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I see Twitter throwing a fit over AfD winning or almost winning in Germany. Can somebody please loop me in about the drama of it all?
AfD is the national-populist party in Germany, that is, they favor socially reactionary and economically redistributive policies. Germany has coalition governments at both federal and state levels, and all other parties have agreed on a "firewall" against AfD: no matter how much they win, they won't join their coalition. The biggest sin of AfD in their eyes is that it's openly tolerant of ethnonationalists all the way to "Hitler couldn't have done everything wrong".
Saxony-Anhalt is a state in former East Germany, which has a different approach to the legacy of the Third Reich, and AfD has just won a plurality of the votes there, almost a majority. What makes West Germans run like headless chicken is that BSW (a splinter Left party that favors economically redistributive and socially reactionary policies) is willing to enter into a coalition with them, threatening the integrity of the firewall.
Which, in my opinion, would be the best outcome. By being locked out of the government, populist parties like AfD are free to criticize the mainstream parties as much as they want, earning free points with the electorate. "We would show them, oh, we would show them how it's done, but they are afraid of our methods working and losing their popularity forever!" they keep on saying. Well, now they get a chance to show everyone how it's done in a single state; they run it into the ground without affecting the rest of the country, and their popularity craters. Or, suddenly thrust into the driver's seat, they self-moderate their populism and become much closer to other mainstream parties in actual policies, obviating the need for a firewall.
What do you think they would need to moderate to become more functional? There was a time when the mainstream had a credible claim on just being normal, and populists could be portrayed as whipping up greviances to grift their way to power, but these days are long over. Nowadays it's populism that's based on just being normal, and the mainstream that needs to be forced to moderate through the threat of populists taking power.
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