They started life at the time of the Euro crisis as a hardline "don't bail out Greece" party, and mutated into a neo-Nazi party at the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. Their more recent surges (summer 2022 and then fall 2023) were down to a campaign (supported by the mainstream right media) against the German government's Net Zero policies, especially the policy of replacing gas central heating with heat pumps.
While their support is strongest in the old East Germany, this region has been invested in so heavily that (unlike northern England for example) it is no longer substantially poorer than the rest of Germany. And in the old West Germany the AfD's support is strongest not in poor regions like Saarland or Schleswig-Holstein, but rather in wealthy right-wing Bavaria, where it grew largely at the expense of the center-right CSU.
To the extent that AfD is a party of the "left behind", it is a party of abusive parents pissed that their kids moved away to the west (and were replaced, if at all, by immigrants).
So for you, democracy is a problem. Your headline immediately devalues and delegitamizes those not in your tribe as a problem. Why would I bother to read an article with a headline like that?
The AfD has never been a "working-class" party.
They started life at the time of the Euro crisis as a hardline "don't bail out Greece" party, and mutated into a neo-Nazi party at the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. Their more recent surges (summer 2022 and then fall 2023) were down to a campaign (supported by the mainstream right media) against the German government's Net Zero policies, especially the policy of replacing gas central heating with heat pumps.
While their support is strongest in the old East Germany, this region has been invested in so heavily that (unlike northern England for example) it is no longer substantially poorer than the rest of Germany. And in the old West Germany the AfD's support is strongest not in poor regions like Saarland or Schleswig-Holstein, but rather in wealthy right-wing Bavaria, where it grew largely at the expense of the center-right CSU.
To the extent that AfD is a party of the "left behind", it is a party of abusive parents pissed that their kids moved away to the west (and were replaced, if at all, by immigrants).
So for you, democracy is a problem. Your headline immediately devalues and delegitamizes those not in your tribe as a problem. Why would I bother to read an article with a headline like that?