In the relatively wealthy city of Zwickau in the former communist east of Germany, economic uncertainty and a turbulent history have led to an influx of extreme right-wing parties ahead of an important state election.

“People are afraid of losing everything they have built up over the years,” says Zwickau’s mayor Constance Arndt.

To understand why “the mood is so bad” ahead of Sunday’s elections in Saxony, one “may have to take a look into the past,” she told AFP.

After a period of painful decline following German reunification in 1990, the people of Zwickau had “reached a certain level of prosperity,” she said.

The city owes its growth, among other things, to its status as a centre of automobile production; Volkswagen is one of the largest employers in the region.

But recent crises – from the coronavirus pandemic to the war in Ukraine to high inflation – have triggered a renewed “fear of loss,” says 47-year-old Arndt from her office overlooking a picturesque market square.

Some would therefore vote for the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) “out of protest,” added the non-partisan mayor of the city of 90,000 inhabitants.

At the beginning of the year, thousands of people demonstrated in Zwickau against the extreme right after it became known that some members of the anti-Islam and anti-immigration AfD had taken part in a meeting at which plans for the mass deportation of asylum seekers were discussed.

The rallies, which also took place nationwide, were seen at the time as a rare mobilization of the so-called silent majority against right-wing extremism.

But it didn’t last long.

At the beginning of June, the AfD won a local election and became the strongest faction in the Zwickau district council.

Even if the AfD did not achieve a majority, discussions in the council are likely to become more difficult, especially with regard to cultural funding, the mayor predicted.

– Nazi swastikas –

On a scorching hot day in August, social worker Jörg Banitz pointed out several swastika slogans and inscriptions reading “NS-Zone” – an allusion to the Nazi era – that had been painted on walls outside the city center.

“We observe this frequently,” says the Zwickau native, who was one of the organizers of the demonstrations against the far-right earlier this year.

Banitz believes that the rise of the AfD is not only due to protest votes.

The party’s “radical language and way of thinking” is now “accepted” by the public, he said. This also contributes to the fact that conservatives from the Saxon CDU have adopted some of their populist positions.

“I think most people who vote for the AfD want exactly what is in the program,” he added.

In a city with an active right-wing extremist scene, the AfD has found fertile ground, says Banitz. In Zwickau, the three members of the neo-Nazi cell NSU, who murdered nine people with a migrant background between 2000 and 2007, hid from the police for years.

Zwickau city councillor Wolfgang Wetzel (Greens) said that many citizens felt overwhelmed in an increasingly complex world.

And in a region that has experienced two successive authoritarian regimes – National Socialism and then the communist GDR – there is a “nostalgia for the simplicity of a dictatorship in which you don’t have to make decisions”, which benefits the extreme right, says Wetzel.

– ‘Uncertainty’ –

However, the AfD rejects these interpretations.

“I think people just don’t want to be deceived anymore,” says Jonas Dünzel, AfD candidate in the Saxony election, where polls show the party is neck and neck with the CDU.

The 30-year-old former insurance agent attacked the conservatives, who he said had adopted the AfD’s demands for stricter border controls and a better asylum policy, but had done nothing to put these demands into practice during their five-year term in office.

If people voted for the AfD, “they would not do so because they are turning away from democracy,” as Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) claimed, but because they “have a problem with Mr. Kretschmer,” he said.

The increasing populist mood is a concern for Volkswagen, which produces fully electric vehicles at its large plant in Zwickau. The AfD regularly rails against the push for emission-free driving and dismisses it as a “fairy tale”.

“The discussions about the future of electromobility are causing uncertainty” among the approximately 10,000 employees at the Zwickau plant, said Christian Sommer, head of VW corporate communications in Saxony.

“And there is indeed a fear,” he told AFP, “that these jobs could be at risk if a right-wing populist conservative government emerges from the elections.”

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