http://dx.doi.org/10.59704/acc09dc79284d888 https://verfassungsblog.de/pillars-of-society/ Pillars of Society - When Christian Democrats Elect the Far Right Steinbeis, Maximilian eng 2026-10-09 electronic resource text/html ddc:342 AfD Brandmauer CDU Deutschland Germany right-wing extremism Deutschland Verfassungsblog Verfassungsblog--2366-7044 CC BY-SA 4.0 Thirteen men and two women make up the Christian Democratic Union’s group in the newly constituted state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. On Tuesday, four of them helped elect a right-wing extremist as President of the Landtag. In protocol, and in politics too, this office carries exceptional weight. What interests me is the fact that in a state governed by CDU Minister-Presidents for a quarter of a century, one in four Christian Democratic MPs gives their vote to a right-wing extremist. Right-wing extremist: what could be more Christian Democratic than this term of demarcation? Not the ‘right-wing’ part. The CDU is on the right itself. It is the ‘extremist’. The insistence that there is a difference between the centre and the extreme. And that this difference is constitutive.