Following the recent Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) victory in the state election of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, where it received 43.8% votes but fell three seats short of forming the government, much of the media commentary has focussed on why people believe in the AfD. Voters, analysts and commentators have debated on a range of issues, such as: Does the AfD promise a new future or merely channelises the existing frustration with ‘elite’ politics? Does its success represent a typical scenario of the ‘forgotten East’ or is it now poised to become an irresistible force all across Germany? Will the party turn into a moderate and centrist formation if and when it comes to power? And if the German economy were doing good, would the AfD still have made such gains? These questions leave another matter insufficiently examined: Is the AfD already setting the agenda of what Germany talks about? Has its step-by-step success exceeded performance with the ballot box by shaping how wider German society frames its problems? Determining the hierarchy of questionsFor the first time, since the Second World War, a far-right party with clear and well-articulated views on exclusion, segregation and cultural homogenisation has democratically won elections. The AfD’s proposals include policies such as separate schools for children of asylum seekers and children with disabilities, compulsory singing of the national anthem in schools, the establishment of voluntary citizens’ patrols that could potentially turn into vigilante groups interrogating people with migrant backgrounds, community-level surveillance and a deportation task force to carry out “deportation from minute one.” Some of these proposals would require changes to federal law, yet a significant section of voters, as expressed through the election results, appears convinced of their necessity.In this context, the more pertinent question is: beyond electoral success, has the AfD already transformed German public and political discourse? Is its rhetoric already shaping how people understand and respond to political problems?The mainstream parties, particularly the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), have played a major role in normalising the AfD’s rhetoric. But we may have reached a stage where, apart from direct voters, a sizeable section of civil society’s liberal voices has also begun to reproduce the basic elements and categories of the AfD’s rhetoric. They frame their concerns about housing, welfare, security, education and crime through questions about migration, culture and identity. The AfD’s influence, therefore, lies not only in shaping the answers to the existing political questions but in determining the hierarchy of questions itself. In this hierarchy, immigration and the figure of the migrant have taken the front seat.The ‘anti-elite’ politics and the villainous migrantFor some time now, globally, the figure of the migrant has become one of the most villainous characters of our time. In an age of anger fuelled by hatred, the figure of the migrant serves right-wing political parties particularly well because it allows them to construct a narrative around the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the insider and the outsider.A study of AfD’s TikTok account reveals that anti-establishment attitude, security implying the ‘plight of the common people’, and identity politics based upon illustrating perceived dangers of migration were three main ways through which the party communicated its right-wing populist messages. For example, on September 25, 2023, the AfD Saxony TikTok account stated: “Now the people see the results […] of migration. Everyone sees the increasing loss of our security, our prosperity, our identity, the loss of our homeland.” A protest vote can be an important democratic expression. But one must ask: what does a vote for change signify?Globally, the rise of the right – in India, North America, Germany, parts of Europe and the UK – has relied on a vivid campaign arguing that mainstream parties have failed the ‘common people.’ This populism is based on a critique of an alleged ‘elite ecosystem’ that has neglected the everyday concerns of ordinary people.For far-right parties, however, these concerns do not exist in isolation. They come heavily packaged in anti-migrant and anti-minority discourse on the one hand, and nation-state-based majoritarian ideas of homogeneous culture, identity and belonging on the other.The argument therefore runs as follows: there is a housing shortage, but this is because the number of migrants has increased. There are fewer places in schools and kindergartens and there are problems with integration because migrants supposedly refuse to assimilate into the culture of the host society.In this framing, material problems such as housing and care do not disappear from political rhetoric. Instead, they are inserted into a broader language of threat and fear centred on the figure of the migrant.The migrant becomes the explanation connecting multiple failures of governance in the past. At the same time, they also become the entity that needs to be selectively removed, deported or controlled in order to improve conditions in the future.That future-making involves restructuring the ideological and demographic foundations of the German family, replacing “Think Modern” with “Think German” (and therefore, also against movements like Bauhaus), dissing the use of renewable energy and hoisting the national flag in front of schools to build a future full of uncritical patriotism. Indispensable migrant workforce and anti-migrant politicsYet, the work of a number of interesting social media activists who have spoken with AfD supporters during the campaign in Saxony-Anhalt shows that many supporters insist they are not racists or ‘migrant-haters.’ To understand why support for a party classified as extremist is being defended while a certain kind of doublespeak is practised, we need to unravel the meaning of the term ‘migrant.’The figure of the migrant carries the burden of the contradictory existence of Schrödinger’s cat: they take up all the jobs, but they are also supposedly idle and lazy and dependent on state benefits. Germany needs an immigrant workforce numbering in hundreds of thousands in the coming years to maintain the size of its working population. Yet, it is striking that a country whose immediate economic stability depends indispensably on immigrant labour has managed to make anti-migrant politics its main political discourse. This apparent contradiction can be understood through two factors.First, “migrant workforce” is a cold and abstract economic term that makes sense primarily through numbers and jobs. Once we replace it with “migrant human beings.” we begin to see people behind those numbers. We see struggles and aspirations, longing and belonging, efforts and challenges. Current approaches to migration, when reduced to a shorthand for workforce requirements, can therefore dehumanise people. Economic dependence exposes one contradiction of anti-migrant politics, but economic usefulness cannot substitute for questions of dignity.Second, specifically in the German context, there is a peculiar expectation that reduces integration to one-way traffic. Migrants are expected to integrate, but the society into which they are expected to integrate, and the people among whom they will live, must also be willing to change their behaviour, forms of sociability and everyday cultural practices. Beyond spaces of consumption and service, the extent to which German society itself ‘integrates’ to the presence of migrants is a question it must confront.Moreover, the process of integration cannot be discussed without addressing racism. If migrants are blamed for deliberately ignoring integration, then racism – as a practice of everyday sociability beyond party rhetoric – equally needs to be discussed. CLAIMS organisation has recorded 975 incidents of racially-charged anti-Muslim incidents in 2025, in comparison to 644 in 2024. Based on a survey comprising 14,000 students and 2,500 teachers, it was found that in 76% of the reported anti-Muslim discrimination cases teachers were involved as perpetrators. Thus, it should not surprise us that racism also disadvantages immigrants in finding rental homes or buying properties, including those who were born in Germany. A woman with a Pakistani name was initially denied a flat viewing, but received appointments when she tried with German-sounding names to document her discrimination. From overt physical forms of violence to passive-aggressive modes of discrimination, integration ceases to remain a two-way traffic. It becomes a demand based upon superimposition of an ideal notion of cultural homogeneity. Democracy of hatred and historical legacy of valuesOne distinctive feature of our age is that far-right parties are using democratic procedures, rather than suspending them, to install authoritarianism. They are therefore required to play a smart political game, much like a multi-headed hydra.In formal policy documents, the AfD does not leave the migrant entirely undefined. But in its broader political rhetoric, it deliberately keeps the category open. It distinguishes between categories such as illegal immigrants, asylum beneficiaries, foreign offenders and foreign skilled workers. Yet terms such as “passport Germans”, “knife migrants”, Muslim migrants, “asylum industry”, “migrant crime” and “alien violent cultures” are frequently used in popular and political rhetoric.Nazi-era symbols and slogans are rehabilitated, while a particular form of national cultural pride is championed.The use of such derogatory terms makes the migrant the bearer of an alien, ‘other,’ non-western culture. They become the antithesis of a Western culture allegedly built upon the values of individualism, freedom, equality, secularism and gender parity.This construction erases the fact that migrants from many parts of Asia and Africa also possess histories and cultures of struggle for freedom against Western imperialism, which was itself violent and discriminatory. It was not only anti-imperial politics, but also feminist, anti-caste, anti-racist and environmental struggles that have shaped principles and practices of equality across the Global South.These values are not the monopoly of any one region of the world. They have been debated, reformulated and fought for globally through various forms of struggle.More importantly, the violation of these values is happening everywhere in the world. Recent statistics show that gender-based violence against women is rising in Germany, and is structurally linked to patriarchy, family and intimate relationships, while being aggravated by pressures such as unemployment and housing shortages. Domestic violence is also a feature of some immigrant families, but not predominantly understood as an “alien cultural practice.” Meanwhile, in India, where the right-wing government is never tired of projecting the country as the ‘mother of democracy,’ struggles to uphold the value of dignity of life continue to be hindered by practices of caste and religion. Majoritarian politics thus combines cultural pride with selective appropriation of modern progressive values, using both to create an othered community.The normalisation of the other beyond electoral pitchThe transformation of these values into political and cultural property of a homogenised West requires migrants to continually demonstrate their compatibility with them. In this far-reaching and expansive field of meaning created through terms such as “alien,” a vote for the AfD is not simply an expression of economic insecurity, institutional decay, regional disparity and everyday hardship. These elements are present, but they are absorbed into a larger logic of otherisation, hierarchy and supremacy of one group over another.The 43.8% of voters who supported the AfD may not all despise migrants. But by voting for the party, they have endorsed a politics that promotes exclusion.In an interview, Adam Toose makes an insightful observation. He says that if economic deprivation were so important then AfD supporters would have talked about redistributive policies to increase average welfare of low-income people. Yet when polls are conducted asking voters why they vote for the AfD, they primarily mention foreigners, migrant crime and national security. So, a protest vote ends up becoming a stamp on politics of hatred and exclusion. But this is not only about the voter and the party. Any electoral success of a far-right, extremist party is also a reflection of an ongoing social transformation in which hatred towards a perceived and politically constituted ‘other’ becomes normalised. Political parties, media outlets and social media propaganda shape these discourses, but people are not passive recipients of them. Through voting, discussions and everyday conversations, they actively reproduce and reshape them.Normalisation also occurs beyond institutional politics. It gains ground when people carry its categories into workplaces, homes, neighbourhoods and ordinary conversations, turning them into matters of common concern.Questioning the monopoly of frameworkAccording to surveys, the AfD is currently polling as the strongest political party in Germany, at around 28% and would come first if a federal election were held now. Nevertheless, its bigger victory may lie somewhere else. Its success does not consist in making people discuss a non-existent issue. Rather, it lies in providing an insidious master explanation, the migrant, that connects problems which otherwise have multiple institutional, political and economic causes.It requires political work to ensure that issues such as housing, kindergartens, schools and jobs continue to be discussed on their own terms, without automatically invoking the migrant as their explanation. Otherwise, the ‘invasion’ of the migrant into ordinary political conversation will signal the victory of the AfD’s agenda in shaping public thinking through the blocks of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – a process that is already underway.Opposing the AfD, hence, requires more than rejecting its answers. It requires refusing its monopoly over the questions and frameworks through which social and political problems are understood. It requires understanding its workings as a multi-tentacled hydra, in which problems of state institutions, the projection of cultural diversity as a problem and the figure of the migrant are conceptually interlinked but strategically prioritised.Any appeasement of a political language based on extremism, which mainstream political parties have unfortunately pursued, is counterproductive. When presenting oneself as controversial has become a way of appearing authentic to the cause of the ‘common person,’ there is no other option but to question the terms and agenda of public discourse itself.All this does not mean refusing to discuss migration and its wider consequences. It means discussing migration in its proper context: the economy, cultural practices, state initiatives, and the policies and infrastructure necessary for integration as a two-way process. It must not be approached as a threat to an imagined, uniform German national culture.Nitin Sinha is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Centre for Modern Oriental Studies), Berlin.