“A people’s decision, not politics against the people!” AfD members out campaigning before Bundestag elections. Photo: CC-by-NC-2.0: strassenstriche.net / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
On 24 September, Germans voted for a new Bundestag. Chancellor Angela Merkel clinched an historic fourth term, with her party, the centre-right CDU (Christian Democratic Union), and its sister party the CSU (Christian Social Union), topping the polls. Her victory was, however, marred by the hard-right populist AfD winning its first seats in parliament.
Alternative für Deutschland, or to give the party its full name: Alternative for Germany, holds an openly xenophobic attitude to immigrants and refugees and precious little in the way of policies on other issues. Much of Germany’s media have no doubt where the blame lies: AfD’s votes, they say, must have come from the “Russians” – or rather, recently repatriated ethnic Germans from the former USSR. But is this really the case – and where did the idea come from in the first place? oDR talked about the situation with sociologist Tatiana Golova, a Research Associate at Berlin’s Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS).
