You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won about 44 percent of the vote in this week’s election in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in the eastern part of the country. AFD finished far ahead of other parties there. It was the party’s strongest showing in an election and the latest illustration of AfD’s growing popularity, particularly in Eastern Germany. In the latest episode of Right Now, Thomas Zimmer, a German historian and author of the newsletter Democracy Americana, discusses the results in Saxony-Anhalt and what they tell us about far-right politics in Germany, Europe, and North America. Zimmer says that pro-democracy, centrist parties, such as Germany’s Christian Democrats, the British Labor Party, and the Democrats in the United States, keep making the same mistakes in fighting the far right. These parties, instead of directly confronting the far-right’s ideology, keep trying to accommodate those sentiments by moving to the right, particularly on immigration. These parties, he argues, also keep offering fairly standard agendas that don’t engage voters frustrated with the status quo. He calls for a robust defense of multicultural, pluralistic democracy in both the United States and in Europe, along with bold policy agendas that might excite voters.
