The German election last month once again secured Chancellor Angela Merkel and her centrist Christian Democratic Union’s position in government, but it also heralded the dramatic rise of Germany’s populist far-right party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), the country’s first right extremist group to enter the Bundestag since World War II.
In an unprecedented turn, the AfD — which was founded in 2013 primarily as a Eurosceptic party, before its deeper xenophobic message took hold — garnered nearly 13 percent of the national vote, placing third after the CDU and the Social Democratic Party. The bulk of its supporters hailed from formerly Communist-occupied parts of East Germany; according to voters in AfD strongholds, the “Revenge of the East” resulted from Merkel’s “lack of respect” for Germans in the region, who accused her CDU of wasting money on immigrants while their local economies crumbled.
What was perhaps most surprising was the sudden influx of support the party received from a large number of former non-voters. Put simply: As in the case of Donald Trump’s electoral victory in the U.S. last November, the AfD triumphed in part because many former non-voters were stirred by its virulently racist, anti-immigrant message, and their votes flipped the results.
Amid a flurry of dangerously insensitive comments from its spokespeople — the most famous was Bjorn Hocke’s description of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial as a “Monument of Shame” to the German people — the AfD experienced an alarming surge of popularity in recent months, running on an entirely reactionary political platform.
During the highly controversial campaign, party leadership openly criticized Angela Merkel’s “immigrant welcoming policy.” According to campaign promises, the AfD intended to change the German constitution to allow for the immediate deportation of any immigrants who had failed in their asylum appeals, regardless of whether or not their country of origin was deemed safe. In addition, they…