Right wing victories in Germany
October 12th, 2023Although the regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse were won by the Christian Democratic parties (CSU and CDU respectively), commentators focus on the success of the anti-immigration protest party which came second in both regions. They refrain from calling the AfD a far-right party.
Népszava’s Tamás Rónay remarks that the AfD (Alternative for Germany) has only been successful so far in East Germany, but now is supported by 22 per cent of the voters nationwide. He attributes these results to the country’s economic woes and to the infighting within the Socialist-Green-Liberal coalition.
On Inforadio Gergely Prőhle, Hungary’s former ambassador to Berlin and head of the Strategic Studies Department at the Public Service University in Budapest explains that the success of the AfD is due to growing discontent with mass immigration, unusually high inflation, outsourcing industries to China as well as Germany’s poor performance in the digital revolution. Governing elites, Left and Right, he suggests, offer no answers to such problems.