Why the AfD Wins | Hacker News Reader

Why the AfD Wins

firstthings.com

59 pointscwwc160 comments

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"

Voters are mostly emotional, not rational. The people that actually sway the elections vote by feel.

You have to always remember that about half the population has an IQ under 100.

That's by design, of course. Whether people got smarter or dumber we might still assign 100 to be the median.

That half of any sizeable population will always be dumber than the average of that population is thing that feels worrisome even though its just how statistics work.

You have to always remember that about half the population has an IQ under 100.

And that the <100 half is much easier to herd.

That sort of “smarter than thou” attitude resulted in the Republican victories in the Eisenhower/Stevenson US Presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. Maybe Nixon too, with the “silent majority”.

Superficially smart, smug, supercilious and (ironic, eh) emotionally satisfying…but ultimately very foolish.

IQ has nothing to do with it -- smart people are plenty tribal, too. anyone who has ever waded into battles in academia has seen this firsthand

cuz that's what it's about: tribe

as Scott Alexander once said: "the ideology is not the movement" (it's the tribe as much as anything)

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-th...

I don't think that's completely true. When times are good, intelligence and education probably come out in the wash. But when times are bad, and people are losing their livelihoods, intelligence has a lot to do with how blame is assigned. In other words, you're a lot more likely to get scammed the less intelligent and less educated you are.

And that's what we got here in the US -- a conman ran a very successful con on people who just weren't all that smart or educated. And there were enough of those people to supplement the base tribalism and propel him to victory.

In Canada it is often said that governments are voted out, not in. Just continually firing them after being disappointed.

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.

The simple, untried solution is to stop being the export dumping ground of china. But when anyone says that the knee-jerk reaction is “you’re an awful person for saying that”

FT has had a few articles about it recently, here is one about a historical vote at the G20 summit. https://www.ft.com/content/dcefdf76-9bac-4b34-80c2-eab80b559...

"Cheap goods" is quite a problem, as basically the US, possibly all of North America loves their cheap Walmart items. Screw how they were made... They're usually the cheapest. Replace "Walmart" with whatever large box store goes lowest price as appropriate.

> "Cheap goods" is quite a problem, as basically the US, possibly all of North America loves their cheap Walmart items. Screw how they were made... They're usually the cheapest. Replace "Walmart" with whatever large box store goes lowest price as appropriate.

Loves? Or driven to them by necessity?

The whole "China Shock" "bargain" for many was something like: you'll lose your jobs, status, and security; but "cheap Walmart items" should make your lowered circumstances more bearable.

I think they could pay 0.20 - 0.50 dollars higher at Target or a different bulk store.

That is not a simple solution in practice, only on social media.

It will make prices go high, which will spiral in a lot of things and will increase the cost of living in the present even more for the vulnerable part of the population of a country.

of course it can be the proper solution for the future but saying it is simple is a huge huge understatement of the political and economical will needed to make it happen.

"China made me do this" isn't a good excuse for fascism and it won't go well.

Increasing COL for everyone is an interesting solution, I wonder how well it would do for your re-election prospects.

The United States voted a shit-slinging gibbon in over anxiety of a minor COVID COL increase. (That he caused, but everyone has forgotten his role in it.)

I don‘t think people believe in the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. It’s more about “the old parties didn’t have any solutions” and “political promises and proposed solutions don’t work anyways”. So why not try a new party

> political promises and proposed solutions don’t work anyways

This is very effective for populist parties because in a way it keeps them from being held accountable by their own voters. When I hear interviews with Trump voters being faced with evidence of how Trump hasn't kept one campaign promise or another, it's exactly the sentiment above: politicians never keep their promises anyways and Trump is no different but we like him so we'll stick with him.

I don't know about german politics, but here in the US this isn't what I observe. My aunt is a republican lobbyist. She is also a drunk. She gets drunk and texts us her unfiltered thoughts.

She genuinely believes that the bulk of racial minorities in the US should be expelled from the country, that Trump is making progress towards that goal, and that the US would be a better place if it was just white people. She isn't just motivated by frustration with the liberals. She is motivated by the racial purity policies of the GOP.

GOP voter: "hell yeah, drain the swamp!"

[proceeds to fall for it, again]

They are smarter than that: Siegmund says he doesn’t want to form a government. After all then people could see how they function in office, and that might hurt the AfD in upcoming national elections. Better to wait until the AfD is in power at the national level.

This is the general consensus in DE (I watched the election during the day on TV). AfD is a cancer on the electorate.

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.

This is common sense.

Germans are our long term neighbors and generally friends. As "Pravda" wrote at the end of WW2, "Hitlers come and go, but the German people remains". It's about time they take their country back.

> generally friends

proceeds to sabotage airports with drones and blow up ammo dumps

"friends"

I don't know, you guys yourself like saying "Russia's only friends are its army and its navy".

Unfortunately , Putin does not come and go.

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

I'm not German and knew little of this subject, but I read the piece word for word and I can say with certainty you have not offered enough of a counterargument here.

I looked up the Potsdam meeting you mentioned and there were literally members of CDU (Merkel's party) present as well. It's utterly laughable to try and use that to then exclusively castigate a different political party for having had some of its members present. By your illogic, we would be forced to infer that the CDU is also "extremist".

So far, I'm left feeling like AfD has indeed been misrepresented by the liberal western media. And, I say this as someone who certainly does not agree with some of their positions. For example, being "skeptical" about climate change in 2026 is sheer idiocy.

But what is very clear to me is that Germany has a democracy problem. The system as described has not been truly democratic. It instead sounds approximately 'left-leaning authoritarian', right down to your insinuation that a political party should have been banned for its speech.

In case anyone in Germany is interested in rediscovering democracy, please note that THIS is what it looks like: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

There's a big difference between "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it" and "I disapprove of your stated objective to expel german citizens who don't meet your ethnic/cultural standard of German-ness, but will defend to the death your right to govern." A century ago, Germans tolerated a völkisch-nationalist party that wanted to expel non-german ethnic groups as well. They did; they expelled millions of them to Poland and liquidated them there. The Verfassungschutz was implemented after WWII to prevent that element in society from taking power again.

I find the vociferousness with which clueless Americans have decided to defend the AfD bizarre. You don't know the political context, you clearly don't know the history, but you've decided that "Germany has a democracy problem." Why are you so entitled to an opinion?

> "I disapprove of your stated objective to expel german citizens who don't meet your ethnic/cultural standard of German-ness, but will defend to the death your right to govern."

I can't believe you're still insisting on this complete straw man. AfD's stated position on immigration is very easy to look up and it's NOT this. At all. You are parroting a leftwing lie.

They want to deport undocumented migrants and remigrate certain refugee groups, such as Ukrainians. You're free to disagree with that position, but lying about it and then descending into such an absurdly histrionic spiral over the matter does your argument absolutely no favors. That only supports what people like Caldwell are saying and, ironically, precisely bolsters AfD's argument about suppression of the discourse and an honest discussion of Germany's problems.

In fact, you've offered a perfect demonstration of what Caldwell covered in the first section of this very essay.

> you clearly don't know the history

Are you seriously trying to imply I'm not aware of the Holocaust?

By your own admission, (top of your first comment) you don't know what you're talking about. I never implied you aren't aware of the Holocaust. Thinking that the Holocaust is the only history to know here is indicative. You don't seem to understand the history of the BRD or how its constitution is structured, and you clearly don't know the internal history of the AfD, which started as a mixed center-right libertarian anti-EU party and has become more and more extreme over the past decade. You being angry doesn't make anything I've said wrong.

You just said:

>I'm not German and knew little of this subject

Yet now you know their party stance by heart and come to their rescue? That is Sus, with a capital S.

>They want to deport undocumented migrants and remigrate certain refugee groups, such as Ukrainians.

This is not what they really want, is it now? They also want to deport Germans with attained citizenship. It's what they said out loud. There are records of this. Anything else is

>parroting a

right wing

>lie.

> They also want to deport Germans with attained citizenship. It's what they said out loud. There are records of this.

It's what who said aloud? When and where? At the referenced Potsdam meeting where certain extremist CDU politicians did the same?

If I judged Democrats in the US by what their most extreme members have said, I would have to assume a vote for them would be a vote to end private property. But I don't assume that, because I'm not a moron.

So, show me a trusted source that argues a plurality of mainstream AfD politicians are claiming they want to deport German citizens. Show me where this is the official policy of the party. I see no good source to support that accusation.

And that's likely because it is in fact what it appears to be: a desperate smear campaign generated by extremists arrayed at the opposing political polarity. And it's also apparently failing since large percentages of the German population are moving the other way.

This is entirely reminiscent of the foolishness that sunk the Democrats in the US and put us in the mess we now find ourselves in. "Why moderate our policy stances when we can just call them bigots and Nazis instead?"

I expect the outcome of this strategy will be much the same in Germany.

They want to deport undocumented migrants and remigrate certain refugee groups, such as Ukrainians.

No. They want an ethnical homogeneous country, hence their remigration institute. Feel free to educate yourself on the institutes own website: https://www.remigration-institute.com/

> “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

This has not led to positive outcomes currently in the US.

I agree with it in theory, I truly do. I think it also gets used as a tool for politicians, companies, and governments to say unhinged shit not based in fact to drive emotional reactions that actually hurts other people in various ways.

> This has not led to positive outcomes currently in the US.

I can't disagree. But, paraphrasing Churchill, (true) democracy is indeed 'the worst form of government except for all the others.'

And Americans will be given opportunities to remedy their mistakes. Both this year and especially in 2028.

We might find that MAGA having the freedom to speak their mind will turn enough of the electorate against them. Or we will continue to choose poorly and suffer the consequences.

But those consequences will have been arrived at honestly. And that matters.

> But those consequences will have been arrived at honestly

The problem with that is that Republican voters will not be the first, and certainly not the only, people to experience those consequences. Nor will they be the ones to suffer the majority, and especially not the worst, of them.

The electorate at large eventually learning their lesson is cold comfort to anyone that warned of this, and suffered regardless

> The electorate at large eventually learning their lesson is cold comfort to anyone that warned of this, and suffered regardless

The problem with this statement is that, in context, it clearly only prioritizes the interests and suffering of particular groups.

MAGA emerged because an altogether different group was completely disenfranchised by neoliberalism and ignored for a very long time. But it turns out they were still a major part of our country and they still had voting power.

So did the system actually break or did it work precisely as intended?

“I'm not German and knew [sic] little of this subject, and here are my opinions for why you’re wrong.”

Participation is not mandatory, you know. What is the agenda you’re trying to push at all cost through your misinformation?

The agenda is TRUTH, which apparently doesn't matter anymore because almost everyone has become a tribal extremist.

I consider myself an accidental moderate. I look for the best answer. I don't turn off my brain and bow down to any specific party or platform.

Every extremist thinks their ideas are moderate and so are the ideas of the rest of extremists they support. Elon Musk also thinks his agenda is truth. Trump created a social network named Truth Social

If we were to examine your political views, I'm quite certain that your positions would correlate highly with those of the Democratic Party, and likely rather closely to its most polarized incarnation found in San Francisco.

By contrast, I make up my own mind on each individual issue. I believe strongly in restrictive and controlled legal immigration, orchestrated in a manner that maximally benefits the citizenry to which a government is beholden. I support anti-trust enforcement. I am in favor of legalized abortion. I am opposed to wealth taxes that might trigger capital flight. I am in favor of progressive property tax levies on luxury homes. I am strongly in favor of solar geo-engineering as a solution to climate change (unlike progressives). I am deeply opposed to tariffs as a mechanism to remedy the woes of the disenfranchised. I support right to work laws.

I do not have a political home. I choose what I see as good sense and it aligns with no party. THAT is what a true moderate is.

> I do not have a political home. I choose what I see as good sense and it aligns with no party. THAT is what a true moderate is.

Yeah, purity tests are the hallmark of the political center

What about them being right extremists, as the Verfassungsschutz has demonstrated, looking at hundreds of pieces of evidence?

The party, meaning the people composing the party, are extremists.

And either they are crazy (possible, like with all extremism) or they want to destroy Germany (maybe a mix of both).

You can look at their carefully phrased statements all you want, they are all about leaving a doubt. These are politicians.

But sometimes they slip: What about leaving the EU and the Euro? Shouldn’t that worry anyone? How is that not in the Programm yet their leader states it is her position? Not really a detail. Political parties all lie, but this one is at the far end of the spectrum.

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.

Yep. Like they say, follow the (foreign) money.

Is this what you truly believe?

I know it. "Salvar Portugal" "Deutschland retten" ROTFL

yes, but also there's a real obvious unserved/underserved voting bloc

https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-boring-theory-of-the-populist...

without convincing the people (winning their hearts and minds, and so on) it'll continue to be a profitable political strategy, unfortunately

That's kinda implying that they only got elected because they had money and a good campaign instead of addressing issues that are not addresses in an effective way by the other parties.

This is probably the case of both things being true at the same time.

I mean, they also get elected because hate motivates.

They lie loudly and often and face no punishment for it because a lie is halfway round the world before the truth gets its pants on.

"They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats."

Did the Brexit campaign address the issues of the people who voted for it? Are all those people now better off because of it? Did Trump and his 'no new wars' and '$1.99 gas' and 'Drain the swamp' and 'Balance the budget' address the issues of the people who voted for him?

Or did they just lie out of their ass and leave everyone worse off?

> Or did they just lie out of their ass and leave everyone worse off?

This, but I guess I should've been more clear in my parent comment in saying that by "addressing" should come in heavy quotation marks.

This says more about the electorate than the candidates. You can’t have a segment of your population that refuses to connect ideas and expect a working society to come out the other end.

they connect ideas all day. xenophobia is that, making fast and loose connections.

unfortunately we are deep into the TikTok times, and simple, but catchy ideas dominate. it's flat Earth, QAnon, anti-vax, anti-economics but now in 4K.

It is not just the money but social media is controlled by right wing ideologist. Musk has openly supported right wing parties in Europe.

I don't disagree but I see this more psychologically by now. Certain mechanisms are just tried and tested, what worked for Mussolini works just as well today, and it's always the same kind of people who are attracted to it.

Of course, it's not just the support by various enemies of Europe and Germany, there are many factors like always. In this particular case there are also historical reasons for the rise of Neonazism in parts of the former GDR and many other former East Bloc countries. I don't want to go into the details, everybody knows that story, but it's worth noting the Skinnheads Sächsische Schweiz of the 90s are now the fathers of young voters and particularly few things had been done against this trend in Saxony. When you allow Neonazi movements to become a major youth culture, you're bound to get serious problems. Since the AfD has absorbed the NPD, it's just the political arm of a vast movement there.

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

The Economy is not imploding. While 2025 was a lost year for growth Germany‘s GDP is consistently growing since q4 2025 - despite a very interesting geopolitical situation. It is part of the problem that every media outlet from progressive to far-right paints the economical situation in the worst light. What is decreasing are nominal wages at least for parts of the population which is a pure allocation problem. Sure the automobile sector has structural problems and the chemical industry needs cheaper energy but Germany is still an economical powerhouse even without a strong domestic ICT industry, which is, in comparison, the most important driver of growth in the US. During the pandemic something went terribly wrong and public institutions seem to be incredibly weak in the moment. Don’t be fooled though, the problems are solvable, the question is how to find political majorities for doing so. The tale of the weak economy is taken as a reason to cut down welfare and thus the CDU/CSU have a vested interest in writing down the economy. This policy will soon lead to even more people turning to political extremism and the CDU is going to suffer most from this development. On the other hand, with the AfD in charge in Sachsen-Anhalt, a small part of Germany with only 1.7 million voters, France, which has its own political problems, is already getting wary of chancellor Merz's plan to build the largest conventional military forces in Europe. Maybe this mechanism explains why so many Germans in the pacifist movement are so compatible to so called nationalists (who also want to withdraw from helping Ukraine against Putin). The biggest irony is that Germany is gaining so much through the Euro currency (most of the exported goods stay within the EU) and a German national currency, which the AfD wants to implement, would appreciate so hard and quickly that exports would go down enormously. That would easily cripple GDP by 10% or more leading to substantial problems.

The mere few bips of GDP growth doesn’t justify the negative GDP growth Germany has for the past few years. That had a huge impact on people’s lives and their wages. In fact people are taking home even less money due to the increased social contributions imposed by this government. So many companies are moving they factories away from Germany due to high energy prices and that has a huge impact on jobs. Not everyone works in IT branch.

Euro is a ticking time bomb and the currency would collapse when France cannot pay its debt anymore. They are literally borrowing money to pay pension and the only way the Euro has survived so far is due to the fiscal discipline of Germany. The lenders trust Germany to keep Euro stable and that has been weakened by the current government when they borrowed more than half a trillion Euros.

Fact check before posting. German gdp growth was negative in 2023 and 2024 since then its positive again. And it was positive before. Wage growth was nominal 28% since 2017.

>I face people are taking home even less money due to the increased social contributions imposed by this government.

You face what? Anyways, the only thing they did was raising the ceiling for contributions which has no effect on low and middle incomes, which you seem to care a lot about.

>Euro is a ticking time bomb and the currency would collapse when France cannot pay its debt anymore

France is not going to default anytime soon.

If Trump wouldn't threaten Germany (probably with tariffs), the AfD would already be forbidden. Don't take my word for it. Politicians from the AfD itself admit that:

https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article696e612da4073...

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.

"Er ist wieder da", or "Look Who's Back" in English.

Yeah that's the one.

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

Clearly far-right European politics is “interesting to nerds because it has been upvoted”, as dang would say; nevermind the hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, a thread with more votes and comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49602582

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

How much illegal immigration did Denmark have?

Enough legal/illegal/asylum drama for it to become an election issue. Hard to hide rape statistics.

So media blowing it out of proportion as usual?

Even 1x/ONE rape of a citizen by someone who shouldnt even be there is too many. Its not disproportionate to do no harm and correct the mistake

Interesting way to phrase that. The easy way to solve rape is to castrate all men. We can save some sperm in case of wanted pregnancy, but since the vast majority of violent and sexual abusive crime is committed by men, it would be the most rational solution to the problem. Eevryone would be safer, even us castrates.

I guess we bave or should have as much control over immigration/asylum policy as we have over the diceroll of sex determination. Interesting gamble, cant see anything wrong with that. Also, why stop at males, females rape too so in the spirit of equity they should undergo the same prophylactic castration and that will be that

At least now riders are being added to applications and agreements that dispose of any cultural argument or litigatory posture that various misbehaviors were not understood to be barred prior to admission or status being granted.

The System is healing

it's funny how insane reasoning like yours has been normalized to justify equally insane policies of letting unchecked thirld worlder in

Also fixing the economy as well. People are pushed to extremes when they are made to felt unsafe in their own country by foreigners that gets free handouts by the government when the citizens can barely afford a living

Says the foreigner who lives in Berlin. Quite the hypocrite aren’t we?

Not really, just because I’m a foreigner living in Berlin doesn’t mean I cannot tell the truth.

Also I would rather tell the truth as it is than playing the victim with a leftist narrative

Just say it out loud. Germany is for white immigrants.

that is what AfD is saying. and they won.

what is the lesson here?

That conservatism works by creating an "other" to blame all of their problems on. It's very comforting for a certain type of person. All of their problems exist because too many brown people live in their city. Same strategy has played out over and over again. Sometimes we have to put them down like Nazi Germany. Too often we let them off with a slap on the wrist like we do with Republicans every single election cycle regardless of the damage they do.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

For the record I’m not white. And also it seems like you’re the racist one. Nobody was talking about anyone’s skin color or ethnicity, but that’s the first thing that you brought to the discussion.

As a non white foreigner living in Germany, I think people like you are the biggest problem in the society which makes everything about racism and bully people into silence that actually prevents people from having an honest, respectful and truthful conversation about the actual issues in the society

And I think people like you are the biggest problems in society. Someone willing to sell out your own people to support blatant racist parties like the AFD. You think that they will accept you because you're one of the "Good Minorities". But this story has played out over and over again throughout history. Tokens get spent. And that's all you can ever be to them. I hope your wake up isn't the same as what Hispanic MAGA are experiencing in this country. Never mind. I hope it is. I hope you get the life you vote for other people to experience.

Congratulations to democratically elected leaders!

Hitler was also put in power legally

Just because you don’t like the result of the election doesn’t make it undemocratic. It was a fair and just election and people have voted what they want and that’s how democracy works.

It is undemocratic when the democratically elected people wants to subvert the democratic order. Most (but not all!) democratic countries have constitutions that actually limit the power of elected people exactly for this reason. Especially those countries that ended up democratically electing dictators on the eve of WWII have constitutions that severely limit the power of the executive.

Then let the constitutional court decide if the actions of the democratically elected party has done anything against the constitution. So far it has not happened and just because you have your hypocritical on how a party might act doesn’t make the said party undemocratical.

You seem too simple-minded to understand the issue with fascists. Perhaps try opening an history book?

So is democracy always good? Or not? If you say you’re anti democracy, a certain cohort gets upset. If you say you’re anti fascist but fascists get elected via democracy, another cohort gets upset.

“Democracy always works” has been shown to be objectively false, and so I’m unsure how we can say it is an optimal governance system. Works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t. Can we tolerate the failure modes until reversion to the mean? Depends on your tolerance for the costs.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/06/afd-saxony-anhalt-germany-f...

> Why it matters: Germany rebuilt its democracy after Nazi rule with unusually strong safeguards against extremism. AfD's breakthrough shows those barriers aren't stopping Europe's far right from becoming dominant electoral forces.

> Context: Germany's postwar system was built in the shadow of the Nazis' destruction of the democratic Weimar Republic.

> The 1949 Basic Law embraces the concept of a "militant democracy" to defend against movements that seek to abolish the constitutional order.

> “Democracy always works” has been shown to be objectively false

Citation needed, never heard this said by anybody.

"democracy" is a wide, wide thing. Technically Russia is a democracy. Also in Europe democracies' presidents don't have the same level of power as Trump, and are more limited.

Democracies only work as long as the people are smart, invested, informed and politicians are accountable and changed often to avoid concentration of power.

Bureaucracy is hell, until you realize it's a feature since it complicates power grabs.

Even Churchill said "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others", so I really have no idea where you got the "it always works" from.

Do you congratulate every elected politician?

Or did you just write “I’m a far right extremist”?

Bit confused by your statement and looking for answers to the above questions please.

This is a question for the AI chatbots to answer.

...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?

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.

desperation

Yes but why? Outlets pushing Angst?

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.

Because all other parties both want more immigration and two do their best to ignore the crime statistics by the immigrants. There is also the high percentage of immigrants who require public assistance coupled with a reluctance to assimilate definitely drives people to make these choices.

It comes down to ignoring voters will drive them to people who don’t ignore them.

This is happening to the technocratic centrist parties all over the world - such as the Democrats losing in '24 to Trump. The irony is that if the technocratic center would stop being paralyzed by fear (fear that the the right wing parties will take over and so we must play it "safe") and get imaginative in proposing actual solutions we could actually stop this slide to the far right. This is kind of starting to happen in the US with the DSA challenging the status-quo, schlerotic leadership within the Democratic party.

It may be that in the US we now have a bit of an advantage at stopping the slide to the extreme right wing. The advantage being the total incompetence of the Trump administration which is now become obvious even to those outside of the left-leaning bubbles. His approval ratings are now right around 33% which is really quite abysmal for a president at this point in their 2nd term.

I fully admit TLDR but where do you live?

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

its a hard pill to swallow, but it might be time for us to accept that democracy enables this and if we want to live in a better world we might have to think of a different model (no, not a dictatorship; obviously not that)

democracy is based on the idea that people will vote in favor of their own interest. it has been proven repeatedly that this is not the case (see: the united states of america)

democracy as a system has been figured out by enough people with enough power to rig it in their favor, even when science and research shows that this is not the better outcome for the majority (see: the united states of america)

its a hard pill to swallow but it might be time for us to accept that democracy isn't perfect...

Because German economy is imploding.

Except it’s starting to grow again and indicators look positive.

This was true right when Weimar Germany fell to the Nazis also. There's a degree of inertia to politics. We're also talking about a region of Germany that has been economically depressed for decades, with an unemployment rate twice the national average.

Not really, VW just announced that they're laying off 50k people and closing plants all around Germany. They're one of the biggest employers. Deindustrialization continues unabated, and business closures aren't slowing down.

I have no idea what these indicators you're talking about are exactly. The indicators I'm seeing is that Germany was cut off from cheap pipeline gas that its industrial economy was built on, and now there's another energy shock from war on Iran. On top of that, China is now taking over the same industrial niches enjoying access to much cheaper energy which lower input costs across the board.

But the right wing is demonstrably indistinguishable from left at making good economies. Same thing in the US.

That seems to not matter for the people that think the way the GP points.

(And they are quite distinguishable. The far right is way worse at it than the kind of left party that wins anything.)

Yes but somehow conventional wisdom is that leaning right is a vote for “fiscal responsibility” and the economy, a misconception that the left needs to deal with.

I never said anything about AfD being any more competent than the current right wing regime.

No, economy does not explains it at all.

“Germany's economy will grow by 1.3% in 2026, RWI said, upwardly revising its forecast of 0.8% growth in June.”

https://www.reuters.com/business/germanys-rwi-institute-upgr...

VW is literally closing plants across Germany a we speak and doing mass layoffs, but whatever you say. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

It's not what I say, it's what the numbers say.

The car industry is struggling - but the German economy is more than VW..

What the numbers say is that Germany is deindustrializing. It's not just the car industry, it's a problem in pretty much every sector. It's not what I say, it's what the numbers are saying. https://www.reuters.com/business/german-industrial-output-fa...

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

anyone who thinks "woke" is a valid counterargument is not worth listening to.

A rose by any other name etc. The moniker may change once every few years - even A. Occasional Cortex recently agreed that 'Woke 1.0 was craaaazy' [1] - but the beast never loses its stripes. Maybe the next term will be 'Woke 2.0', maybe something else but seeing how as this terminology comes from inside the narrative generator it can not be denied that it describes something real and as such claiming that those who use such terms that have fallen by the wayside '[are] not worth listening to' is the equivalent of loudly saying NA NA NA I DON'T HEAR YOU NA NA NA.

Woke 1.0 was 'crazy' indeed, good that this can now be said. The successor will probably be just as crazy but in some different way. It most likely will be some throwback to classical marxist tropes instead of the intersectional mess which best describes 'Woke 1.0' because younger generations never experienced the reality of the Soviet bloc, never were taught the reality of life under communism in school and as such are easy targets for socialist propaganda, viz. the success of the DSA. This time it will surely work, people, real socialism has never been tried after all...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/15/aoc-wo...

it's funny because the reference to your quote of her shows it was not a quote of her

we should call that hagbardisms

If you insist on believing the story she told of that being said by 'a political friend', sure. Did you listen to the interview she gave? I did. It sounded very much like the 'politician friend' was made up from thin air to enable her to bring this quote into the conversation. It was she who produced the quote, the 'politician friend' has not been heard from. In other words, believe what you want but first listen to that interview?

it's funny you can't stop claiming to understand everything from politics but still can't imagine that there actually are other politicians (Chi Ossé's comments made the rounds before AOC repeated it) out there than your favorite target

that too should we call hagbardisms

We're talking politics here so that bit about 'claiming to understand everything from politics' is misplaced.

Call it what you want, everything needs to be turned into a meme after all. I call it 'observations' and go by those, not by narrative or attempts at memecasting.

Who is my favourite target by the way? As far as I can remember this is the first time I mentioned this politico on this - or any other - forum. Also, could you maybe say something about the actual subject here which is the grand-grand-grand-grandparent post stating that 'anyone who thinks "woke" is a valid counterpoint is not worth listening to'? You seem to be trying to do the same when it comes to what you're trying to call 'hagbardisms'. You haven't actually touched the original subject yet, what about it?

my point of view is simple:

anyone who thinks "woke" is a valid counterargument is not worth listening to

Does that include those like the mentioned politica who espouses the virtues of the next iteration of 'woke' because the first version was craaaazy? If so I do applaud you, it is indeed and best left to the historians for dissection. If not, why not?

glad to learn that you suddenly embrace any kind of compassion and solidarity, in the form of what you call the next iteration of woke

I cannot help but notice that you did not answer my question. What about is?

Also it isn't me who refers to ${whatever} as the next generation of woke, it is implied by those who refer to the past madness as woke 1.0. Where there is a 1.0 there is soon to be a 2.0, or maybe a 1.1, who knows.

This is a very obviously biased argument that both sides make about themselves.

The AfD literally published a manifesto of new and notably more conservative policy goals in 2017.

They do not claim to have the political stance of Germany 25 years ago, they themselves say that they are something new (For example, point 1 is an adoption of Swiss-style direct democracy, which is a notable shift to the right).

I encourage you to think much more deeply than "I saw this meme and it resonated with me," because the same is true of the American Tight, despite Elon's claim (Regan, for example, was very famously against Tariffing Canada).

> For example, point 1 is an adoption of Swiss-style direct democracy, which is a notable shift to the right

Since when did direct democracy became a right wing concept?

>Since when did direct democracy became a right wing concept?

It's intended to make Parliament powerless (when you read the document, I'm sure you saw that part), so, I'd say it became a right wing concept when it was proposed by a far-right political party in 2017 to move Germany to the right.

You may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

So next time if a far right political party suggest that everyone should eat vegetables for good health, then eating vegetables becomes a far right concept?

Controlling what people eat is definitely authoritarian/right-wing.

For a historic example, you may be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Grain

Maybe try a different example to make your point?

That’s like the dumbest take ever. Then all the veganism movement for the sake of climate must be right wing as well.

How about the grass is green logic? If the right wing parties started saying that grass is green and that’s the nature then anyone saying the same thing is right wing as well? Like how dumb are you? Don’t you have a brain to think than being brainwashed by left ideological nonsense?

Please don't break HN rules.

Where's @dang when you need him?

I'm as smart/dumb as anyone else on here and I'm sorry this conversation turned into whatever this is.

I guess this must be extremely subjective because for 15 years now in my country the far-right has been "on the rise" and all the politicians, and a lot of the media, now only talk about the immigration, the immigration and all the "normal" right-wingers, centrists and even soft left try to compete for being the one who will say the least "politically correct" thing, that is something about how immigration is not compatible with our culture or something. The right-wing party has split and one part is now allied with the far-right party.

My impression is that the overton window has gone further and further to the right so chacun voit midi à sa porte

The real underlying issue is the economic pressure - much worse in East Germany than in West Germany. People have problems, but the real problems are not immigration or green politics.

IMO they explain it well here:

Inside The Rise of Germany's New Far-Right

https://youtu.be/l2SjWowpynY?si=9P4R6CtrNrXEsYx0

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