HALLE, GERMANY — Everywhere Ulrich Siegmund goes, an influencer follows — streaming live from the campaign trail.Siegmund is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate running for governor in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. But Siegmund needs neither influencers nor journalists.
The 35-year-old former marketing man is a TikTok star in his own right and his party is comfortably leading polls Sunday's state election, which could make the AfD the first far-right party to lead a German state government since World War II.Siegmund has almost half as many followers on the platform as people eligible to vote in this small state.He makes a point of taking time to answer their questions personally, often from the comfort of his back porch.In every video, he's dressed in a flawlessly ironed white polo shirt or starched white dress shirt — the uniform of Germany's newly professionalized far-right.His carefully coiffed side parting is as immaculate as his smile, something which distinguishes him from the rest of his party whose members tend to grimace rather than grin.
But Siegmund's broad smile rarely cracks, even when he speaks his mind about the party's biggest issue, immigration and the mass deportation of migrants.The incongruity is striking.
The polished, affable politician is also a proponent of one of the hardest-right positions in contemporary European politics.In a recent TikTok post, Siegmund asserts that it is "unacceptable that our doctors are leaving for Switzerland, Norway, or elsewhere because they cannot tolerate the conditions here, while we bring in doctors from India or other places to replace them."The AfD's platform states that "culturally foreign" health workers often fail to meet German medical standards and "endanger patient well-being."Siegmund refrains from going into such detail on camera and he keeps his campaign speeches snappy — full of pep talk rather than policy. The real detail is something former AfD supporter Ha...