Frauke Petry’s Blue Party is over

When former leader Frauke Petry left the AfD after the 2017 federal election, she kept her seats in the Bundestag and in Saxony’s regional parliament. These seats were meant to form the base for a new movement/party she quickly set up with friends and family. [caption id="attachment_29025" width="1200"] Image source: Wikipedia[/caption] The “Blue Party” was…

BBC interview: the Dresden Nazi emergency

For all its (perceived) shortcomings, to me the BBC remains the epitome of all that is good and great about public radio. This is why I always find it exciting, exhilarating and also slightly scary to talk to them. https://twitter.com/ProfTimBale/status/1190680393172819969 Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with Carolyn Quinn on the PM show about…

Another AfD leader speaks at a far-right “institute”

The ‘Institut für Staatspolitik’ is a well-known far-right ‘think tank’. Their self-stated meta-political mission is to educate the future nationalist. The long-term objective is to achieve a stealthy transformation of German society. They have been around for a while, and there are books and chapters about them, written by people who study right-wing extremism for…

Video: The AfD’s transformation, 2013-2017

The “Alternative for Germany” began its political life as a softly eurosceptic breakaway from the political mainstream but has changed beyond all recognition. Using a very large dataset covering the full 2013-17 period, Carl Berning and I trace the transformation of the AfD’s electorate, which now fits the somewhat stereotypical radical right template. Read the full article, or watch the highlights in just under 90 seconds.

How the AfD and their voters veered to the Radical Right, 2013-17

[button url=”https://www.kai-arzheimer.com/alternative-for-germany-voters” target=”blank” background=”#c8232b” size=”20″ center=”yes”]Read the full article (ungated)[/button]

Elections everywhere. And populist anti-vaxxers. 4 links I liked

Elections everywhere. And populist anti-vaxxers. 4 links I liked 2

Bonnie N. Field has written a very clear explainer on the issue of minority governments in Spain for the EUROPP blog. Read it. Over at Europe Elects, Alexander Sarti explains how they predicted the distribution of seats in the European Parliament. By and large, it seems to have worked rather well. Somewhere along the way,…

Regional support for the “Alternative for Germany” varies wildly

Regional support for the

The AfD was founded near Germany’s financial centre of gravity (Frankfort) by members of the old western elites. But early on, the eastern states of Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia became important for the further development of the party. It was here, during the 2014 state election season, that the AfD began to toy (very reluctantly…

The EP 2019 brings all the (neo-fascist) boys to the yard

The EP 2019 brings all the (neo-fascist) boys to the yard 4

Germany – no EP electoral threshold for the last time There are currently 111 ‘political associations’ registered with Germany’s federal electoral commission. 41 of them (counting the CDU and the CSU separately) are fielding candidates in the upcoming European elections.Why are they doing it? Narcissism aside, this is a national election that is held without…