The Friendly Face

Third essay after “Die wartende Struktur” (The Waiting Structure, March 2026) and “Der Wegbereiter” (The Trailblazer, April 2026), both available in German only.

I. What has happened since the spring

In March we described the AfD as a waiting structure: an autocratic mobilisation machine that does not yet have an autocrat at its head and will produce one in a crisis. In April we showed who is furnishing the waiting room. Half a year later the situation looks like this:

On 6 September 2026 the AfD won around 44 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt according to the provisional figures, on a turnout of 77 per cent. The CDU of Minister-President Sven Schulze came to around 17 per cent. The AfD holds 39 of 83 seats, three short of an absolute majority. Two weeks later it reached 38 per cent in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; the CDU failed to clear the five per cent threshold there. Nationally, the AfD stood at 27 per cent in the ARD Deutschlandtrend in October, the CDU/CSU at 20. Only ten per cent of respondents were satisfied with the federal government — a historic low.

On 6 October, with Tobias Rausch, an AfD politician became president of a German state parliament for the first time. He received 48 votes in a secret ballot. The AfD and the BSW together hold 44 seats. At least four votes therefore came from other groups. The CDU had announced it would abstain; of the 14 CDU members present, however, only five abstentions were counted. According to research by the ZDF programme frontal, ten CDU members said they had abstained. The arithmetic does not add up. A third of the group is presumably not telling the truth about its own vote.

The structure is no longer waiting. It is beginning to fill offices.

II. The man

Ulrich Siegmund is 35, comes from Havelberg in the Altmark, trained as a wholesale and foreign-trade clerk and studied business psychology. He joined the CDU at 19, left it five years later and became an AfD member in 2014. He has sat in the state parliament since 2016 and has co-led the parliamentary group since 2022. In 2023 he took part in the Potsdam meeting at which “remigration” was discussed, and he defends the term. His state party has been classified by the domestic intelligence service as confirmed right-wing extremist since 2023.

According to press reports, his programme for the first hundred days envisaged cutting funds for “left-wing extremist associations”, no longer requiring school visits to Nazi-era memorial sites and withdrawing from the treaty on public broadcasting. The draft state programme names Viktor Orbán as a model.

All this is known. What is new about Siegmund is not what he stands for but how he comes across. He is tall, slim, well dressed, smiles, asks journalists about their families, greets members of other parties in the corridors. By consistent accounts he has more than 600,000 followers on TikTok and around 300,000 each on Instagram and Facebook — more than almost any other German politician. The editor-in-chief of DER SPIEGEL, Dirk Kurbjuweit, wrote that he comes across as friendly and likeable, even to voters who are not right-wing extremists but want major change.

Siegmund is the friendly face of a confirmed right-wing extremist structure. That does not make him more harmless. It makes him more effective.

III. Is he the one the structure is waiting for?

In March we derived from the structure the qualities the expected leader would need: the ability to ignite masses, not merely manage them; readiness to serve the existing enemy images; the ability to neutralise internal opponents through pressure of loyalty; and the appearance of coming from outside. The crisis is the invitation.

Examined mercilessly, Siegmund fits on two counts and fails on two.

He fits in effect and in timing. He reaches people Weidel does not reach. And the crisis is here: a government with ten per cent approval, a CDU that halves itself in an eastern state, an economy that does not move forward.

He does not fit as an outsider or as a challenger. Siegmund has been a professional politician for ten years; he knows every corridor of the Magdeburg parliament. And he says explicitly that he wants to make Alice Weidel the first AfD chancellor, not to challenge her. On election night he spoke of “Chancellor Alice Weidel”, at whose side he wanted to make history.

Our finding is therefore: Siegmund is not the autocrat. He is something we did not foresee in March — a new kind of charisma. In the essay “The Intuitive Conversation and the Intuitive Speech” we described how the speaker before a crowd corrects himself by the mood rather than by the thought, and that the seismograph for this now sits in every trouser pocket. Siegmund needs no Sportpalast. His stage is the algorithm that tells him hourly what lands. His tone is not frenzy but the smile. This is the charisma of the influencer: approachable, friendly, tireless — and precisely for that reason suited to carrying a structure whose content nobody examines closely any more.

IV. What his opponents do for him

In March we wrote: “An autocratic structure lives on demarcation. It needs the enemy. The establishment that excludes it is its most important advertising.” The summer of 2026 confirmed this.

In August DER SPIEGEL put Siegmund on its cover: “The most dangerous man in Germany”. Siegmund called the cover “very good advertising”, signed it on camera and spread the video. Even Dietmar Bartsch of the Left called the cover campaign help. The warning was defensible on the facts. Its effect was that of a poster.

The CDU in Magdeburg has a different problem. Its group is split: Schulze won the group chairmanship by eight votes to seven. In the election of the parliament’s president, some of its members evidently voted differently from what they had announced, and are not saying so. The new president, Rausch, declared that Siegmund could count on four CDU votes in December. The group’s answer on 13 October: it intends to leave the chamber during the election of the minister-president — so that no one from its ranks can vote for Siegmund.

That is a remarkable admission. A party protects democracy from its own members by preventing them from voting. In Magdeburg the firewall no longer holds through conviction, but through absence.

V. The arithmetic for December

Siegmund intends to stand for election in December. The state constitution provides for up to three ballots. In the first two a candidate needs a majority of the members, that is 42 votes. If both fail, the parliament can decide to dissolve itself within fourteen days, which also requires 42 votes. If it does not, a simple majority suffices in the third ballot.

Soberly considered, this leaves the following paths:

First: Siegmund in the first ballot. He needs three votes beyond his own group. If the CDU leaves the chamber and the BSW abstains, as it has announced, he will not get them. Siegmund says he will stand only in the first ballot. If he keeps his word, he would have failed for now.

Second: the third ballot. Here the arithmetic becomes a knife edge. The AfD has 39 seats. The CDU, SPD, Greens and Left together also have 39. The BSW has five. If Siegmund does stand after all and the CDU stays outside, his own votes suffice. If an opposing candidate stands whom the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left elect together, it is 39 to 39 — and five BSW members, along with every single defector in a secret ballot, decide. The CDU has so far ruled out such a joint vote because it refuses to cooperate with the Left.

Third: a new election. Siegmund has raised it “in an emergency”. With a result of 44 per cent and a CDU in free fall, a new election is no emergency for the AfD but a chance at an absolute majority.

Fourth: a caretaker government without end. Schulze remains in office until a successor is elected; the constitution sets no time limit. That is legally permissible and politically a standstill that hands the AfD an argument every day.

None of these paths is good. The thought that the firewall in a German state depends on five BSW members and on the honesty of a group a third of which is presumably not telling the truth about its own vote should reassure no one.

VI. What speaks against it

A merciless analysis must here too be merciless towards its own thesis.

The AfD is not rising everywhere. In Berlin on 20 September it came only third with just over 16 per cent, behind the Left with almost 26 and the CDU with just under 19 per cent. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the SPD under Manuela Schwesig holds the formation of the government in its hands despite 38 per cent for the AfD. The structure is strongest in the rural east; in the big cities it also mobilises its opponents.

This counter-check has a limit, however, and it no longer runs along the Elbe. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state and the old heart of West German industry, the AfD won just 5.4 per cent in the 2022 state election. In the latest INSA poll of October 2026 it stands at 21 per cent; Forsa put it at 22 in September. Over the same period Hendrik Wüst’s CDU has fallen from almost 36 to 26 per cent. A fourfold increase in four years, in the west, without Siegmund and without an eastern biography: this is no longer a regional phenomenon.

And the AfD remains a party of scandals, power struggles and personnel that damage it. Even sympathetic observers write that Siegmund’s success came partly despite his party, not because of it. A structure that fills offices must also fill them competently. A parliament president who is at the same time general secretary of his state party will be measured every day by whether he runs the house or a parliamentary group.

Neither changes the direction. But it shows that it is not irreversible.

VII. How things may develop

We consider three developments the most likely, and none excludes the others.

Normalisation from below. An AfD parliament president, vice-presidents with votes from other groups, CDU members whose voting behaviour nobody knows any more: the firewall does not fall with a bang but stone by stone, in secret ballots for which no one has to give account. Münzenmaier’s “anchoring in the territory”, which we described in April, has found its parliamentary counterpart.

The split of the CDU. In the east the party stands between a wing that considers demarcation suicide and one that considers it the last line of defence. The state party conference on 5 December, shortly before the election of the minister-president, could decide which wing leads the party. A CDU that breaks apart in Magdeburg does not break apart only in Magdeburg.

The test run. For the AfD, Saxony-Anhalt is what a test bed is for an engineer: here it can try out how offices are filled, majorities organised and opponents split before the federal level is at stake. On election night Weidel declared that the CDU/CSU would never again win a federal election and that she wanted to bring the AfD to 40 per cent nationally. Siegmund is the face that shows what it can look like when it looks friendly.

VIII. What remains

In March we wrote that the structure was waiting for its autocrat. Today we would add to that sentence. The structure is no longer waiting idly. It is filling offices before it has the man who is to fill them all. And it has learned that for this it needs no grim face, but a friendly one.

The AfD’s opponents have not yet learned this. They warn, and the warning becomes an advertising poster. They draw lines, and the line holds only when their own people leave the chamber. They administer the crisis that is the invitation, and are surprised that someone accepts it.

No alarm helps against a friendly face. The only thing that helps is a politics that serves the need it serves better — the feeling that someone is really taking things in hand. As long as that is missing, the next election will be the next invitation.