MAGA rejoices as far-right AfD wins in Germany for first time since Third Reich
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "MAGA rejoices as far-right AfD wins in Germany for first time since Third Reich")
Ulrich Siegmund, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s main candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state election Photograph: (AFP)
The MAGA movement has celebrated the AfD's landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt, highlighting growing links between Trump's political movement and Germany's far right.
The MAGA movement in the US has celebrated the result in Saxony-Anhalt: the extreme right AfD (Alternative for Germany) secured a historic landslide win for the first time since the fall of the Third Reich. They secured 43.8 per cent of the vote in the ex-communist east, putting them far ahead of the centre-right CDU (Christian Democratic Union). This is their highest-ever percentage in a state election.
The AfD explicitly borrowed the Trump playbook during the campaign with catchphrases resembling those of MAGA: “make Germany great again”, using anti immigration, anti-woke, ultra-nationalistic, highly Islamophobic, and Euro-sceptic rhetoric. US President Donald Trump swiftly posted the Saxony-Anhalt exit poll on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, though he did not explicitly respond to the election results on Sunday.
Former US ambassador to Germany during Trump's first term, Richard Grenell, celebrated the results as "a huge win and a new day in Germany." He claimed that people are “ready to change”. The richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, also joined in reposting the AfD's co-leader Alice Weidel's post, “Well done!”
The victorious AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, who ran an explicitly Trump-inspired campaign, publicly thanked Musk and expressed eagerness for future "strong and constructive cooperation."
“Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany,” said Ulrich Siegmund in a post on X.
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Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev framed the result as “historic” and total “humiliation” for Friedrich Merz. He said the national government led by the centre-right Friedrich Merz's CDU (Christian Democratic Union) was "discredited." Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán hailed the political developments as "a huge night for Germany and Europe." Spain's right-wing Vox party framed it as a beacon of "great hope."
While support from European far-right parties is ideological, Russian support is a more strategic choice. The German government is the single largest donor to Ukraine; in comparison, the AfD is considered more favourable to Russia, as it advocates cutting aid to Ukraine, halting sanctions on Moscow and starting to purchase cheap Russian energy.
Similarly, the support from MAGA is not merely ideological but part of the US national security strategy. The December 2025 US National Security Strategy document explicitly advocates for supporting nationalist and populist movements, providing tangible support to the far-right ecosystem in Europe to cultivate a resistance to the current trajectory of European nations. The document claimed that Europe faces "the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure" due to unregulated immigration, cratering birth rates, and "regulatory suffocation" by transnational bodies like the EU.
