Why the world should care about the far right’s rise in Germany

The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party won 43.8 percent of the popular vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, trouncing the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU). That victory brought a party which follows in the historical footsteps of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party closer than it has ever come since World War II to ruling a German state. Two weeks later, the AfD took more than 38 percent of the vote in a regional election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the Christian Democrats failed to cross the 5 percent threshold to enter the regional parliament – “a disaster”, said Chancellor Friedrich Merz.