Recently it happened again on the train: When the conductor came to check her ticket, Nour Al Zoubi was the only person in her compartment who had to show identification. The conductor threatened to call the police if she didn’t obey. A typical situation for the social worker born in Syria, who now works as a consultant for the Thuringian Refugee Council.

“There is this everyday racism,” she told DW. “But after living in Gera for six years, I’m used to it and know how to deal with it.”

Moving away is out of the question for Al Zoubi – even if the AfD, which is classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, wins the Thuringian state election on September 1. Thuringia is her home, says Al Zoubi. In 2020, she was awarded the Gera Integration Prize for a newspaper project for refugees that she founded.

After the incident with the train conductor, she received support and encouragement from two older passengers – things like that make her feel like she can stay.

“The number of AfD voters has increased – but so has the number of Germans who support a welcoming culture,” she says. Al Zoubi knows some people who are considering leaving Thuringia if the AfD wins, but others have no other choice.

“Not all migrants in Thuringia can do that. Refugees and asylum seekers have to stay in Thuringia for three years due to restrictive residence regulations.”

Growing anti-immigration sentiment

In Thuringia, the mood towards immigrants has been getting increasingly harsh for some time. The recent knife attack in Solingen in northwest Germany, in which three people died, is likely to fuel the mood even further.

For Al Zoubi, this means being particularly cautious – for example, when tensions arise again, as when Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke got his Gera audience to shout Nazi slogans in December 2023, or when the weekly anti-migration protests take place in the streets of the city. How does Al Zoubi see the state after the election, if the AfD actually wins?

“We will then see even more racism in public spaces. At a higher level. Not just insults, but also physical violence. That is what I fear. Especially after what just happened in Southport, England,” she said, referring to the stabbing of three girls that sparked unrest across Britain.

Many migrants fear an AfD election victory

Al Zoubi’s gloomy visions of the future are not an isolated case. In Dresden, 150 kilometers east of Gera, Ismail Davul has similar thoughts. Davul was born in Turkey and came to Saxony to study in 2006. He has been working for the Dresden Foreigners’ Council for almost eleven years. He helps young migrants in particular, but also listens to the concerns of parents.

“Some people have asked me: Where is Saxony going?” he told DW. “What does it mean if the AfD wins? Will our living situation change then? The mood is clear: everyone is actually afraid.”

Davul often hears of people who might leave Dresden if the AfD wins Saxony’s state election in September. He and his team reassure them by reminding them that the democratic parties in the city council are fighting the shift to the right; that the situation will not change overnight; and that the Foreigners’ Council and many civil society organizations are here in Dresden. But the reality is that a growing number of attacks on immigrants in this city are being reported to the authorities, Davul told DW.

“It used to be very rare for an immigrant to be attacked, they were isolated cases. Back then, the media condemned such attacks much more strongly than they do today. We hear every day that migrants are victims of attacks, bullying or spitting just because of their appearance, skin colour or dialect. Unfortunately, this is now almost a daily occurrence on the streets,” said Davul.

Some sympathize with the AfD

While many immigrants are extremely concerned about AfD electoral victories in Thuringia and Saxony, others are even considering voting for the far-right party, despite its anti-immigration rhetoric and talk of “remigration” – a term coined for the plan to send immigrants back to their countries of origin regardless of their citizenship status.

How can these two things coexist? Özgür Özvatan, a political sociologist at Humboldt University in Berlin, explained to DW how the AfD targets Turkish-born Erdogan supporters and immigrants from Russia living in Germany: In videos, they glorify Turkish nationalism and Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan. To reach Russian Germans, they use the narrative that they were forced to integrate without receiving recognition and still have no status in German society. An estimated 6 million Russian-speaking people live in Germany. The majority of them are German citizens: ethnic Germans who came from the former Soviet Union – mostly from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The AfD’s message to voters with a migration background is: You had to work hard for everything when you came, but now the new refugees are getting everything for free.

Such messages are based on supposed truths, explains Özvatan – even if they do not stand up to scrutiny. The AfD is primarily campaigning for the votes of young immigrants on social media such as TikTok, with a lot of money and the help of influencers with a migrant background. This is simple arithmetic, says Özvatan: The AfD can only win an election if it can also win over people with a migrant background.

“The AfD has learned to address specific target groups on the new social media platforms. It has understood very well that ‘recommendation algorithms’ make it possible to spread almost contradictory positions simultaneously in this social media world. Above all, however, this gives anti-democratic parties a structural competitive advantage: abbreviated and false content has a higher potential for virulence.”

This article was originally written in German.

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