Indian Council of World Affairs

Abstract: Founded in 2013, on the single point agenda of opposition to Eurozone, the AfD has now emerged as a potent force in the German politics. This paper explores the political agenda, ideological foundations and the growing appeal of the AfD and how the Eurosceptic, anti-migration and nationalist rhetoric of the party is reshaping the German politics, mainstream party strategies and public discourse. 

The February 2025 snap elections in Germany only reinforced the putative euphoria of the far-right resurgence in Europe. The Alternative fu¨r Deutschland, or the Alternative for Germany (AfD), managed to clinch its best electoral performance and became the second largest party in the German Bundestag. The fact that in just 4 years the party nearly doubled its vote share from 10.4 % (2021) to 20.8 % (2025), winning 152 seats out of a total of 630 seats, shows how fast the political landscape in Germany has changed. 

The victory of AfD, however, is not just a political phenomenon of one European country. The far-right populist parties in Europe are now enjoying increasing support and have recorded significant conversion of this support into votes. This has dramatically impacted the prevailing mainstream centre-right and liberal political spectrum of Europe and has affected European responses to many challenges it is facing, such as immigration, climate change and the war in Ukraine. 

In the first piece[i] of this series on the European far-right and populist parties and leaders, the author attempted to discern the main ideas and politics of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. In a pre-election meeting with Alice Weidel, the AfD candidate for the office of German Chancellor, Orban declared Weidel as a “fellow freedom fighter” in his sustained battle against Brussels since 2010. Weidel, on the other hand, described Orban as her great role model and assured him that her party will follow the path of Hungary.[ii] Orban has been instrumental in bringing a coalition of the right, far-right and populist parties in the European Parliament and is leading a pan-right-wing project of weakening the European Union. 

This part of the series is focused on the main ideas of the AfD, its history, its electoral issues, its support base and how it is changing the political landscape of Germany. 

The Founding Ideals

The AfD, which has so deeply entrenched itself in the anti-migrant narrative in Europe, was originally founded in 2013 on the sole issue of dissolving the Eurozone. At the core of its foundation was the issue of the euro crisis and the ensuing fear that Germany would end up bailing out eurozone member countries of Southern Europe. Thus, the founding members advocated for Germany to leave the eurozone (but not the European Union), demanding a return of the state’s sovereignty to their respective parliaments. The idea was to have a Europe of a single market consisting of sovereign states enjoying budget competencies.[iii]

A look back at the first manifesto[iv] of the party highlights the early ideals of the party. These ideals primarily focused on the opposition to the eurozone and strongly advocated the re-introduction of the national currencies. The manifesto strongly opposed any EU’s prospects of developing as a centralised European state, and recommended re-claiming the legislative powers of national assemblies and weakening the EU bureaucracy with significant EU reforms.

Besides, the party also advocated for the strengthening of democratic structures and respect of citizens’ rights, a return to the Swiss governance model of referendum where political parties participate in the political process rather than dominating it, simplification of tax laws and reduction of German debts, and giving humane treatment to legal migrants, including permission to work.

Dubbed as the “party of professors”, the AfD in the beginning also advocated political asylum for the persecuted and even avoided the hard-line positions on migration and Islam[v] and thus was never seen as an extremist and far-right party, although it did have an informal faction of members from east Germany, called the Der Flugel (The Wing), with extreme-right, anti-Islam and anti-Semitic positions.

A considerable number of this faction supported the anti-Islamist Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the West) movement, with Nazi tendencies, which had been organising anti-Islamic and anti-immigration protests in Dresden and other German cities since October 2024. Lutz Bachmann, the founder of Pegida, had to resign in January 2015 as a picture of him posing as Adolf Hitler, with his peculiar undercut hairstyle and toothbrush moustache, went viral.[vi]

The Internal Churn and a Hostile Takeover

What started as an economic campaign against the eurozone by some German intellectuals belonging to the economics, legal and political domains have now become a full-fledged party propagating populist ideas on migration, family and traditional values and citizenship. The leaders of the party now aggressively capitalise on the anti-migration narratives, the rural-urban divide and the existing socio-economic inequalities based on geography and history.

The far-right turn in the AfD actually occurred in the year 2015 with the growing assertion of the extremist right-wing faction, disenchanted with the liberal tendencies of the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as mentioned above.  With the beginning of the migration crisis in 2015, the right-wing faction (Der Flugel or The Wing) grew more assertive. Alexander Gauland, one of the founding members, referred to the migration crisis as “a gift” for the party and recommended the use of force to prevent refugees from coming to Germany.[vii]

Many leaders belonging to this faction promoted the institution of family and recommended having more children to address the labour shortages rather than facilitating immigrants in the country, and some of them actually practised what they preached.[viii] Frauke Petry, for example, who chaired the AfD from July 2015 to September 2017 is also a mother of six children and has used her motherhood to shape her political image.[ix]

In March 2015 the Wing published its Die Erfurter Resolution, which described Germany as a “resistance movement against the further erosion of Germany’s identity”[x] By this time, a clear divide among the party members could be easily noticed, as five of the seven AfD MPs in the European Parliament openly criticised the Wing members for their racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic and homophobe positions.[xi] Within months, Bernd Luke, one of the co-founders of the AfD and an economist by profession, who served as the Chairperson of the party, had lost his control over the party, and the beacon of leadership passed on to his rival and co-chairperson, Frauke Petry, who also headed the AfD’s branch of eastern Saxony state.[xii] Eventually, Luke and other moderates who wanted to stick to the original ideals of the party left the AfD, alleging a clear populist and right-wing shift in the party.

In a party riddled by a never-ending quest of gaining power among competing factions, Petry tried to bring some discipline to the party and attempted to take a more realistic and pragmatic approach. Although she herself supervised the right-wing turn in the party in 2015, she attempted to make her party more attractive to the moderate voters and thus tried softening the hard-right narratives of AfD before going for the federal election in 2017. Her critical comments on senior members of the party, like Björn Höcke, accused of condoning Nazi activities during the Second World War, and Alexander Gauland, put her in another power struggle with the right-wing faction, which ultimately led to her leaving the party on the day AfD recorded an impressive 13% vote in the federal elections and became the first far-right force to join the German parliament after the Second World War.[xiii]

Alice Weidel and the AfD: Quest for Normalisation

With Petry gone, the AfD came under the leadership of Alice Weidel, a trained economist and an investment banker by profession with stints in Singapore and Hong Kong, who had joined the party in 2013. Weidel was already the favoured AfD candidate, along with Alexander Gauland, for Germany’s Chancellery in 2017, having replaced Petry only a couple of months before the election.

Weidel’s personal life remains in complete contrast with the values the AfD promotes. She lives in a lesbian relationship with her Sri Lankan-born partner in Switzerland with two adopted children. This does look unconventional for a male-dominated party that promotes traditional cultural and Christian values, emphasises the institutions of marriage and family, recommends a high birth rate among the native population to address Germany’s demographic requirements, recommends the controversial policy of re-migration, vehemently opposes the introduction of genderised language and opposes investments in gender research in German universities, besides rejecting homosexuality and transsexuality education in the German schools. 

Weidel’s sexual orientation contrary to her party’s position, however, has not stopped her from gaining favourable votes from the conservative supporters of the AfD, who seem to be able to live with this contradiction. In fact, her party has rather tried to use Weidel’s identity to shed the misogynist, homophobic and racist tags that have largely defined AfD’s image in the more liberal voters especially in the western Germany and also in areas dominated by German universities. This strategy, however, has not worked in the favour of AfD as a large number of voters belonging the Queer community remain suspicious of the party’s agenda.

Weidel’s rise has coincided with the simultaneous rise of the AfD. In the latest federal election, she led her party to its best performance to date as AfD doubled its vote percentage and became the second-largest party and the principal opposition in the German parliament.[xiv] In a more recent survey, conducted 2 months after the federal election, the popularity of AfD has further soared, and the party was expected to garner around 24% of the vote if the elections were to happen again.[xv] Another survey puts AfD in the first position with a 26% vote, thus confirming the sustained popularity of the party among the German electorate.[xvi]

Weidel’s atypical profile for a far-right politician has helped her normalise the AfD in Germany, where she actually believes that the party may have a chance to rule by the next federal elections. She is also heading the AfD at a time when the populist zeitgeist across Europe is now an established fact. Besides, Weidel has received support from across the Atlantic, where the Trump administration has not even hesitated to openly show its disgust for Europe. Weidel has received open endorsement from JD Vance, Elon Musk, and other European leaders like Viktor Orban. AfD has thus become an important element in the emerging global far-right movement across America and Europe. This kind of international acceptance helps the AfD project itself as a normal political party working for the betterment of Germany.

The Master Plan

By the February 2025 federal elections, the 2013 four-page manifesto of the AfD had evolved into a 95-page-long programme that encompasses almost every aspect of German social, political, and economic life and also very clearly illustrates the hard lining of the party positions reflecting the evolution of agendas with the change in leadership. The political programme of the alternative for Germany[xvii] that the party released before the 2025 German elections shows how the AfD has managed to evolve itself from a single-issue movement into a major political force in Germany.

The party continues with its Eurosceptic agenda. It sees the EU as an “undemocratic entity” under the control of the bureaucrats with no accountability. It opposes any idea of centralisation of power in the EU and seeks “fundamental reforms”, such as making the Brussels bureaucracy more accountable and transparent, the absence of which will allow the AfD to push for either Germany’s exit from the bloc or negotiation of a new European economic union. This section, however, will focus on the controversial idea of re-migration that has given AfD its extremist and far-right tag in the aftermath of the migration crisis.

The most prominent of the party agendas has been the question of immigration. It is interesting to see that a party that favoured “qualified and willing to integrate immigrants” and recommended a policy for sheltering asylum seekers, including “humane treatment” for migrants in the form of allowing them to work in its manifesto of 2013, has now completely upended its position on the issue of migration. It has now adopted a more controversial and radical policy infamously dubbed “re-migration”, which first came to light after the details of a secret meeting of the AfD members were revealed. 

In a secret meeting that took place in a hotel outside Potsdam on 25 November 2024, key figures of the party reportedly discussed a “master plan” that envisioned a mass deportation plan of not just asylum seekers but also German citizens of foreign origin, prompting protests against the AfD’s agenda and a call for a ban on the party after details of the meeting came out.[xviii]

Although the programme was put forward by Martin Sellner, the poster boy of the extremist Identitarian Movement, the AfD leaders present in the meeting did not oppose and rather enquired about the feasibility of the plan.[xix] The ‘master plan’ purely based on racial segregation identified asylum seekers, non-Germans with residential permits, and ‘non-assimilated German citizens as the targeted groups eligible to be deported to a “model state” in Africa, a plan which reminded many of the Nazi Plan of 1940 to deport four million Jews to Madagascar.[xx]

The Support Base

A closer analysis of the votes that the AfD has received in the recent elections points towards a support base of the party which is largely located in eastern Germany, i.e., in areas that once comprised the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – where fascist and Nazi ideas were banned – under the control of the erstwhile Soviet Union. In the region, the party has emerged as a powerful force where it has almost reached hegemony and is the main driver of politics.[xxi]

The enduring east-west divide in Germany remains key to understanding AfD’s growing support in eastern Germany, where the party has consistently managed to get popular support in parliamentary and state elections. In the last parliamentary elections, in which AfD emerged as the second largest party with 20.8 % of votes, the party scored significantly higher than its national average in the eastern Germany. In the five post-Soviet federal states of Thuringia, Saxony, Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Brandenburg, the AfD secured votes in the range of 32–39%, which is almost double the average of 18 % votes it received in the western states.[xxii] The persisting demographic and economic differences along with the weak penetration of the mainstream parties like the CDU/CSU and the SPD in the eastern Germany have given the AfD an opportunity to exploit these differences.

There also exists a sense of isolation in the East, which has only deepened with the general belief in the lawmakers of the West about the underdevelopment of democratic values in the former East Germans.[xxiii] The increasing support in the east for the AfD establishes the fact that the party has managed to diversify from its infamous anti-migration agenda, given the fact that its highest support comes from regions that have traditionally remained non-attractive to the migrants.

Apart from geography, there also exists a distinct rural-urban divide in the German voting pattern where the AfD remains a potent force in the rural areas where there exists more acceptance of the party’s agenda on traditions and familial and cultural values.[xxiv] In the rural areas, the AfD projects urbanisation as a negative force responsible for cultural degradation, emphasising the need to protect the traditional family, farming, and rural identity from the urban cultural invasion.[xxv] Such has been the opposition that even the construction of windmills in the rural and forested areas has been projected by the AfD as a representation of an urban idea destroying the traditional cultural landscape of the rural areas.[xxvi]

A Crumbling Brandmauer?

Post-1945 Germany has largely remained immune to right-wing populism owing to a national-level consensus among the mainstream parties to not engage with far-right populist parties. Although right-wing populist parties like the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and the Schill Party have existed in German polity, they have failed to have any meaningful presence in the German Parliament owing to a cordon sanitaire imposed by the mainstream parties against the right-wing populist parties, popularly known as the Brandmauer or a firewall against the far-right.

In a nutshell, Brandmauer denounces the perceived anti-democratic elements and discourages any alignment or reproachment of the mainstream civil society and political class with the far-right thought leading to a complete non-cooperation. Besides, Germany’s bitter experience of the Third Reich has also ensured that the new parties on the right of the political spectrum are often stigmatised as the heirs of the Nazi party, and their leaders are not treated as normal politicians. Yet some recent events show cracks in the German Brandmauer.

In recent months, many in the CDU and its sister party CSU Bavaria are now debating the feasibility of the German firewall against the AfD, and leaders such as Jens Spahn, an ally of Friedrich Merz, have sparked new debates[xxvii] questioning the need for the firewall and recommending a “soft attitude” of the mainstream parties towards the AfD.[xxviii] Many in the CDU/CSU want the absolute incompatibility clause to end and have recommended cooperation with the AfD with concrete conditions.[xxix]  The idea here is to deny any sympathy to the AfD owing to its continued isolation and force the party to moderate its own radicalism by showing the AfD a clear red line that it cannot cross if it wants to be treated like a normal opposition group.[xxx]

The firewall looked the weakest, and its complete collapse was seen imminent when Frederich Merz relied on votes, before the snap elections in February, from the AfD to get his five-point migration plan passed through a non-binding motion that called for tougher rules on border and asylum with the support of the AfD.[xxxi] Although the final bill failed in the absence of the required number of votes, Merz drew harsh criticism for his alleged collaboration with the AfD, as he was accused of breaking the firewall.

Although the firewall continues to hold, as of now, as Merz has now ruled out any further cooperation with the AfD in the Bundestag, the rising popularity of the AfD is fuelling anxiety among the mainstream parties. The fact that the AfD became the single largest party in a post-poll survey that projected 26% vote for the AfD against the CDU’s 25% has only exacerbated this anxiety.

German Politics at a Crossroad

The rise of the AfD has the potential to greatly alter the functioning of German democracy and how the German mainstream political parties have conventionally responded to the questions of family planning, climate change, migration, and Germany’s engagement with the EU. The unprecedented electoral performance of AfD, by far by any right-wing party in Germany, has made the party the second largest party in the parliament and the principal opposition voice.

Unlike other far-right parties in Germany, the AfD has not only consistently crossed the 5% threshold in the last two elections to enter the German parliament but also has managed to increase its electoral tally and effectively represent the voice of the German far-right in the Bundestag.

The representation of the AfD is starker at the state level, where the party has managed to secure representation. This looks more impressive if put in the right context. The provincial elections in Germany not only determine the composition of the upper house of the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, but also impact any federal legislation impacting the states. In Germany, the state has considerable power of its own, and thus, if the party manages to win more elections at the state level as it did in Thuringia, it could significantly influence the policies at the state as well as national level.

The continued success of the AfD riding on a primarily anti-migrant narrative has led to the fragmentation of Germany’s previously stable party system, where the dominance of the two major political parties - the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) – has been effectively challenged. The fact that the AfD is now continuously polling in double digits has made coalition-building more complex, and its continued popularity has also forced the mainstream parties to adopt more conservative positions on issues like migration and law enforcement to retain their right-leaning votes.

The post-war democratic consensus in Germany has also been challenged, as evident in the Nazi apologists' position taken by many leaders in the party. The now defunct – “Der Flügel” (The Wing) – an extreme right-wing faction within the AfD, was classified as an extreme group, and its actions and rhetoric led to the surveillance of AfD for its alleged threat to the constitutional order in Germany. With time the common perception about the party regarding its perceived anti-Semitic and anti-democratic rhetoric has only intensified, which finally led to the designation of AfD as a right-wing extremist group in May this year by the German domestic intelligence agency. This development has further intensified the demands to ban the party, which now happens to be the second-largest party and the principal opposition group in Germany.

Conclusion

The AfD is more far-right even by European standards. This explains why the party, despite climbing the popularity ladder in Germany, is only gradually finding support with the broader far-right movement in Europe. Although the party has found support from leaders like Viktor Orban and President Trump, popular far-right leaders like Marine Le Pen seem to be keeping a distance from AfD at times.

Its isolation was more visible in the European Parliament when it was first kicked out from the far-right Identity and Democracy group following its alleged involvement in a series of scandals. The party again failed to secure membership in the far-right Patriot of Europe group, which replaced the ID in the aftermath of the elections of the European Parliament, forcing it to create another group of far-right parties called the Europe of Sovereign Nations.

The German politics, however, has been seeing considerable internal churning with the rise of popular support for the AfD. AfD’s continued rise has put the German political system, known for complicated coalition building and complex negotiations for forming the government, under greater stress. The rise of AfD has further complicated the national and local coalition building among the mainstream parties and has forced them to readjust even to the point of rethinking the relevance of the “cordon sanitaire” that has defined the post-Nazi German polity.

The rise of AfD has also been seen as a challenge to the democratic norms and institutions of Germany which has come under stress given the alleged extremist and illiberal discourse the AfD is pushing for. Its radical rhetoric on the issue of migration and Islam and its continued Euroscepticism, which will now be so dominantly put forward by the AfD in the German parliament, has put the mainstream leaders in uncomfortable positions. There has also been indication of the mainstream parties making hardline choices on issues of border control and migration to keep their voter base safe from AfD penetration.

The economic grievances, cultural anxieties especially in the aftermath of the migration crisis in Europe and rising political distrust has been gradually pushing the German electorate away from the mainstream parties as the AfD is effectively exploiting these grievances to convert them into votes using populist rhetoric peddled through a very effective social media campaign. AfD has particularly gained in the eastern Germany where it has exploited on the “democracy deficit” that has existed in the region which has been largely more traditional and less liberal compared to the western Germany. These dynamics are thus providing ideal grounds for AfD’s comparative acceptance as an alternative in the eastern Germany.

Although the popularity of the AfD has surged in recent years, its radical ideas have also led to increased opposition to its political programmes, with a majority of Germans expressing negative views about the party and questioning its commitment to democratic ideals, the rule of law, and human dignity. However, the fact remains that the rise of AfD has been one of the most consequential developments in the post-war political landscape of Germany. Its growing support base, its influence on public debates about the major issues faced by Germany, and a slow crumbling firewall indicate that the AfD is here to stay.

*****

*Aman Kumar, Research Associate, Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal.

Endnotes

[i] Aman Kumar. ‘Into the Ideas and Politics of Viktor Orban”, Indian Council of World Affairs, 18 February 2025, /show_content.php?lang=1&level=3&ls_id=12462&lid=7616 (Access 15 April 2025)

[ii] Nette Nöstlinger and Csongor Körömi. “German far right wants to join forces with Orban to dismantle EU from within” Politico, February 12, 2025  https://www.politico.eu/article/alternative-for-germany-afd-alice-weidel-far-right-viktor-orban-hungary/ (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[iii] Klaus Ziemer. Has the AfD changed German Politics, Political Science, 2 , 69–101. 2020

[iv] AfD. Manifesto for Germany. AfD. 2013 https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/down/originals/41953_2013.pdf (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[v] Leonie de Jonge and Rolf Frankenberger. “Whats is the AfD? Germany’s far-right party, explained”, The Conversation, February 21, 2025  https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-afd-germanys-far-right-party-explained-250218 (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[vi] Justin Huggler. “Pegida leader resigns after photograph of him posing as Adolf Hitler emerges”, The Telegraph, January 21, 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11361416/Pegida-leader-resigns-after-photograph-of-him-posing-as-Adolf-Hitler-emerges.html (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[vii] Volker Witting and Jens Thurau. “Germany’s AfD: Euroskeptics turned far-right populists”, DW, November 03, 2024 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-afd-euroskeptics-turned-far-right-populists/a-64607308 (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[viii] Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. “Populist leader aims to change political situation in Germany-and Europe”, NPR, January 27, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/01/27/511644280/far-right-leader-aims-to-change-political-situation-in-germany-and-europe (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[ix] Nalina Eggert. “Female politicians and babies: a lose-lose situation” BBC, August 3, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-40800687 (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[x]Henry Bernhard. “The difference between the “wing” and the rest of the party”, Deutschlandfunk, October 29, 2019,  https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/afd-der-unterschied-zwischen-fluegel-und-restlicher-partei-100.html (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[xi] Klaus Ziemer. Has the AfD changed German Politics, Political Science, 2, 69–101. 2020

[xii] The Local. “AfD ditches Lucke as party swings to right”, The Local, July 15, 2025, https://www.thelocal.de/20150705/germanys-afd-heads-right-with-new-leader (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[xiii] Kate Connolly, “AfD leader quits party caucus hours after German election breakthrough” The Guardian, September 25, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/25/afd-leader-frauke-petry-quits-party-german-election-breakthrough (April 15, 2025)

[xiv] DW. “German election : Merz’s CDU wins elections, AfD second”, DW, February 23, 2025, https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-merzs-cdu-wins-election-afd-second/live-71700729 (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[xv]Sabine Kinkartz. “Germany: Far-right AfD rises in the polls”, DW, March 04, 2025 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-far-right-afd-rises-in-the-polls/a-72132087 (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[xvi] ANSA. “In Germany, AfD is still first in the polls with 26%”, ANSA, April 22, 2025, https://www.ansa.it/nuova_europa/en/news/sections/news/2025/04/22/in-germany-afd-is-still-first-in-the-polls-with-26_3178b024-0184-43ae-a86d-69a806c1f2be.html (Accessed April 23, 2025)

[xvii] AfD. “Manifesto for Germany: The Political Programme pf the Alternative for Germany”, AfD, April 12, 2017 https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-04-12_afd-grundsatzprogramm-englisch_web.pdf (Accessed April 15, 2025)

[xviii] Nadine Schmidit and Sophie Tanno. “Mass protests against Germany’s far-right AfD over deportation master plan”, CNN World, January 21, 2024, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/20/europe/germany-protests-far-right-afd-migrant-deportation-plan-intl (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xix] Correvtive. “Secret plan against Germany”, Corrective, January 10, 2025, https://correctiv.org/aktuelles/neue-rechte/2024/01/10/geheimplan-remigration-vertreibung-afd-rechtsextreme-november-treffen/ (April 18, 2025)

[xx] Ibid

[xxi] Maria Fiedler,  Et. Al. “How Germany’s AfD intends to boost its influence”, SPIEGEL, April 11, 2025,  https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/right-wing-report-how-germanys-afd-intends-to-boost-its-influence-a-140fc377-8981-4411-9f31-78e4b267eb3f (April 18, 2025)

[xxii] Anadolu Ajanis. “Far-right AfD becomes strongest party in eastern Germany states” Anadolu Ajanis, February 24, 2025, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/far-right-afd-becomes-strongest-party-in-eastern-german-states/3491992 (April 18, 2025)

[xxiii] Lucia Mackenzie. “What Germany’s East-West divide means for the election”, Politico, February 14, 2025, https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-east-west-election-feb-23-elections-afd-party-cdu/ (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xxiv]The Conversation. “These maps of support for Germany’s far-right AfD lay bare the depth of the urban-rural divide”, The Conversation, February 6, 2025, https://theconversation.com/these-maps-of-support-for-germanys-far-right-afd-lay-bare-the-depth-of-the-urban-rural-divide-248405 (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xxv] Ibid

[xxvi] Petra Sorge. “German Far-Right Aligns with Trump on Takedown of Wind Energy”, Bloomberg, January 13, 2025,https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-13/german-far-right-aligns-with-trump-on-takedown-of-wind-energy (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xxvii] Anne Hahnig. “Life after the firewall”, Zeit, April 17, 2025, https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025-04/union-afd-debatte-brandmauer-ostdeutschland (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xxviii] Michael Curzon. “Merz ally sparks establishment panic after talking sense on AfD”, The European Conservative, April 17, 2025,  https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/merz-afd-firewall-jens-spahn/

[xxix] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025-04/union-afd-debatte-brandmauer-ostdeutschland (Accessed April 18, 2025)

[xxx] Ibid

[xxxi] Jessica Parker and Damien McGuinness. “Far-right vote on asylum rocks German parliament” BBC, January 29, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceq901dxjnzo (Accessed April 18, 2025)