What’s the matter with the AfD? Over the last couple of weeks, the mainstream media (or as the AfD would have it, the “lying press”) have begun to write off the AfD as past its sell-by day (btw, did you realise that we won the battle against populism when Wilders performed slightly less well than…
The other day, someone on twitter suggested that the polls on the upper margins of my latest model-based estimates of AfD support were conducted by the “notoriously AfD-friendly INSA company”. https://twitter.com/freifrauvonitze/status/845565084290158593 This view is not uncommon in Germany. INSA, who do polling for Germany’s premier tabloid Bild, want to prop up support for the AfD…
Yardena Schwartz has written a portrait of the AfD’s Frauke Petry for Newsweek, with some input and a couple of verbatim quotes from me. [contentcards url="https://www.newsweek.com/2017/03/17/frauke-petry-germany-afd-party-nationalism-564872.html"]
Seven months before the election, what’s up with the Alternative für Deutschland? I’ve kept repeating this since the Alternative für Deutschland’s ascendancy in the polls began in late 2015: the AfD’s electoral popularity depends on a) steering away from open right-wing extremism, which has frustrated previous attempts to establish a right-wing populist party in Germany, and…
Before Christmas, I had yet another chat with the journalist Yardena Schwartz, who covers Germany for various outlets in the US. Parts of our conversation re-surface in a piece she wrote for Politico on Germany’s Far Right: [contentcards url="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/germanys-far-right-rises-again-214543"] She also published an article on how the Far Right tries to capitalise from the Berlin…
The good folks over at the LSE (which, apart from running one of the most vibrant Political Science blogging sites on the planet also happens to host a university) have kindly asked me to look ahead at the likely outcome of the German Federal Election in September in general and the role of the Alternative…
I recently had a lengthy chat with Yardena Schwartz on the AfD’s significance for German politics, and their likely trajectory. One thing that came out of it is a CJR article on the (mis?)representation of the AfD and their voters in the German media. I don’t agree with everything she writes, but it is certainly…
Der rheinland-pfälzische Landtag wird in Zukunft die Pressemeldungen der Fraktionen nicht mehr auf seiner Homepage veröffentlichen. Hintergrund ist, die Landtagsverwaltung nicht für möglicherweise justiziable Aussagen der AfD in Mithaftung genommen werden möchte. Über diesen Vorgang habe ich gestern mit dem Trierischen Volksfreund gesprochen. Einige Einschätzungen zur Vokabel “Volksverrat” sind in diesen Artikel eingeflossen: [contentcards url="http://www.volksfreund.de/nachrichten/region/rheinlandpfalz/rheinlandpfalz/Rheinland-Pfalz-und-Nachbarn-Landtag-reagiert-auf-ruppigen-Ton-der-AfD;art806,4572988"]
For obvious reasons, books on the AfD are thin on the ground. It took me an unduly long time to review this one, not because there was anything wrong with the book but rather because something was wrong with my timekeeping and project mismanagement. Hopefully, the review should appear in one of the next issues of German Politics, but for the time being, I’m posting the author’s version here.
I had a lengthy chat with someone from Bloomberg on the AfD and their use of Social Media. The result is a short piece with some soundbites by me. If you want to know a little more about the AfD’s role in the darker corners of the German Interwebs, have a look at my APSA…