The Central Council of Jews in Germany is shocked by the AFD success in Thuringia.
“The first election of an AfD candidate to an executive office – according to the preliminary result in Sonneberg – shakes me,” emphasized Central Council President Josef Schuster.
“To put it bluntly: Not every AfD voter has right-wing extremist sentiments. But the party whose candidate they chose is right-wing extremist according to the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” Schuster continued. The fact that so many people agree with this worries him deeply.
Those voters who voted for the AfD in Sonneberg should seriously ask themselves whether the problems they have justify the election of a candidate from such a party, stressed the President of the Central Council.
“This is a dam breach that the democratic political forces in this country simply cannot accept”.
AFDs Robert Sesselman was elected district administrator of Sonnenberg in the federal region of Thuringia in a run-off election, making it the first time a Far-Right party candidate takes a high-ranking local office in Germany.
Sesselman achieved 52.8% of the votes against the union of all the democratic political parties, including the CDU, SPD, the Greens, and the Left.
This win comes amid a surge in nationwide popularity for the party as recent polls saw AFD overtake the SPD to become the second-biggest party in Germany.
