The Intellectual Insolvency of the People's Victim Role: How the AfD Instrumentalizes Dementia#
One has to look at the mental balancing act of the right-wing extremist scene in Germany almost with a mixture of deep disgust and fascinated pity. When one's own national fantasies of omnipotence threaten to collapse in the face of unadorned reality, the brown echo chamber assembles its truths from the moist mud of one's own paranoia.
The latest, intellectually completely bankrupt masterpiece from the propaganda forge of the far-right AfD state association of Saxony-Anhalt under the aegis of Ulrich Siegmund: The preventive and completely hysterical "electoral fraud" in the nursing home. It's the pathetic political equivalent of a tearful toddler who knocks the game board over with the human-annoying-not-roaring, even before the first damn dice has even touched the table.
The mulled scandal in the Martha House#
The mechanics of this staged, cheap scandal are so incomprehensibly transparent that one wonders whether the fanatical target group of the AfD is actually already completely overwhelmed when tying shoes in the morning. The starting point of the concerted smear campaign was the senior citizens' residence "Marthahaus" in Dessau. The nephew of a 95-year-old, severely demented resident felt betrayed because his aunt's postal ballot papers had allegedly been shredded and her vote had already been cast without his knowledge. Incidentally, the fact that a "creaky" signature could be seen on the postal ballot application in question, as the outraged nephew complained in the election office, is less the irrefutable proof of a large-scale green world conspiracy in a senior citizens' residence than the banal anatomical consequence of a 95-year-old body.
But the AfD leadership in Saxony-Anhalt immediately smelled folkish morning air and immediately constructed the gigantic, insane narrative of a widespread, far-left electoral fraud from this unexplained individual case. In a video on Platform X, AfD top candidate Ulrich Siegmund conspiratorially whispered that specifications were being made here from a "certain left or green corner". In a rare touch of unintentional honesty, however, Siegmund then pushed back exactly the sentence that perfectly sums up the entire mental misery of this party: "You can't prove that. But we all know how that often works."
Translated from the whining AfD speech into reality, this means: We do not have a fraction of evidence, we lack any facts, but the insolent claim simply fits too well into our fascist stab-in-the-back legend not to be mercilessly exploited. In order to make the smear theater perfect, state chief Martin Reichardt stylized himself as an emotional angry citizen and publicly stated that the coverage of the nursing home made him "deeply angry". The party also fabricated unrestrained "criminal political activists" who allegedly work disguised as nurses in retirement homes and manipulate the helpless residents.
The hard impact on the ground of justice#
The fundamental problem with the smear campaign of Siegmund, Reichardt and their deluded followers? The merciless reality of a functioning constitutional state. The competent public prosecutor's office in Dessau-Roßlau officially closed the investigation in this specific case on 4 September 2026 after meticulous examination. The devastating conclusion of the investigators: There is absolutely no evidence of manipulation of the postal vote or stolen ballots.
The absurd idea that completely underpaid and chronically overburdened nurses in Saxony-Anhalt would risk up to five years' imprisonment under Section 107a of the Criminal Code for a single manipulated ballot can hardly be surpassed in ridicule anyway. Anyone who has ever set foot in the real life of nursing knows that the staff there does not have the time capacity to orchestrate a highly complex, far-left electoral fraud ring out of the medicine room. The widely announced "election fraud" was nothing more than hot, brown air from front to back, blown off by a troop of far-right panic-mongers who have to hide their own political incompetence behind fictitious crimes.
Contempt for humanity as an editorial concept#
But nefarious facts, discontinued investigations and the statements of the judiciary have never stopped the new real swamp from excessive rumination. If the public prosecutor's office simply does not deliver the fraud hoped for, the media cesspool of the right-wing extremist scene has to be tackled. On the YouTube channel of Compact magazine, an elderly lady was then allowed to cheerfully and completely unchallenged in a special broadcast about the fact that demented and disabled people in Germany actually have the outrageous audacity to vote.
In this bizarre, toxic echo chamber, the pure existence of inclusive suffrage is stylized as an acute threat to "true" democracy. In remembrance of the intellectually challenged gentlemen in the blue suits, the Federal Constitutional Court already unambiguously stated in 2019 that the previously applicable exclusions from the right to vote for people under comprehensive supervision are simply unconstitutional. The non-profit BIVA Nursing Protection Association makes it unequivocally clear: In principle, no one per se may be excluded from the election – neither the elderly nor people with dementia or cognitive disability. And yes, technical assistance with voting is perfectly legal, as long as the election decision itself is made by the entitled party. So when the AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla complains in the media that some of the residents of the home are being "led by the pen", he is basically only complaining loudly about a completely legal, democratically intended process of inclusion. However, in the racist and ableist delusion of the extreme right, legal inclusion is systematically rephrased as criminal fraud.
The Preventive Alibi Building of a Loser Troop#
This entire pathetic, staged circus not only reveals a deeply inhuman, disgusting anti-democratic worldview. It shows an ideology in which old, sick or disabled people are obviously only regarded as useless ballast and second-class citizens from whom fundamental basic rights should be withdrawn according to purely national opinion.
Rather, it is the completely transparent, preventive construction of a cowardly stab-in-the-back legend. Even before the actual election, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is preparing itself and its blind supporters for a result that may simply not be enough for the wet imagination of the absolute majority. Instead of taking even a shred of political responsibility for its own toxic agenda, this party would rather delegitimize the entire democratic process and, by the way, place an entire, hard-working profession under vile general suspicion. It is the classic, worn-out tactic of fascists from the textbook for dictatorial apprentices: If democracy does not deliver the desired result, it does not question its own, misanthropic politics, but simply declares the system illegitimate. Anyone who so obviously and desperately sabotages the foundations of a democratic election with fictitious fairy tales is not afraid of alleged electoral fraud. He has a bare, naked panic in front of the adult voter.