What Germany’s Election Means for the Western Left
Fear of being left behind economically and socially proved to be potent fuel for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which for the first time won more votes than the Social Democrats in a German federal election. So long as center-left parties fail to address this fear, the far right will continue to exploit it.
https://prosyn.org/ZJ7Zpaj
WARSAW – Germany’s Social Democrats are one of the West’s oldest political parties, with a legacy of advocating parliamentary democracy, opposing Nazism, and leading the modernization of postwar Germany. In addition to the many notable labor, economic, and human-rights reforms that the party has implemented over the years, former SPD leader and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in the 1970s laid the groundwork for Germany’s reunification in 1990.