Right turn: how to grapple with Germany's hard right

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  The Economist Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here,

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  co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.

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  This is Editor's Picks.

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  You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist read aloud.

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  Enjoy.

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  It would be comforting to play down the significance of the votes in two German states on September 1st,

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  when the hard-right Alternative for Germany,

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  AFD,

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  party lost in Saxony by a whisker and scored a nine-point lead over its nearest rival in Thuringia.

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  Yes,

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  this victory is the first the hard writers won in a state election in Germany

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  since the Second World War.

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  And yes,

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  its leader in Thuringia is a nasty piece of work with two criminal convictions

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  for using a slogan popularised by the Nazi brownshirts and banned under German law.

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  But Thuringia is home to less than 3% of Germans.

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  It is about as representative as Wyoming in America,

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  where Donald Trump took 68% of the votes in 2016.

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  or Clacton in Britain, which elected Reform UK's leader Nigel Farage in July.

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  Yet what happens in Thuringia does not stay there.

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