German’s far-right AfD party suffered a narrow electoral defeat on Sunday after huge protests swept across Germany against the party over revelations of debates about mass expulsions of immigrants, AFP reports.
A candidate from the mainstream center-right CDU won a slim victory over an AfD challenger in a run-off in eastern Thuringia for a district administrator post.
Over a million people have marched in recent days in cities from Hamburg to Dresden to Stuttgart in protest at the Alternative for Germany party and hundreds of thousands poured into the streets again on Saturday and Sunday, according to AFP.
The wave of mobilization was sparked by a January 10 report by investigative outlet Correctiv, which revealed that AfD members had discussed the expulsion of immigrants and "non-assimilated citizens" at a Potsdam meeting with extremists.
Sunday's run-off vote in eastern Thuringia for a district administrator post was the first election since the outrage over the meeting.
The defeat comes after AfD candidates made strides in local elections.
In June, AfD won a local election for the first time, when Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, won the election for district administrator in Sonneberg in the central state of Thuringia.
A month later, the party notched up another first when its candidate was elected a full-time mayor of the small town of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
In December, a candidate for AfD was elected as the mayor of the eastern town of Pirna, marking the first time that an AfD candidate had been elected as the mayor of a significantly sized town or city.
AfD, which was formed in 2013, entered Germany’s national parliament with 12.6% of the vote in 2017. The party has a history of controversial statements, particularly surrounding the Holocaust. Hoecke caused a firestorm in February of 2017 when he suggested that Germany should end its decades-long tradition of acknowledging and atoning for its Nazi past.
AfD chairman Alexander Gauland in 2018 described the Nazi period as a mere "speck of bird poo in over 1,000 years of successful German history".
He had previously asserted, however, that Jews should not fear the strong election showing by AfD and indicated that he was ready to meet with German Jewish leaders “at any time.”