On Sunday, the first round of local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia came to an end. AfD achieved unprecedented success. The elections in Germany’s most populous state took place under the shadow of a conspiracy theory, fueled by a puzzling coincidence: as many as seven politicians from this still relatively unpopular party lost their lives shortly before the vote. Although both AfD leaders and the local election commissioner reassured the public that there was no indication of third-party involvement in the deaths of politicians from the increasingly popular anti-immigration party, many people were not convinced. This shows how deplorable the state of democracy is in Germany, commented Tomasz Froelich, Member of the European Parliament for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in an interview with niezalezna.pl.
The better AfD performs in the polls, the more hostility and resistance it faces on a daily basis. Froelich cited one example: one of the AfD candidates wanted to run for mayor in the city of Ludwigshafen, with a population of 180,000. Yet he was excluded from the race. The candidate had excellent credentials: a teacher by profession, apparently with a PhD, a member of the Landtag, and yet he could not run for mayor. Even Elon Musk wondered on X how such a thing was possible, Froelich recounted.
AfD’s excellent result
This situation concerned Joachim Paul. The electoral commission, citing doubts about whether he would remain loyal to the constitution, barred him from standing in the local elections scheduled for September 21. Paul appealed the decision.
As a result of these actions, an atmosphere has formed around AfD in which people begin to believe that the deaths of our politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia may not have been accidental, Froelich told niezalezna.pl.
Yet neither the smear campaign against AfD in the German media nor the turmoil caused by the politicians’ deaths – which forced local authorities to reprint ballots in some districts and repeat postal voting – was enough to stem the rising support for the anti-immigration and widely described as far-right party. In North Rhine-Westphalia, AfD tripled its results compared to the previous local elections in 2020. Back then, Alice Weidel’s party received 5.1% of the vote. This year, it gained the support of as many as 14.5% of voters. All this came as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), historically dominant in North Rhine-Westphalia, recorded their worst results in the history of West Germany: CDU – 33.3%, SPD – 22.1%. For the CDU, this was a drop of one percentage point compared to 2020, while for the SPD the decline was 2.2 points.
Harassment of AfD fuels conspiracy theories
Froelich, however, tempers the emotions sparked by speculation about the deaths of his party’s candidates.
To be honest, I think it was simply a coincidence, although I do not rule out anything in advance. Seven deaths is a lot, but these were municipal elections in the largest Bundesland. Eighteen million people live there, and in all of North Rhine-Westphalia there were 20,000 seats to be filled. I don’t know how many AfD candidates stood in these elections, but I would estimate around five thousand. The situation would be far more alarming if it had been an election where we put forward, say, 50 candidates and among them seven mysterious deaths occurred. But under the current circumstances, it looked more like unfortunate accidents. However, the very fact that people do not rule anything out shows the condition of democracy, Froelich noted.
He added that the whole situation is most interesting from a sociological point of view. The question of how it was possible that as many as seven candidates from one party died shortly before the elections drew worldwide media attention to the local elections in Germany’s largest state.
This is proof of the poor state of democracy in Germany, because these questions arose as a result of the repression against AfD. And although to me personally it looks like a coincidence, one cannot rule out anything, given the repression applied in Germany against AfD, said the German MEP.
Immigrants for AfD?
The situation was further fueled by the fact that North Rhine-Westphalia is the state with the highest immigrant population. One in four residents there has a migration background. In such conditions, AfD, with its openly anti-immigration program, was locally the only party to openly address the problems resulting from the mass influx of foreigners. Speaking openly about the uncomfortable aspects of immigration in a place with such a high proportion of immigrants could hardly be expected to win approval. Froelich, however, does not believe that these controversial program points had anything to do with the wave of candidate deaths.
In some Bundesländer, AfD even records higher support among immigrants than among Germans. For example, during the elections in Hesse, some immigrant groups voted for AfD significantly more often than locals. Up to 6 percent of Muslims living in Germany vote for AfD – and support in this group is even growing, the German MEP pointed out.
The politician remains convinced that AfD will certainly cooperate with the police and prosecutors and closely monitor them to ensure the case is not swept under the rug and that all doubts are dispelled.