German Elections, Antisemitic Nurses, and the Latest Hostage Release

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Over the past year, right-wing parties across the West have been sweeping elections: Donald Trump in the United States, Javier Milei in Argentina, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, and now, Germany.

Last week, 83 percent of Germans went to the polls—the highest turnout since the Cold War.

The Christian Democrats, the country’s center-right party led by Friedrich Merz, won. But that’s not the big story. The big story is that the right-wing populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), came in second place with nearly 21 percent, the strongest showing since WWII.

There is a single reason why. It’s not the economy. It’s not the war with Russia. It’s not climate change. It’s immigration.

And I’m not talking about jobs or wage deflation. I’m talking about the fact that over the past decade, Germany has seen a net migration of 5 million people, with more than 1 million of the new arrivals coming from Syria and Afghanistan.

And the rifts have been palpable. And here, I’m choosing two examples from just last month:

An Afghan migrant suspect rammed a car through a crowd of people in Munich. Thirty-nine people, including several children, were injured. Just the day before the election, a Syrian migrant became the lead suspect for a stabbing outside of the Holocaust Museum in Berlin.

This all fundamentally tests the limits of assimilation and multiculturalism.

The dynamic here is the same that has characterized many Western nations. The center-left and the left have ignored the problem. And the right has named it—and filled the vacuum. As Michael Sandel has put it: “Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread.” If there’s a line that captures the politics of our era, it is that.