Immigration Opens the Door to the Right Wing

There were three regional elections in Germany on Sunday.  The right wing anti-immigration party Alternativ fuer Deutschland (AfD) made significant gains achieving around 10, 15 and 25% of the vote in the three regions.

Of the voters who chose AfD almost 10% of the total votes were from people who had not voted previously through apathy or disinterest.  Upward of 85% of the AfD voters said their vote was an anti-immigration vote.  Around 60% mentioned their fear that Germany was being overrun by Islam and a similar amount were concerned about increases in crime.

Now the AfD started off as an anti-Euro party and then morphed into an anti-immigration party.  One of its major figures was recently quoted as saying what a god-send the immigration crisis was as before that they were not really getting anywhere.

Taken individually the fears are not necessarily grounded in reality, but as we all know, perception is a form of reality.  The AfD had no qualms about feeding those fears and happily took advantage of the reluctance of the major parties to engage entertain the fact that even if the fears being voiced were exaggerated, they still need to be addressed. 

Enter the AfD.

A party that wants to build walls around Germany to keep out immigrants and advocates the use of arms to beat back the men, women and children at the gates.  This is a party that condemns all Muslims and nonchalantly blames a perceived increase in crime on immigrants without any information to support their accusations.

It is a party that wants women back in the home rather than in the workplace.  Perhaps they will reintroduce the Mutterkreuz.  They want to cut benefits for single mothers, lower the minimum wage, and in general return to the cultural mores of the late 19th century and more recently under the 1000 year Reich....

I can only hope that all of the "protest" voters come to their senses and realise that they have let a wolf in sheepskin in the door.