Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party won its best ever results this weekend. We hear why an anti-immigrant, fascist-curious party is surging in the land that gave birth to Nazism. This episode was produced by Travis Larchuk with help from Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members A poster of Alice Weidel, who co-leads the Alternative for Germany (AfD), behind a "Make Duisburg great again" cap. Photo by LOUIS VAN BOXEL-WOOLF/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
Germans went to the polls this weekend and how it was the biggest election turnout in a generation. More than eight in 10 eligible voters cast a ballot. Friedrich Merz, a conservative from the CDU party, is on track to be chancellor. He said today it's time for traditional Democratic parties to start getting things done.
The world won't wait for us. It won't wait for long drawn out coalition negotiations. We must be capable of acting again quickly so that we can do the right thing in Germany.
The party that came in second place, the Alternative for Germany, or AFD, is from the far right fringe. So it is perhaps inevitable that America's unelected vice president, Elon Musk, has spoken in support of the AFD. But so has America's elected vice president, J.D. Vance. Coming up on Today Explained, the transatlantic alliance no one wants.
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This is Today Explained.
Noelle King here with Nina Haase. Nina is chief political correspondent for Deutsche Welle. That's Germany's international broadcaster. All right, so Nina, big election in Germany this weekend. What's the headline today?
The headline is that the Conservatives... swept the Social Democrats out of the Chancellery and we will see a new German government in a couple of weeks time that is going to be led by the Conservatives in a coalition probably with the Social Democrats and that is still going to be a pro-European, a centrist government facing lots and lots of challenges. Also the
headline underneath is that for the very first time in a national poll, a far-right party, the AfD, managed to get one in five German voters to vote for them. Who is the new chancellor? The new chancellor is a man called Friedrich Merz. He's a grandfather. He is not an unknown figure. He entered politics in the 1990s, and he was then
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