Why the AfD Wins

yogthos

Because German economy is imploding.

gjsman-1000

If a right wing party can win in Germany, that’s a sign the left wing and centrist parties completely sucked and ignored voter concerns for too long. Let’s start there.

13415

Extremely high budget for ads and posters, social media campaigns, etc., all paid from foreign countries under dubious circumstances by straw men. It's all copy & paste across EU countries, far-right parties even copy the slogans they put on their posters, they just exchange the country name.

deusex_

much of it can be expressed via this visual which made the rounds a few years ago https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144/photo/1 ? the topics have different emphasis than in the US, but the principle remains. immigration, de-industrialization, green politics, erosion of trust based society

karol

Congratulations to democratically elected leaders!

asmodeuslucifer

We can have billionaires, or we can have democracy. We cannot have both, because the billionaires have declared war on democracy. We have to imagine a world without billionaires because the billionaires are imagining a world without us. --Gil Duran, author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

sajithdilshan

The main reason AfD won the election is the incompetence and arrogance of all other political parties. Since Covid times every other political parties in Germany seems to be under the impression that they are somehow holier and knows what is best for the people and what people wants doesn’t matter and the politicians decide what people deserves. The pinnacle of this is the current Chancellor of Germany which is arrogant, completely broke his election promises and keep on pushing the voters that are in the centre right or centre left towards the respective extremism. Another important factor is the current German economy. When the economy was somewhat in good shape after Merkle’s government people mainly voted for the Greens whose main agenda is climate change back in 2021 because people had good living standards and they could afford to focus on solving world problems. But the current economy is imploding and a lot of people are losing their well paid jobs and no other party seems to be even talking about it except for AfD and somehow the current government is under the delusion that economy is doing far better than they have thought. This again is a reason for a lot of people to vote for AfD. Last but not least is the Islamic extreme/terrorist attacks that happened past years. There have been multiple incidents of cars been driven into crowd including in Christmas markets and latest attack in the Gay pride in Berlin this year. That has been used by AfD to emphasise the incompetence of the current and previous governments to ensure the internal security of the country to gain even more votes

Luker88

I don't know why this happens, but I would caution against assigning rationality to the voters. In Italy voters have been electing one party after the other without consistency for the last several elections, which I would use as a point to general desperation and not feeling represented. I would like to know how many other countries have a similar attitude, like "let's try these ones, we have not voted them yet so maybe this time it's better"

qw12j

Because people want Nord Stream, fewer immigrants, more apartments, nuclear energy and no forced state TV payments. Weidel is of course living the woke WEF lifestyle in Switzerland with her Sri Lankan lesbian partner and was at Goldman Sachs. So a betrayal of the voters, Meloni or Trump style is very likely if the AfD should manage to have the federal majority.

rvz

This is a question for the AI chatbots to answer.

RGS1811

Caldwell is a Claremont guy, which is key to understanding where he's coming from. First Things is an christian nationalist / natcon outlet funded by (among others) Peter Thiel. That doesn't prevent him from being correct about things in this article, but it's worth noting the outlet and source. Caldwell systematically elides the völkisch-nationalist character of the AfD and their adjacency to neo-Nazism. He underplays Höcke's extremism, ignores the Potsdam meeting, and leads us to believe (falsely) that the identification of the AfD as rechtsextrem was somehow a biased political stunt. It wasn't, there is plenty of backing for the classification, and it would not have been undemocratic to apply the Verfassungschutz and ban them permanently. edit: typo

Luker88

...Should we also point out that the people who actually lived Nazism and Fascism are basically gone, so we are very probably looking at nostalgics who do not believe it was that bad, simply because to them it's just another third-hand story?

davidguetta

As a right wing / afd ally said in France litterally said yesterday: Do you know where extreme-right is low ? in Danemark. You know why ? because the SOCIALIST PARTY implemented the end / started being tough ob illegal immigration. it never was about anything else than the majority of people tired of being force-fed immigration by european elites solve this issue, solve "extreme right" and it was the same in the US at that point people not seeing this are mentally ill in my opinion

rayoleary

I fully admit TLDR but where do you live?

jleyank

Let them have their minority government and see what they table for consideration. From their actions, people will judge them. The won because people think complex problems have simple, untried solutions that are common sense. They hate "them", they're stoked on (social) media. They feel put upon and denied their rewards. Same old, same old with more effective communication paths.

grigio

desperation

markus_zhang

I remember watching a movie about Hitler coming back and became a media and political star. That movie was probably more than ten years old but I still find it very relevant.

davoneus

Grievance politics sells quite well. When AfD backers argue it's Western Germany's fault, it's easy for a lot of people to climb on board. Heck, AfDs own platform argues there should be more Russian language in the schools and Russian cooperation across the board. That on its face says an awful lot.

archagon

Why on earth did the mods decide to remove flags on this?