What the commentators said

For the past year, Germany has been an “island of calm” among Western nations, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. Under “strong and stable leadership”, it seemed safe from the “hurricane of political populism”. How wrong that impression was. The election has revealed an unsuspected “undercurrent of anti-establishment rage” among workers resentful of mass immigration and squeezed living standards. At many of her rallies, Merkel could not be heard for the jeering and whistling, a novelty for Germany. And on election day, the country’s two once-dominant parties – the CDU and SPD – could between them command barely half the vote, losing out both to the nationalist Right and to the extreme Left: Die Linke, heir to the old Communist party, took a 9% share. The message is clear, said Sean O’grady in The Independent. “From Hungary to France, and from the Netherlands to Poland, the anti-establishment, anti-eu vote has not collapsed, even if it hasn’t grabbed significant power in Western Europe. Yet.”

The AFD started life as a fringe party of anti-euro free marketeers, said Alan Posener in The Guardian, but it has morphed into something altogether more alarming. Joint leader Alexander Gauland claims it’s natural for “ethnic Germans” not to want to live next door to black people, and declares Germans can be proud of its soldiers in both World Wars. As for his colleague Alice Weidel, she’s a “rabid nationalist” who says Germany is still “beholden to the victors of World War Two”. (An unlikely leader for a party that opposes gay marriage and “globalism”, Weidel is a lesbian former banker who lives in Switzerland, reportedly for tax reasons.) Ignore the hysterical talk about the “return of Nazism”, said Brendan O’neill in The Sun. The bulk of Afd’s voters are “decent people” from across the political spectrum – early analysis suggests a million defected from Merkel’s conservative bloc – who just want to see vital issues such as immigration taken seriously. Its vote should be seen as a “cry for more open debate”.