German voters in Thuringia democratically elect a candidate from the populist Alternative für Deutschland party, are denounced by state media and establishment politicians for being antidemocratic

Robert Sesselmann, Landrat-elect of Sonneberg, and the first AfD candidate elected to top political office in Germany.

Democracy is when you want what the late-stage liberal system wants to give you, and the system gives it to you. If you don’t want what the system wants to give you, your preferences are undemocratic and the system gives it to you anyway. You’re free to protest the things the system hates, but if you protest the system or any of its agenda, that’s undemocratic and you’ll be water cannoned to protect democracy. You’re free to believe in the principles espoused by late-stage liberal democratic politicians, but if you dispute them, you’re a danger to the free world and should be arrested.

These blunt truths, revealed as never before in the Corona era, have been proven yet again in local elections in Thuringia, where voters in the district of Sonneberg have voted the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) candidate Robert Sesselmann to the office of Landrat – the first time a member of this populist right-leaning political party has achieved top municipal office. Although the AfD have more support than the government-leading SPD, they’ve been blocked from major electoral victories until now by a prearranged cordon sanitaire. Because all the other parties undemocratically collaborate against them, they need an outright majority to win any high office – a hurdle no other party faces, and that until the Sonneberg victory, they’ve never been able to surmount.

State media and the entire allegedly democratic political establishment are up in arms about the danger that this entirely democratic electoral result poses for democracy.

From tageschau, among the worst of the lot:

The AfD has achieved top municipal office for the first time in Sonneberg, Thuringia. Experts see this as a turning point. They say it is becoming increasingly difficult to campaign against the right-wing populists or to win elections against them in eastern Germany. After the AfD's electoral victory in … Sonneberg, they expect further wins for the party in eastern Germany: “If there’s no dramatic change of mood, next year’s state elections and local elections could become a triumph for the AfD,” Dresden political scientist Hans Vorländer told the dpa news agency … The support of the Left, SPD, Greens and FDP for the CDU incumbent Jürgen Köpper was not enough to prevent the AfD victory. …

According to Matthias Quent, an extremism researcher from Magdeburg, Sesselmann’s victory has “symbolic value of nationwide significance … The real possibilities for a district administrator in a district with 54,000 inhabitants are limited, but this win gives the AfD a central position for advancing further in state and federal politics.” Additionally, the election results confirm the “extreme course of right-wing radicalisation” adopted AfD state leader Björn Höcke …

Green Party leader Ricarda Lang has interpreted the result as a warning to all supporters of democracy. Sesselmann had campaigned primarily against the policies of the coalition federal government – with energy and refugee policies a primary focus. The Thuringian SPD state chair Georg Maier also blamed unstable political conditions in the state for the outcome of the district council election. …. Robert Sesselmann’s win is an alarm signal for democracy, said Martin Schirdewan, co-chairman of the Left Party… The Left Party politician cited dissatisfaction with the government and the appropriation of right-wing populist narratives by the CDU/CSU and the FDP as the reason for the AfD’s first takeover of a top municipal office.

“Democracy” has obviously acquired a strange new definition for our political establishment and their academic allies. It no longer denotes the right of citizens to elect representatives of their choosing, but rather their obligation to vote for parties and policies that are already favoured by the political elite. Establishment parties like the CDU or FDP can’t even take up popular AfD positions without being accused of antidemocratic populism in turn. In the last resort, the AfD will simply be outlawed by our political police, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The Thuringian branch of the AfD is already under surveillance by this crack team of constitutional protectors, whose real job is to guard the right flank of the centre-right CDU, and who have declared the Thuringian AfD to be “proven right-wing extremists.”

Now, I am myself right-leaning, but you don’t have to be on the right to loathe these developments. The AfD aren’t antisemitic Nazi fascists as they’re often slurred. My American readers would find them very hard to differentiate from MAGA Republicans. What’s more, they’re the only major German party to have opposed lockdowns and mass vaccination, and to oppose the ruinous energy transition agenda and to call for an end to mass migration.

The clear aim is to deny German voters all possibility of mounting any democratic opposition to these increasingly unpopular lunacies. Germany is no longer even interested in democratic pretences. It’s a thinly-veiled oligarchy steered by a closed political elite, whose interests every day wander further from the people they claim to serve.