Democrats' Socialist Wing and Germany's Far-Right AfD Are Both Testing Party Firewalls This Fall

Michigan: El-Sayed says he's not a socialist. His allies say otherwise.

Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary last month, narrowly defeating establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, according to Fox News. He's now the party's nominee for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters.

El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official, rejects the socialist label. He told CNN, "I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated." He told CBS News he doesn't "do ideology" but wants "solutions that solve problems" and hopes to build a coalition that includes Trump voters alongside members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

That coalition-building claim runs up against his list of endorsers. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, all DSA-aligned, backed his campaign, according to Fox News.

Michigan state Rep. Bill Schuette isn't buying the denial. "Abdul El-Sayed can't define what a woman is, so I'm not surprised he can't define what socialist is," Schuette told Fox News Digital. "The facts are all the policies he supports are emblematic of the DSA movement."

Schuette argues Democrats have "jumped the shark," pointing to DSA-aligned primary wins in New York, Florida and Colorado as evidence of a broader leftward shift. He predicts Michigan voters will reject that shift in November.

El-Sayed's actual platform beyond "regulated capitalism" wasn't detailed in the available reporting, and whether Michigan's general electorate treats DSA endorsements as disqualifying is an open question that won't be answered until November's vote.

Germany: the firewall against the far right is buckling

A very different but structurally similar fight is playing out in Germany, where the state of Saxony-Anhalt holds elections on Sunday, September 6. Polling has the Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 41 to 43 percent, roughly 10 points ahead of the incumbent CDU-SPD-FDP coalition, according to the World Socialist Web Site.

If several smaller parties fail to clear the 5 percent threshold for representation, the AfD could win an outright majority and install Ulrich Siegmund, its lead candidate, as state premier without needing any other party's votes. That would mark the first time a far-right party has governed a German state since World War II, according to Politico Europe.

Germany's domestic intelligence service has designated the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch an extremist organization, and Politico Europe reports its ranks include former members of a now-banned group modeled on the Hitler Youth. The party's stated plans include a deportation task force, rewriting school history curricula to spend less time on Nazi crimes, and cutting funding for art it deems "anti-German." AfD strategist Hans-Thomas Tillschneider told Politico Europe the goal is to "legitimize AfD policies through a practical example," pairing those proposals with uncontroversial ones like more money for rural fire departments.

The strongest argument AfD supporters and sympathetic voices make is a democratic one: if a party wins over 40 percent support at the ballot box, treating it as permanently untouchable by every other party looks less like principle and more like the establishment overruling the voters. That's the case Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Left Party leader who now heads the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), is making explicitly. She has called the mainstream parties' "firewall" against AfD cooperation "madness" that must end, according to the World Socialist Web Site.

Wagenknecht hasn't committed her party to a formal coalition with the AfD. But the World Socialist Web Site reports she has proposed a workaround: BSW could abstain in a third round of voting for state premier, where only a simple majority is needed, effectively clearing the path for Siegmund to lead a minority AfD government. She's also pushed BSW's Thuringia lawmakers to abandon their coalition with the CDU and SPD there, citing the revocation of Premier Mario Voigt's doctoral title over plagiarism findings from the Technical University of Chemnitz.

Two different fights, one underlying question

El-Sayed's socialist label and the AfD's extremist designation aren't equivalent in substance. One is a domestic political argument over regulation and coalition-building; the other involves a party flagged by German intelligence and tied to banned extremist groups. But both stories turn on the same mechanic: institutional walls built to keep fringe movements out of power are being tested by voters who no longer treat those walls as sacred.

Saxony-Anhalt votes Sunday, September 6. If the AfD falls short of an outright majority, Wagenknecht's BSW may hold the deciding votes on who becomes state premier. Michigan voters won't render their verdict on El-Sayed until the general election in November, against Republican opposition that's betting his coalition strategy collapses once general-election voters, not just DSA-energized primary voters, weigh in.