After the elections in eastern-German Länder and ahead of those in Austria, Robert Misik casts an unsentimental eye on far-right voters.
Social Europe, September 2024
In the German-speaking world, the election season began just in time for the start of September. Nerves are on edge. In the regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony, two eastern-german Länder, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won over 30 per cent of the votes and even became the strongest party in Thuringia.
Although this was anticipated, the shockwaves hit hard, their impacts going far beyond those of peripheral elections. The ruling centre-left, three-party coalition in Berlin no longer knows how to help itself and is dragging itself into the last year of its term, while the ultra-right—including barely camouflaged Nazis—has been able to win relative majorities on the local scale and a significant share of support on the national level. The ascendant far right: the lust for cruelty weiterlesen