Sincere congratulations to Saxony-Anhalt: You are the people#
My unconditional, heartfelt respect and deepest appreciation today goes to the 56.2 percent of voters in Saxony-Anhalt. In a gruelling social climate, characterised by constant media fire, calculated scaremongering and aggressive populism, you have maintained your attitude and proven your backbone. You have sent a powerful, unmistakable signal at the ballot boxes: An Ulrich Siegmund, his secured far-right cadres and the creeping normalization of ethnic ideologies do not have a majority in this country.
This 56.2 percent deserves not just polite applause, but our full, sincere gratitude. You have been at the forefront, defending the firewall of democracy where the pressure of the constitutional enemies was most felt. If the historical slogan "We are the people" still has an honest, incorruptible meaning today, it is precisely in your vote: You are the living, defensive civil society that stands for freedom, diversity, humanity and the preservation of our legal system.
This result now gives rise to a crystal-clear obligation for the Union. The eternal party-political tactics, the cowardly glance at reactionary edges and the constant temptation to dangle with anti-constitutional forces out of sheer lust for power must stop immediately. Anyone who claims to be a civic force in the middle must now unreservedly commit to the values of our Basic Law and put the focus back on the essentials: reliable, solution-oriented and empathetic politics for the real life realities of all citizens.
The Chronicle of Total Mental Loss#
While the election result gives the majority cause to breathe a sigh of relief, an inconvenient, deeply disturbing question remains in the room: What do you actually do with those figures who have left the social consensus so radically mentally, morally and emotionally that every rational argument on them bounces off ineffectively like rain on a weathered barn wall?
I was allowed to observe this phenomenon up close some time ago. A piece of rural decay: A couple, far from any civilization, in a courtyard in a Kaff in front of the Kaff, where the population scratches the double-digit range with hardship. He is the prototype of the embittered plaice egoist – a humble farmer who is next to himself, driven by pure profit madness, and in character, without flinching, willing to sell his own mother for a handful of copperlings, provided there is even a single buyer on this planet. She, spiritually now truly not blessed with the brightest candle on the birthday cake, spends her existence in a continuous loop of tearful whining, pseudo-spiritual hocus-pocus and the hysterical stepping of plots with the dowsing rod to chase away vicious earth rays.
Together, the two form a congenial monument to collective stupidity. Of course, they consider themselves the undisputed intellectual spearhead of the nation, by no means ordinary "sleeper sheep", and they are never embarrassed by an unsolicited lecture on alternative thought structures, BRD-GmbH myths or the true downfall of the West. One could almost think pityfully: Wonderful, let the two old people acidify in their provincial microcosm, where they are cared for at the bottom, until the family court also divorces the twenty-seventh peasant love marriage, while they marvel together at the sunsets under a supposedly chemtrail-infested sky.
Far from it. As luck would have it, I got a detailed insight into the private digital communication of the two. Exactly the kind of unfiltered correspondence that is conducted when people lull themselves into the deceptive certainty that no outsider will ever read along.
What struck me there was no longer spleeny, irradiated senior mania that you could shake your head at embarrassingly as you passed by. It was a deep-black, anti-democratic and abysmal fever dream. A rampant misanthropy that literally turned my stomach. For me personally, the two are ultimately completely strangers – figures from a distant orbit, from whom I have expected literally nothing positive, decent or constructive for years anyway. And yet they managed to disappoint me humanely on a level I didn't think possible.
And that's exactly what makes me shudder: If the insight into the moral decay of two basically strangers leaves me so disgusted – how incredibly cruel, painful and disruptive must this experience be for those who had real emotional ties to such people? How terrible must it be when parents, siblings or long-time friends have to witness how a formerly loved one gradually sinks into this brown, hateful delusion until there is nothing left of the original personality except dull anger and spite?
The Paranoia of Idyllic Nowhere#
You have to visualize the grotesque absurdity of this rural tragedy: Two pensioners in Kleinarschhausen squat in the middle of the scenic postcard idyll, surrounded by beautiful nature, saturated peace and fresh air, and they have absolutely nothing better to do on their remaining evening of life than to wipe through TikTok algorithms with shaky fingers for 14 hours a day to let right-wing extremists liquefy the rest of their brains. What a miserable, wasted existence.
And the absolute pinnacle of ridicule: At a godforsaken spot on earth, where no person with a migration background has ever voluntarily strayed in the whole of human history, these two push a xenophobic paranoia that has washed itself. In a courtyard where even one's own children no longer want to come to visit on Christmas Eve because they can no longer bear the toxic misery, one trembles with fervor at the alleged "alienation" and the evil "Muselmann". No one ever came to you, no one wants your dilapidated homestead, and no one will come in the future. They want to shout at these people: Calm down, put the damn smartphone down, don't make a mockery of yourselves in front of the whole of humanity and just enjoy your last few years instead of sacrificing your end of life as useful idiots for fascist slogans! But these words go unheard. And this is exactly where the circle closes to Saxony-Anhalt: Some people have simply drifted too far. They are lost.
No resentment for Saxony-Anhalt: Shake hands with the majority#
Precisely for this reason, I appeal to all democrats throughout Germany: please do not spread sweeping malice about Saxony-Anhalt. Does not reflexively beat an entire state from a safe, arrogant distance. I understand the first impulse of frustration after such election evenings all too well, but it is politically short-sighted and deeply unjust.
Blind bashing never hits the radicalized – they are already cognitively unable to grasp a text that goes beyond three words on a right-wing Sharepic. Such collective punishment only affects those 56.2 percent who have courageously and steadfastly opposed the brown wave. This democratic majority does not deserve ridicule, but our unreserved love, respect, encouragement and unwavering solidarity. It's damn hard to fly the flag on the ground when families and village communities are shattered by the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of these lost souls.
Standing together, drawing boundaries, building bridges#
Democrats, unite. We won this battle for sanity, even if it was damn close. Let's establish two clear, unambiguous guidelines for the future:
Consistent isolation of the unteachable: Stop wasting your precious life time, nerves and resources on those who have completely chosen to hate people. Do not argue with people who want to trample on the fundamental rights of others. Draws a crystal-clear line in everyday life: do not shop with them, do not place orders with their companies and leave them to the social cold that they themselves long for.
Warmth and support for reversers: But if someone succeeds in fighting their way out of this brown swamp on their own, who strips away the toxic delusion and wants to be a sincere part of our society again on the firm foundation of the Basic Law – we receive them with open arms, honest warmth and genuine forgiveness.
We conduct political discourses passionately and constructively with those who respect the soil of our constitution. We simply leave the lost residue to the right in the mud of their own paranoia.