a cascade of first-class self-dismantling. The Merzians were completely blank, clueless, erratic. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, resigned themselves to their downfall. Lars Klingbeil questioned – hahaha! – the pace of reform, and Bärbel Bas saw everything quite relaxed. At the same time, the so-called tax reform is an unprecedented humiliation for top performers and the upper middle class. The Union's coalition partner treats them poorly too. And the Union puts up with it all.
Let us come to the pre-political space. In terms of realpolitik, the biggest lever for the AfD, after taking over the office of Minister President, would be to immediately terminate the state broadcasting treaty. That alone would probably have made the decision worthwhile for the vast majority of AfD voters. The applause for this decisive break with post-war history would likely be immense deep into the bourgeois center. What so-called comedians, so-called news anchors, and talk show editorial teams have gotten away with is unprecedented.
The old elites didn't listen when the people repeatedly made it clear that things couldn't go on like this. Worse still: The mockery and the scorn, the contempt with which media-celebrated streamers observed and commented on the East German right like spiders and lizards in their advanced seminar terrarium – this arrogant, ethnological gaze upon the supposedly wild East Germans and their bizarre ideas of normality has ensured that the climate is so poisoned. The repressions against the right have radicalized this right like hardly anywhere else in Europe. That can be frightening. But the "carry on" of the old elites is at least as dangerous.
Germany stands where it actually never wanted to stand again after 1945: at a dangerous precipice.
*It was published first on September 7, 2026, in Die Welt and translated by The Levant Files to English. The opinions expressed in it do not necessarily align with the editorial line of TLF.