AUSTRALIA PERSPECTIVE

Sydney, July 5, 2026. As the AfD held its federal congress in Erfurt on July 4-5, the Australian press covered the event by establishing parallels with the populist dynamics the country has long experienced. The German scene resonates in Canberra: the same mechanisms, the same patterns.

In Erfurt, approximately 15,000 protesters from unions, civil society groups, and left-wing parties converged to block access to the congress center, according to police estimates reported by PerthNow. Riot police reinforcements from across Germany had been deployed. Inside, the AfD reelected its co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla without surprise, who have led the party to the top of national polling, now surpassing Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives.

Opening speeches labeled protesters as "anti-democratic." A song titled "Send them back" was distributed on the party's social media before the official opening. Cards sold in the venue displayed the slogan "YOU will be deported." Weidel declared from the podium: "We have one last chance to save our country." The party aims for victories in regional elections in 2026, which would constitute a historic first.

In a commentary published by The Guardian Australia, commentator Julianne Schultz outlines a transnational model: populists who activate anger, fear, and a sense of threat to mobilize and gain traction, supported by some of the world's wealthiest individuals. She notes that trust in media hovers around 40 percent in most democracies—slightly higher in Australia—and that this precise institutional weakening opens the door to movements like the AfD.

The Australian mirror is Pauline Hanson. Her One Nation party, active since the 1990s, laid the groundwork for anti-immigration and anti-establishment discourse that the AfD now deploys on a far larger scale. Schultz warns that traditional parties cannot simply play the 24-hour news cycle game to counter these movements: that would be terrain designed for populists to win, those who are instinctively emotional, angry, personal, and omnipresent.