Afd Germany Quotes

Americans across the worldview spectrum succumb to their basest survival instincts under such circumstances. So, it seems, do people the world over. Europe, like the United States, recently has seen the rise of right-wing populist leaders railing against immigration, European integration, and open borders. And sure enough, the same four parenting questions that reveal so much about Americans’ political preferences also explain a lot about what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Worldview was central to the Brexit vote in Britain. It is also central to support for right-wing parties like France’s National Front and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party. The same is happening in places as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Austria, and Denmark. Whether the influx of immigrants is objectively more like a trickle or a torrent, citizens of all these places perceive a flood pouring into their countries with the potential to change their culture, a dynamic that heightens the appeal of any leader who promises to Make (insert country name) Great Again.

I recently came across a book written by Hans-Olaf Henkel, a former president of the Federation of German Industry lobby group, who in later life became a member of the European Parliament for the far-right AfD. One of Henkel's big complaints was that Germany had lost the textile industry; he failed to mention that this was the case for every other country in the Western world, too.

But as the numbers of asylum seekers kept rising, an initial outpouring of support was quickly drowned out by voices of opposition. Soon, right-wing populists were winning big across the continent. Germany hadn’t had a far-right party in its parliament since 1945, but many Germans rejected Merkel’s welcoming approach. In 2017, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) suddenly became the third-largest party in the Bundestag. Farther north, the far-right Sweden Democrats—an outgrowth of that country’s neo-fascist movement—also surged in popularity. Jimmie Åkesson, who had called Islam “our biggest foreign threat since World War II,” led the Sweden Democrats, a right-wing populist party, to its best result yet in the 2018 elections, winning over 17 percent of the vote.