Due to its explicit and overt references to Nazism, the statement by Alternative für Deutschland has sparked concerned reactions among the other political parties, both in Germany and abroad. We—taking the opposite approach, which does not place much weight on “statements”—offer several observations.

The democratic mechanism—which, according to bourgeois ideology, is supposed to be the means through which the will of the people—the sovereign people—is expressed—is a formidable tool for imposing the arbitrary will of a very small circle of bourgeoisie, of the oligarchs of capitalism, both international and national. The electorate is steered in the direction dictated by the bourgeoisie. It sets the “agenda” for the “political debate”: security, immigration, national sovereignty (which is, of course, undermined), democracy or fascism, Russia or America, etc.

This is achieved through the extremely powerful tools of propaganda—the mass media—which are controlled by large industrial and financial conglomerates. The Internet, which was supposed to promote “free information,” has inexorably become a key cog in this infernal machine. In newspapers, on television, and on social media, big capital floods the public with propaganda to impose the prejudices that keep the working class subservient to the will of the ruling class.

On the electoral front, the bourgeoisie is invincible.

Instead, we can investigate what is being plotted in each country among the bourgeoisie against the workers, or among rival bourgeois states. What happened this time in Germany?

In one of the 16 federal states, Saxony-Anhalt, the “far-right” party, the AfD, achieved a stunning result of 44% of the vote in the September 6 election, doubling its 21% share from 2021 and winning 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament.

But the AfD is not an “anti-establishment” force, as both right-wing and left-wing parties claim; it is as bourgeois and conservative as the rest, aligned—despite its apparent differences—with the single agenda of the state and capital, behind its verbose demagoguery about “security” and against immigrants.

It says it is against the war and sending weapons to Ukraine, and in favor of restoring relations with Russia, but it supports national rearmament—clearly at the expense of the welfare state—and mandatory conscription.

It is funded by U.S. capitalists and supported by the State of Israel.

Furthermore, the AfD continues to lead the Zentrum union, through which it helps redirect workers’ discontent toward comrades with a different skin color.

It’s for “remigration,” in a contest of demagoguery with all the parties, just as in Italy and the U.S., where “right-wing” governments have deported fewer immigrants than “left-wing” ones. In Spain, Sánchez boasted of blocking more immigrants than Meloni. Not to “protect domestic workers,” but to allow capitalists to better exploit wage earners by pitting workers of different ethnicities against each other in a race to the bottom—and by keeping them out of the country when their numbers become excessive.

During a period of counterrevolution, workers are easily lured into the deception of bourgeois “alternatives.” In the absence of a strong class movement, they are driven—along with the petty bourgeoisie, terrified by their rapid proletarianization—into nationalist illusions, into the apparent “lesser evil” among their oppressors,

In Germany, amid the deepening crisis—marked by factory closures, announced mass layoffs, and cuts to social welfare and pensions—votes from the working class have plummeted for all the remaining parties, which are enthusiastic supporters of this impoverishment, as well as of rearmament and support for the war in Ukraine.

Will a “black wave” sweep across the West, as Democrats and liberals fear? As long as it can, the bourgeoisie has an interest in concealing its dictatorship behind parliamentary rhetoric. In the absence of genuine, widespread, and organized workers’ struggles, the capitalist class prefers the lie of democracy, which remains, in Lenin’s words, “the best wrapping paper for capitalism.” Precisely—a cover—to delude the proletariat into believing it can “choose” and “participate” in reformist policies and in overcoming the economic crisis.

In the absence of organized struggles by the working class, bourgeois propaganda succeeds in diverting the working class’s passions toward the defense of a nonexistent democracy that is supposedly “under attack,” concealing from workers the true causes of economic crises and the role of capitalist institutions, and steering workers’ consciousness and struggle—from both the right and the left—toward conservative policies.

But despite all the transformations of the single party of capital, the bourgeoisie always keeps the fascist option at the ready. It knows that the crisis will deepen and that it will have to further worsen workers’ conditions, and it is already preparing, by means of democracy, repressive decrees and increasingly stringent political restrictions.

When the workers’ struggles intensify, the bourgeoisie will hand over the government of the state to an openly fascist regime—as was the case with Mussolini in 1922 and Hitler in 1933—which will win, democratically, a vote of confidence in parliament. Fascism does not enter through the window but through the front door of the democratic state.

In this political maneuver, election results mean nothing—it’s just a game of percentages designed to keep “political commentators” employed.

Democracy and fascism are not two opposing but rather complementary forms of capitalist government in certain economic and social phases. It will not be the AfD, the CDU, or the SPD that decide this, but the industrial and financial giants that finance and control them.

Nor will votes for the bourgeois left stop the inexorable trend toward open dictatorship; only the social struggle of the workers against the dictatorship of the bourgeois class—which hides behind democracy—will do so.

The way to dismantle the bourgeois propaganda machine and set out to destroy its political regime lies—outside the electoral system and parliamentary cretinism—in the defensive class struggle—the trade-union struggle—of wage earners and the proletariat, which is destined to evolve into a political class struggle as the economic crisis of world capitalism deepens.

In the absence of a vibrant labor movement—that is, a strong class-based union—workers are ensnared in the hollow bourgeois “political debate,” which seeks to direct their discontent against a nonexistent internal enemy—immigrants—and against an external enemy—the coalition of states with which the national bourgeoisie is in conflict over the division of the world market.

A class-based union fights to organize the most exploited segments of the working class, including immigrants and the unemployed.

Other paths remain illusory dead ends that lead to new defeats.