This year, as Germans slog through the dog days of summer – traditionally a time of political calm in Germany – there is a striking undercurrent of anxiety in the air. The country looks with unease toward elections on September 1 in the eastern German states of Saxony and Thuringia – and on September 22 in Brandenburg – which are likely to shatter long-held traditions of the Federal Republic.

In both Saxony and Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could become the strongest party with around 30 percent of the vote. A victory for the AfD and its neo-Nazi tendencies would be a turning point for post-war Germany.

A relative majority in these states does not necessarily mean that the radical populists will end up in a governing coalition, since the establishment and left-wing parties (at least for now) rule out cooperation with the far-right party, which is radical even by European standards. But already one party, the emerging left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), is openly doubting this promise. For the BSW – and also for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) – a forced marriage with the far right may prove less unattractive than forming a clumsy coalition that excludes the AfD.

Some observers are confident that the CDU, BSW and other smaller parties – such as the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the FDP – will put aside their ideological differences and form anti-AfD coalitions if the worst comes to the worst. This would keep the AfD in the opposition, but it would by no means neutralize it. Since 2014, it has been an opposition force in East Germany, obstructing democratic processes, encouraging extra-parliamentary neo-Nazis and adopting an aggressive tone against minorities.

But winning a third of the parliamentary seats in Thuringia, for example, would give the AfD real weight in governing. In Thuringia, a two-thirds majority of all elected MPs is required to dissolve the state parliament and allow new elections. Constitutional changes and the election of judges to the Thuringian Constitutional Court and other offices also require a two-thirds majority. According to observers, this “blocking minority” function would enable the AfD to create chaos, and it is fully aware that this would further weaken the credibility of the established parties.

However, the mood in Germany is also so tense because right-wing extremist participation in the government is quite possible – and that would have enormous consequences not only for Saxony and Thuringia, but for the whole of Germany.

There is every reason to believe the polls are correct, as the AfD achieved similar results across the east in the European elections in June. The worst-case scenario is that the AfD comes to power as the strongest party in a coalition and claims the state’s premiership, a post equivalent to a governor’s post in the US. “We know that can happen,” said Jasmin Gräwel of Christopher Street Day Leipzig, an LGBTQ+ rights group in Saxony. Foreign policy“This is the reality we are facing. The funding from Saxony that we and other groups such as anti-racism initiatives and diversity-oriented (non-governmental organizations) receive would be cut or eliminated entirely.”

Maximilian Steinbeis, a journalist and author who writes about populism, expressed similar concerns. “We have seen in other European countries what happens to state institutions that have fallen into the hands of authoritarian populists,” he said. “They have used their offices to immunize their power against oppositional politics and public criticism. We are ill-prepared for that in Germany.”

The latest cover of the popular weekly newspaper The mirror shows a Soviet-style bust of the radical Thuringian AfD spokesman Björn Höcke with France’s right-wing scourge Marine Le Pen and former US President Donald Trump behind him. The Mirror The headline reads: “How fascism begins: Hitler’s secrets.” Twice this year, a German court has convicted and fined Höcke for using symbols of a former Nazi organization; Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified Thuringia’s AfD as an extremist group. As Thuringia’s top politician, Höcke has announced that he will “re-migrate” German citizens with foreign backgrounds, reshape education policy along traditional lines, and completely restructure or close state media – and that’s just the beginning.

The AfD could come to power in several ways: as head of government of a country, as a coalition partner in a government led by another party, or alone as a minority government.

The first two options involve breaking the much-discussed “firewall” against the far right, namely the joint refusal of the established and left parties to govern with the AfD so far. This week, the BSW denied explicit coalition intentions, but was open about the AfD and the desire for less confrontation with its voters. “If the AfD says the sky is blue, the BSW will not claim it is green,” the BSW chairman told German media. “To deduce coalition intentions from this is childish. We need a different approach and, above all, we finally need sensible policies at federal and state level that take into account the wishes of citizens instead of leaving them angry.”

The newcomer BSW has performed so well in recent polls (13.4 percent in Saxony, 18.7 percent in Thuringia, 17 percent in Brandenburg) that cooperation between the BSW and the AfD alone could be enough to gain a parliamentary majority. In Thuringia, this would mean that Höcke would become Prime Minister. And while the CDU continues to verbally avoid the right-wing extremists (calling them neo-Nazis), it is allied with the AfD on many issues, not least on the sensitive issue of immigration. In both federal states, the results of the CDU and AfD together could result in a solid majority, and the CDU could possibly become Prime Minister.

A final scenario envisages the AfD ruling alone in a minority government. This could happen if the other parties fail to cover up their differences and hostilities and form a multi-party coalition.

What would it mean if the AfD were in power in Saxony or Thuringia? There is hardly a newspaper, TV talk show or podcast in which German experts, politicians, intellectuals and civil society activists do not discuss exactly this question.

“If the AfD has a ministry in its hands,” wrote journalist Arne Semsrott in Seizure of power: What happens when the extreme right rules?“his minister can determine the practical implementation of laws without interference from parliament. He can issue regulations and internal guidelines and fill important government posts. The decisive factor for the AfD’s greatest influence is therefore which ministries it controls.” Regardless of which ministries the AfD holds, Semsrott argued that the first step would be to replace non-AfD department heads with loyalists. Höcke himself listed around 150 posts in Thuringia that would immediately switch to the AfD if he were to lead the state.

Since the AfD sees itself as a law-and-order party that Germany urgently needs to bring “out-of-control crime” under control, its lucky charm would be the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and secret service. AfD leader Alice Weidel’s tirade at the AfD party conference in June leaves little doubt as to who the first target will be: non-Germans. “We have an internal security crisis,” she complained. “Foreigner crime and violence are exploding.” In Germany, she claimed, there are always “more knife attacks, more murders, more rapes” – and the victims are decent Germans.

Very quickly – without changes to the law – an AfD-led Interior Ministry could give the police an authoritarian, right-wing extremist makeover. “The Interior Ministry sets priorities for its police,” explained Tobias Singelnstein, professor of criminology and criminal law at Goethe University Frankfurt, in a podcast episode. “For example, it could decide not to take action against right-wing extremists but against left-wing extremists, and instead of cracking down on economic crime, it could pursue climate activists.” The AfD’s most wanted people also include: Muslims, naturalized citizens with roots in Turkey and the Third World, Sinti and Roma, asylum seekers and refugees.

Höcke was thinking of these groups when he told the German television station N-TV: “We will definitely make Thuringia as unattractive as possible for social migration. We will make it clear that the Thuringia department of the International Relief Agency will be closed.”

Justice ministries are also high on the AfD’s wish list. As in Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and in Poland, which was governed by conservatives from 2015 to 2023, the extreme right would undermine the independence of the judiciary by replacing as many state judges as possible with AfD cronies. As for the agenda, the AfD says it will start by overturning the verdicts against its own party members like Höcke. “When the AfD is in government, the political show trials will be dealt with,” Höcke said at the party conference in June, referring to his and other trials. “Then there will be a neutral judiciary again.”

At the same event, AfD Bundestag member Stephan Brandner called for a “depoliticization of the judiciary” and explained what this means: the arrest, prosecution and conviction of those “who are responsible for the underground state of this country”.

According to Gräwel of Christopher Street Day Leipzig, LGBTQ+ people and others who do not fit into the AfD’s narrow understanding of normality will suffer, especially in smaller towns and communities. “Some of my friends are considering leaving,” she said, should the worst come to the worst. “In small towns where everyone knows everyone, it’s not easy to be ‘out and proud,'” she added, noting that violence against LGBTQ+ people is already commonplace in Saxony.

Only the police can prevent militant right-wing extremists from disrupting the Pride parades in Saxony, even in the major cities of Leipzig and Dresden. “It’s frightening,” says Graewel about the aggressive counter-protests. If the security apparatus were in the hands of the AfD, the LGBTQ+ community would be just a part of civil society that could no longer count on protection.