Far-right AfD wins election in East German state of Thuringia: Exit polls.

This is bad.

I mean, third time’s the charm……. Right? 😳
- Eh. Germany weren't the colossal dickheads in WWI that they were in WWII. Frankly most of Europe had a part to play in sparking the first one.
- As long as the trains running time...
- I mean, third time's the charm..... Reich?

Mom, can we get Nazis?

No we have Nazis at home.

I'd much rather have the idiot kind of nazis than the 1930s kind.
- How the hell do you think it starts‽ In the 20s with complete idiot nazis

Our "Verfassungsschutz": "Watch out! They plan to overthrow the current system!!"

AfD voter: "Yeah, but the migrants"

I'd go even further. The AfD threatens the current (democratic) system. Most AfD voters vote for them for this exact reason. They want to "enact revenge" on a system they feel left behind by IMO.
- "democracy doesn't let me be racist enough, we should get rid of it"
  ~average AfD voter
- Who should I vote for after unhinged leoliberal capitalism made my life worse?
  Socialists: Vote for me, so I can tax the rich and spend money on programs to help workers like you
  Fascist: Vote for me, I promise to deport some brown people (but in reality I will just cut the taxes of rich people and be friendly with Russia)
- Just proves again that we should deport AfD voters instead
I'm really worried that the Verfassungsschutz talks and talks about the dangers the AfD poses, but they seemingly won't actually do anything and I suspect by now it's too late to prohibit them.
- Yeah, it sucks. A party can't be forbidden in Germany if it's not "relevant enough"... But when they are relevant, it might be too late.
And AFD won't "send migrants back" because that would remove their favorite Boogeyman. Expect don't symbolic tinkering and not that much more, otherwise they have to start all over again with another minority to blame. It won't improve these people's economic situation. EU exit and austerity is back on the menu with AFD.

People in the comments attacking AfD voters as racists and rightly. However, no one wakes up one day and decide to be a racist from now on. There are reasons why these extremists gain political support and they draw it from a pool of people of which some wouldn't even consider voting for them a few years ago. This shift reflects a social sentiment that everyone seems to be ignoring.

No one is ignoring the global sentiment. We get it, capitalists are fucking everything to squeeze every cent out of us and a few idiots get conned into blaming brown people instead.
Sooo they turn into racist slowly? That's still not cool.
Fair point, I think we know it, just our politicians keep ignoring it. The elites backing moderate governments would rather see fascists on the throne, than to have a democratic, true leftist government.
Socialism endangers capitalism, fascism doesn’t.
The solution is definitely not ridicule and mocking, but it’s also not appeasing fascists. Anybody who wants to destroy democracy, has no place in a democracy. In the short term, we should ensure fascist don’t get to power by whatever means necessary, and in mid-/long term, we should enact social changes that decrease the support of these radicals.
Tbh I’m not sure this is possible peacefully (or at all), and maybe another world war will happen - though not because of Germany, more likely China/Rusia, maybe US if things go bad.
A lot of their voters couldn‘t even vote before. GenZ make up a big portion of extreme right voters because that‘s how TikTok works apparently. The young have a huge media competency deficit.
So, what's that climate and what exactly are the solutions?

So, no one bothers to learn lessons from history any more...? Hmmm.

Issue is, they just change a few bits around to fool the people that are uneducated about the subject. I'm from Hungary, and one history teacher of mine taught me that Nazis did things for the sake of being evil, one other said "it was a punishment for the Jews killing Jesus". Once you associate bigotry with being evil, any dumb rationale can make it look not evil in the eyes of these people.
- it was a punishment for the Jews killing Jesus
  This is peak logic. Glorify Jesus becasue "he died for our sins" but demonize Jews for killing him... Bitch, if they didn't kill him you lack key aspect of your religion!
They think history is based and also lies and also rad as hell and should definitely be repeated. But that bad mustache man should win this time.
- It doesn't help at all that history is rewritten all the time and is provably inaccurate at least in detail in a lot of cases.
  I'm not a holocaust denier or saying the Nazis are any better than what history shows them, but I also can't in good faith say that history is written in stone while southern US states are banning books right and left and making taboo teaching subjects. I've seen pushes in some areas that try to eliminate slavery and push the indentured servant narrative wide enough to cover all slavery.

It can't be as bad as it sounds, right?

Right?

Fuck.

They probably aren’t literally Hitler. But there is a lot of damage and awful shit they can do in between reasonable and Hitler. And they are much further towards the latter than anyone should be comfortable with.
- The thing with Hitler: He still considered himself a patriot, even he didn't solicit financial support from Germany's worst enemies.
Well, the only good thing: The pro-democratic parties will probably build a government without them.
A lot of the time, it's just name-calling, and not really Nazis
- Bernd Höcke who leads AFD in Thüringen is a Nazi and this got confirmed by a court. He sees himself als some kind of incarnation or continuation of Hitler. AFD in Thüringen has won the election by a great margin. This is like defending NSDAP.
- Sometimes though a judge has decided that it is factually correct to call the leader of a party a fascist because he is one
- An AfD-sympathiser. Of course unable to discern reality from wish world.

Here is the (non final) result for anyone to lazy to check themselves:

Scheiße
So it's still a minority by a significant amount. It could be much worse.
- With how absolutely entrenched the CDU is in our political system, this is about as bad as you could reasonably expect it to be. The CDU is an overall incredibly dominant party and the others are often competing for second place, which the AFD has gotten now. Them actually competing on that level is frankly terrifying.
- The long term strategy is to destabilise the CDU by forcing them into unfavorable coalitions. Which they have probably achieved this time. If the CDU looks bad enough in 5 years the AfD might get enough votes so that no government can be built without them
Is this projection only from exit polls or the actual count?
Also how does the whole 'two votes' thing work - from what I understand you have one vote that's basically a singe transferable vote type and another for your local electorate that's proportional representation (but I'm not sure what counting system is used)
- It's projected from the actual (then still unfinished) count but I think it uses some data from the exit polls to fill in the gap. So both?
  We now have a preliminary official result. You can see it here: Saxony, Thuringia
  @barsoap@lemm.ee has explained the basics of our electoral system pretty well: The first vote (Erststimme) is towards a candidate in a FPTP system to represent an electoral district and the second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party in a closed list proportional representative system. A party nominates a bunch of candidates and ranks them on a list. If they get enough votes to get a certain number of seats then those get filled first with candidates elected by Erststimme and then with candidates from the list starting at the top.
  A party needs to win at least 5% of the Zweitstimme or win at least 3 seats using the Erststimme to be awarded any seats. This was done as a lesson from Weimar Germany where too many small parties made coalition building impossible which helped Hitlers rise to power.
  But what if a party gets more seats via Erststimme than they should have? In that case we just start adding seats until the proportionality is maintained (those seats are referred to as Überhangs- und Ausgleichsmandate). That has lead to ballooning parliaments with our national parliament the Bundestag (small pronunciation guide: Bundes-tag not Bunde-stag - compound words can be tricky) being one of the biggest, right behind China. Recent reforms should curb that. We'll see next year how well they work.
- I don't know exactly how their electoral system works but the baseline in Germany is mixed member proportional. That is, you have a FPTP vote for a district seat, and also a proportional vote. If parties get less district seats than their proportional result, members are added to parliament from party lists until the proportions work out.
  I don't think STV is used anywhere, the FPTP portion is kept in check by the proportional thing anyway. When things are more complicated than baseline mixed member proportional it generally has to do with voters being able to re-arrange people on the party lists.

Hicks exist in every country.

Sometimes they drive fancy cars.

Hicks exist in every country. They don't always exist in the form of a "bring back the policies that destroyed our country the last time around" political party though.
- Uhh, my experience must be different than yours.
  I grew up surrounded by hicks who were still furious the North invaded them to take away their freedoms! (to keep slaves)

Jesus Christ, Germany, figure it out.

And which country are you from that you think you are entitled to throw the first stone?
- As a German, I'd very much like to throw the first stone at AFD-voters. And the second... and third.
- Nobody here is claiming their country to be without sin. This is a global problem.

Lets see how keen Germany is on stopping fascism in its borders again or if they’ll ooh and ahh as they wait for the state to talk about discussing doing something.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/

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Let's see what they'll achieve. Gonna be fun to watch.

Not so much fun to live through, I imagine. Especially if you have the "wrong" skin color.
- Nothing will change except more people feeling emboldened by the results. This isn't going to change much for non-whites in the state. If they were treated badly before, they'll continue to be treated badly now. That isn't going to change.
  But I bet this party won't achieve much in the next 4 years. Germany is a federation, Thuringia is a state. There's not much AfD can do at that level that wouldn't be rejected at national level, maybe even already by the state court. They can't change the constitution, they can't "ban immigrants" from their state, in short they can't implement their "program".
  It'll be a constant fight to get anything through and after 4 years, I bet they'll have very little to show for it. All they'll do is blame the other party for not cooperating.
I think, you misunderstand... They will probably not be part of the government(s). The other parties made that pretty clear. This is Germany. You need 50% of the seets. Does not matter who has the most votes.
And no, it wouldn't be fun for lots of minorities.
- Lol, sure. Look at the parties will form a coalition there. Wikipedia says CDU is center right (23%), Linke is far left (12% --> 35%)), SPD is supposedly social democratic and progressive (6% --> 41%), and BSW is all over the spectrum (15% -->56%). The only thing they have in common is that they are political parties.
  I wouldn't be surprised by AfD + CDU + BSW, honestly. They are politically much closer together than the other possible coalition.
I mean Franz von Papen thought something like this too in 1932 about Hitler and we all know how it ended.