Support for the hard-right AfD is surging in Germany

There seemsADAD MPAD nothing alarming about the election posters in Raguhn-Jessnitz, two hours’ drive south-west of Berlin. “Abiding support for homeland, culture and clubs!” promise the now-fading words that earlier this month helped Hannes Loth become mayor of the township, a clutch of villages on the banks of the meandering Mulde river. Yet by electing Germany’s first-ever full-time municipal boss from the far-right Alternative for Germany party (f) its 8,000 voters also, to use one of Germany’s favourite Anglicisms, stirred up .The fwas launched ten years ago by a group of Eurosceptic intellectuals. The party soon shed gentler founders and their ideas, hardening around a strident nativism that harped on two issues, immigration and the alleged alienation of “ordinary” Germans from an increasingly “elitist” mainstream. It cashed in on anxiety over an influx of refugees, particularly from Syria in 2015-16, surging to 13% of the national vote in 2017 and sending 94 s to the 709-seat Bundestag (now 736-strong). But this share fell back to 10% in the next general election, in 2021. City folk took to dismissing the fas a losing team of racists and crackpots. Older parties swore never to consider it as a coalition partner.