[Music] to discuss all of this and more let's bring in URI Brookner he's a professor of European studies at Stanford University in bin Berlin rather thank you for joining us on the show today did you see this coming well if you would have asked me 10 years ago if we one day sit here to discuss a winning of an extreme right-wing party in a parliament in Germany I would have said straightforwardly no now that we are discussing this for a longer time and we see that populist parties learn from The Playbook of populism how to play Tik Tock right and all the other populist communication strategies it didn't really come as a surprise that they get as close as becoming the leading party in Saxony and winning in trinia which still doesn't make them the governor of the two countries but the importance and the challenge to the establishing parties that did not come as a surprise so what would you say are the issues behind this and we know that many German voters are increasingly frustrated by the number of migrants arriving in the country especially now that Germany's economy has stagnated is immigration the core issue here or are there other reasons well this is what the Spin Doctors and the leading figures in the party try to make Germans think but I think there are many more reasons why they win support and why it's even cool these days for young people to support the alternativa for doand but it's not a single issue and it's certainly not something that plays an important role on a regional level there have been discussions about Germany's support for Ukraine there are discussions about communication problems there's an overall dissatisfaction with how the government in Berlin is communicating but there's also a very specific eastern part of the narrative that many people in the format gdr feel like second class German citizens and this is something that exists in specific Pockets Saxony is 4 million citizens turingia is two the overall size of Germany is 84 million so it is extremely difficult to Simply generalize and express that the government did things wrong I think this is more a very successful storytelling strategy that doesn't really need facts the economic situation in the country is way better than it has ever been and still people feel neglected or think that there is no pride of future ahead Chancellor Olaf Schultz has urged mainstream parties not to lend support to the farri alternative for Germany if Government coalitions are built without the afd would that undermine the Democratic particip ation of some parts of the population well that is a tricky point and I think this is partly also the reason why populist parties managed to get support and public attention because for a long time parties in the traditional political Spectrum move to the center from the very not the very right but from more conservative positions and also from more left positions to the center Angela Merkel transformed the conservative party CDU to a very Centrist party and then they presented everything they did as without alternative and if you stop explaining why you opt for a specific strategy then you give birth to Alternatives that appear as ugly as those do being racist being anti-semitic being islamophobic and being so self- Centrist that an open society and an export-based economy like Germany simply cannot afford so just finally does this indicate that the next general election in Germany will make a shift to the right do you think I don't think so because national elections are something very different from Regional ones it's way too early to tell who's going to be the next candidate parties also make mistakes and so far neither the alternative of a doand nor BW have presented anything that looks like a program so they are far from taking responsibility they're very good as organizing protest but that's basically it or Brookner thank you very much for your time thanks for having me [Music]