Germany's far-right AfD bids for their first taste of power in eastern vote

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1:18Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. And we're beginning in Germany, in what may seem like slightly strange territory for a global news programme like ours, because we're talking about a local election and also one taking place in one of Germany's smaller regions, Saxony-Anhalt. And yet, with voting well underway there, the word that keeps on coming up in the reporting of these elections is seismic, because the Alternative für Deutschland party, the AfD, is hoping to secure a majority in the regional parliament, and an outright win would mark the first time a far-right Party has held state-level power in Germany since the Second World War, since the time, in other words, when the Nazis were committing some of the worst crimes in the history of humanity.

2:08The AfD has held a huge lead in the opinion polls going into this election. Whether it's enough to secure power, given the other parties a vow that they won't go into coalition with the AfD, well, that's the key question. Ulrich Siegmund is the leader of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, and he spoke at a rally on Saturday. We know that our beautiful fatherland does not have much time left. Every day counts. It will take a long time to rebuild what they have been destroying here for over 20 or 30 years. I'm starting right now, my friends. Let's make history tomorrow. Let's take back the country. Fingers crossed.

2:47What though are those in Saxony Anhalt unpersuaded by the AFD's programme? One will explore in a bit more detail in a moment. This photo was one of those to express concern. I'm very worried and I view the whole situation very critically. I vote for democratic parties. I'm committed to that. But I think that regardless of the results, the mood among people will change. And those who are openly more right populist in their views will then also appear more openly on the streets. And this might also lead to more conflicts among citizens. It is the AFD, though, who've had a huge lead in the opinion polls going into this election.

3:24And J.S. Tyler is one of their supporters.

3:30These elections are very important, not just for Saxony and Holt, but for the whole country, because there must finally be positive changes that benefit the people, rather than working against them, as has been the case for many years now. After all, migration is getting out of hand. We have nothing against foreigners, even if we as AfD voters are branded as Nazis. The BBC's Berlin correspondent Jess Parker is not in Berlin at the moment. She's in Saxony-Anhalt. She's one of those who's used the seismic word. Why? Alternative for Deutschland have been growing in popularity and now they are on the verge, although we've got to be clear, we do not know what's going to happen.

4:13Voting is underway. But they're on the verge potentially of taking power for the first time at a state level. So that in itself is a huge moment for Germany because it's just a very controversial political movement here. It would be the first time that the far right would have held that kind of power in the post-war era. And for the AFD, they see it as part of their stepping stone towards bigger, better things. But for example, Friedrich Mertz, the conservative CDU chancellor, is already in quite a bit of political trouble. he's in the doldrums, poor poll ratings, this could be a further dent in his authority.

4:53So there's quite a lot there in terms of that context as to why this really matters for Germany, even though this is a small state, 2 million people. Much to pick out of what you've just said. One of the things I want to get a bit more detail on is us talking about the AFD as a far right party. I mean, I know that they've come out with a sort of enormous 250 page program of for government in Saxony Anhole. But can you explain to me what you think they're sort of their big ticket items are? What what leads them to be described as a far right or hard right party? Yeah, I mean, look, I think we have to always be clear, all these types of terminology, they are things that are used to summarise a party, and then you get into the detail of the policies that they espouse.

5:45And worth saying, the AFD say they're a conservative libertarian movement. But in terms of their policies for Saxon-Anhalt, and you're right, it's an extensive manifesto. They take a very hard line on immigration, so they talk about setting up a deportation task force. They use the word remigration in their manifesto, which has become an increasingly slippery term, But certainly an interpretation of it that has been written about by people on the far right is the idea of the mass deportation of people with migrant backgrounds or the kind of pressured campaign to make people leave who are of migrant backgrounds in their millions and millions in Europe.

6:27here in Sachsen-Anhalt, where obviously they don't actually set nationwide immigration policy, but they say what they want to do is focus on getting people to leave who are here illegally or whose visas have run out. So people that shouldn't be in Germany anymore and they want to speed that up. So that's what they say they're referring to in this context as remigration. I think party critics suspect that it actually goes much further. So that's one of their policies. They're pro-Russia. They're pro-reopening ties with Putin's Russia. The party talks about wanting to defund what it calls anti-German art.

6:59It wants to create a kind of more patriotic atmosphere in Germany. It describes German memory culture, which is the idea of facing up to the Nazi past as a guilt complex. Now, that's quite a controversial thing to say here in Germany. And they want to do things in schooling like ban the flying of the rainbow flag, the sort of flag associated with the LGBT community. So that's a flavour of some of the policies that they are talking about locally, but also how that feeds into their kind of national perspective as well. When do you think we will know how everything is going to sort itself out, whether they can govern in some way or whether a coalition of smaller parties can be cobbled together to govern in their stead?

7:45Later this evening, when the polls close, we get a projection. There's this big question over whether these smaller parties are going to reach the 5 % threshold. And some of them have been hovering very closely around that mark. And you need to hit 5 % in order to get into Parliament. The more parties that get over their 5 % threshold, the less likely it is that the AFD is going to be able to take a parliamentary majority. We should be getting an idea, unless it's crazy tight this evening, and then possibility one the afd takes an overall majority and that's pretty clear picture or possibility two nobody's got a majority and presumably we'd be looking at a world where other parties are seeing if they can form a coalition but that has the potential to be very messy because if you're excluding the wire the brand the firewall if parties are saying they're not going to go into coalition with the afd how are they going to cobble together a coalition of lots of parties without it being a bit of a political nightmare.

8:43The BBC's Jess Parker in Saxony-Anhalt. So let's look further at how this election, albeit in a fairly small region, could reverberate right across Germany. Markus Ziener is a visiting senior fellow with the think tank the German Marshall Fund. He's in Berlin. How significant does he think this is on a local but also national level? I think we have to put it a little bit in perspective. I mean, Saxony-Anhalt is a state that's very small and the impact actually on governing and governance in Germany on a federal level are limited. I think what really counts here and why it attracts so much attention has simply to do with the fact that it could turn out to be the first state in post-war Germany that has a right-wing extremist party in power.

9:30So I believe that would be a big blow for the chancellor. So it would reverberate on the federal level. But that's something that has to be seen, actually, depending on the outcome of today's election. And just to pick you up on that point, when you say a big blow for the Chancellor, I mean, clearly, you know, whenever the main opposition party picks up votes, secures an election victory, it's a blow for the incumbent. But I mean, Metz himself, the Chancellor, he came into office saying, with me, I will beat back the far right. And he's, I mean, it seems as if the trend is entirely the other way.

10:14Yeah, he was even more blunt in saying and promising to cut the number of supporters of the AFD in half. And what happened was actually just the opposite. I mean, the AFD has increased not only in Saxony Anahalt, but also in general in Germany. So for the chancellor, this is a huge problem from many perspectives. One of them is, okay, how should the CDU, his party, the Conservative Party, how should they act? How should they deal with the AFD? I mean, this has the potential to tear the party apart because there is one part of the CDU that's saying, well, we have to somehow to build an alliance with the AFD.

10:57And then there's another part saying we can never team up with them. And probably tonight, if the election outcome is such that the AfD can only govern with the help of another party, we'll have a very dangerous discussion from Mr. Merz's point of view. And you could also see it. I mean, and, you know, lots of people are suggesting that, I mean, obviously that the AfD has been riding high in the opinion polls and they're likely to be the largest party, but not necessarily secure an outright majority. in which case there could be an option whereby, you know, the other parties try to scrabble together some sort of unwieldy coalition.

11:39But how far do you think that that has inherent dangers, that, again, there will be a sense from voters that, you know, there's a sort of establishment stitch up here, that they're being disenfranchised? Yeah, it depends basically whether the Green Party makes it into the parliament or not. if the Green Party is crossing the 5 % threshold and they have seats in the parliament, it seems very unlikely that the AfD will have an absolute majority of seats in the parliament. But what then? I mean, if the AfD is, and they will clearly be the strongest party, but then basically all the other parties have to, well, form an alliance in one way or the other to govern against the AfD.

12:23Is this going to play in the hands of the AfD in the long run? Because then they could make the argument, well, you see, we are the strongest, but they do everything to prevent us from governing. That's an open question. And secondly, the CDU has clearly stated that they do not want to form a coalition with the far left. But that's probably what's needed in order to prevent the AFD. It sounds as if you're saying this is an election. I mean, clearly, We have no idea how it's going to play out. But how it does play out could have huge implications way beyond this relatively small region. Absolutely.

13:06And it has already quite some implications. I mean, I have been on the ground and looking at how the AfD is campaigning in Jericho, that it's a small town in Saxony Anhalt. And it was really interesting to see how the top candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, is actually doing his campaign. He was talking to basically each and everyone at the market square where I was and where I was watching this and patting people on the back, just asking how they are doing at work, doing selfies for hours actually until the really last person on that market square was able to have a selfie of himself with the potential new prime minister on the smartphone.

13:45So it's a campaign that works very much on the emotional level, while the incumbent Prime Minister Sven Schulze is more of the guy who's talking from the bully pulpit and very rational. And I think that the established parties have not found any way to counter this kind of campaign. Markus Zina speaking to us from Berlin. This is a story we'll be keeping across very closely here on the BBC World Service.

14:15Also coming up on NewsHour, the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama on his concerns about the direction and the strength of American democracy. J.D. Vance, our vice president, has been pushing this line about heritage Americans. If you can trace your ancestors back to at least the Civil War, that you're somehow more American. I think it's terrible. Donald Trump wants to upend the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. That affects me personally because my mother was in the United States on a student visa when she met my father at the University of Chicago and had me. And under those rules, I wouldn't be a citizen if those people had their way.

14:58Francis Fukuyama in 15 minutes. One headline for the BBC newsroom, the top US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are in Kiev today for their first talks in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion. We'll be looking at that a little bit later.

15:15You're with the BBC World Service and live from London, this is News Hour with me, Tim Franks. In Indonesia, more than 150 ,000 passengers have been left stranded after a volcanic eruption forced officials to suspend operations at six airports. The volcano, Mount Anak Krakatau, between Java and Sumatra, began erupting and hurling ash high into the sky on Friday. Lisa Tambunan is the BBC's correspondent in Indonesia and joins me now. Lisa, what is the latest on this? Is the volcano still active? The volcano is still active. It's been active since, as you mentioned earlier, since Friday. And this is impacting flights in the surrounding area.

16:05It is located in the Sunda Strait, which is located in between Sumatra and Java. But it's impacting beyond just its closest vicinity and sending volcanic ash into Jakarta, which is some distance away from the volcano itself. And this has closed down the airport today and impacted more than 700 flights and hundreds and thousands of people left stranded. So the impact is huge. And any idea from the authorities how long this might carry on for? They are giving updates every few hours or so. But as of tonight, there's no signs of reopening the airport until this is now late Sunday in the evening. So it's almost coming toward 24 hours since it was first shot earlier this morning.

17:15And there have been efforts to limit the volcanic ash airborne with disaster response teams planning to conduct cloud seeding operations. This is to trigger rain in an attempt to disperse the airborne ash. But there are some challenges to this due to the dry season with limited clouds to actually be able to induce rainfall. And just in terms of, I mean, you mentioned about the disruption to flights. I mean, for people living close to this volcano, and presumably there are concerns about health effects, just briefly. Yes, there are. With the volcanic ash being sent to the surrounding region, health authorities have advised residents to stay indoors with warnings of respiratory infections as well as risks to skin and eye diseases.

18:13So people are advised to wear masks if they do have to go outside for whatever activities. Lisa Tambunan in Jakarta thank you very much for bringing us the latest

18:29The world's oldest film festival in Venice is now in its 83rd edition it's underway and among films in competition this year our sister programme on the BBC World Service weekend picked out one directed by May el-Touki the Danish-Egyptian director who's one of only two female directors taking part this year in the festival. Her film premieres later today. It's entitled Woman Unknown. You can decide to be scared of it. You can let the thoughts go away when they come. You can decide not to be sad. You can learn to push away sad thoughts. That's the main character, Maria Nanni, talking to the young girl she looks after.

19:13The film is set in the Danish capital Copenhagen in the aftermath of the Second World War. It tells the story of Marie and her secret, the relationship that she had during the war with a German soldier. When Julian Warwicker caught up with May Al-Tuhi, she told him first why she had picked on this complex era of post-war life for her film. There was a lot of saved up anger in the immediate aftermath after Second World War in Europe, many places in Europe. And for Denmark specifically, because we chose a politic of collaboration with the Germans to avoid too many casualties, it's understandable that you would get angry at people collaborating.

19:53At the same time, that was the official politic of the country. So that makes it a messy matter to tell a story about and therefore, for me, more exciting because there's something to debate and talk about. Because people felt, correct me if I'm wrong, that those women, by doing what they did, had effectively gone against their national identity at a time when that mattered so much to people. Yeah, and so they were actually called horizontal collaborators by some. In wartime and in post-war, the female body has always been regarded as part of the kind of national identity, national territory. And that's also what the film is about, basically, the female body as a battleground.

20:38And what that means in a private setting and what that means in a public setting. And sometimes these people, I mean, they were hunted down, weren't they, for what they had done? Yes, and quite violently, they were shamed in the street, humiliated, spat on. You would cut their hair. And then given that time where migration wasn't as common as it is today, people didn't necessarily leave their hometown. So often these women would live in that town that had shamed them and their children would suffer as well. So what we see now is the grandchildren of these women who are starting to, you know, share their stories about their parents who were born out of these relationships.

21:22Which is fascinating. I mean, I was going to take the conversation to the present day and you've gone there before I did. And I wonder what kind of emotions those grandchildren were expressing now that they knew the stories of their grandmothers. I think they look at their grandmothers with a more sympathetic, gracious gaze and with more nuance, which makes sense because my mother is 80, for example, now. So she's born in 46. And so for her, these women were something she heard about, but she would definitely take a stand on the people who spent time with the Germans. I think there is an opportunity now to tell stories about that time where we can maybe be more nuanced and add, you know, a favorable complexity in order to reflect on what went down and also to some extent talk about how can we deal with future conflicts of that sort.

22:22I talked to a historian at some point who had been helping me out, and we talked about the concept that men often pay with their lives during war and women pay with their bodies. I mean, one final question, which is about you and your craft, really. You're one of only two female directors at the Venice Film Festival this year, which I have to say, when I saw that, I was very surprised by. What does that say to you about women at the top of your industry at the moment? I've encountered this many, many times throughout my career, being the only one or maybe one of a few. So it's not a big, big surprise, but I would have hoped that I had more female colleagues in competition.

23:05It is a very structural problem. Even the budgets I work under compared to male colleagues, the talent I can attract, the actors who say yes. And sometimes even the media write about the male director genius that I have never encountered with a woman. So, and not that I think I am one, but just to say that it's so severe, this structural problem, and therefore it's really important that we keep talking about it. And that was May Al-Tughi, director of Women Unknown. It's having its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival later today. She was talking to my colleague, Julian Warica. do stay with us if you can here on news hour we've got much more to come in the next 30 minutes we've got a long interview with a fascinating man one of the world's top public intellectuals francis fukuyama and we'll be hoping also to bring you the latest on steve wickhoff and jared kushner who have made it to kia for their first talks in ukraine since russia's full-scale invasion of four and a half years ago

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25:06Welcome back to NewsHour. For a while, apparently, Hungary had a bit of a shortage of gravediggers. And so back in 2016, it launched what it called the World Gravedigger Competition. The event was so popular that it now takes place every year. And this weekend, cemetery workers from all over the globe descended on a town in northern Hungary for the big dig. Wendy Urquhart has this report.

25:36with shovels in hand the 19 teams of two got down to business in the hope of winning the 2026 world grave digging competition and it's no mean feat the earth is so hard in some places that they have to use pickaxes joseph varga from the hungarian cemeteries association says it's Fun for the competitors and the crowds that come to watch, and it also shows the public just how demanding the job actually is. When relatives arrive at a funeral, the grave is already dug. They don't see what actually precedes it. When videos of the competition became more widespread year by year, they saw how hard and stressful it was physically and psychologically, and now they have more respect for the gravediggers.

26:23This contest is also a PR exercise for the trade. There's not enough room for mechanical diggers in some graveyards, so digging by hand is the only other option. And the hope is that this event will shake off some of the taboos surrounding death and persuade young people to join the industry. To make the competition fair, each team pulls a plot number from a pot before the event begins. And just in case you're wondering, winning is not just about digging a hole in record time. There are rules involved. Each grave has to be exactly two metres long, 80 centimetres wide and 1.6 metres deep. And the earth has to be neatly piled at the side too.