East Germany

At the same time, do not overstate what happened.

This is one region of what was formerly Eastern Germany that voted for this, okay? They did not have a majority even in this region, although they had the largest numbers.

The...

There are several parties competing.

Security Chief Ola, a recently recruited engineer, Christoph, who barely speaks Norwegian, an accountant whose accent never fit.

When I run these names through my own offline database, I find references to Soviet and East German researchers.

Identities mismatched, names quietly buried, never flagged by company HR.

I flick through old badge photos.

And that happened in West Germany, right? West.

And right next door in East Germany, the exact opposite was happening.

Yeah.

So you kind of had a real-life laboratory.

East Germany, occupied by the Russians, went in the other direction and became a stagnant, controlled economy that people wanted to flee from.

But West Germany prospered, and that was because of Ludwig Erhard and his reliance upon capitalism.

Right.

Now, Saxony-Anhalt is one of the smaller German states, only a population of two million people.

It's in eastern Germany.

But the fact that the AFD won such a large share of the vote, nearly winning a majority in the parliament in that state, has been a veritable earthquake in German politics.

It's been a historical event in the basic sense that a far right party has not won.

Yeah, because there has been a lot of discussion of the economic grievances that may have led to the rise of the AFD's popularity.

Saxony-Anhalt, just as an example, there are other states where the AFD is very popular, but this is one of the poorer parts of Germany.

It is a... kind of classic left behind region of former Eastern Germany.

So there is a lot of talk of the AFD's material policies to the extent that they exist.

On the 11th of September, 1989, the Iron Curtain opened between the communist Hungary and Austria.

From Hungary, thousands of East Germans thronged to Austria and West Germany.

Okay.

Well...

And, of course, it does make some people who are uncomfortable with multiculturalism and a multi-ethnic society, and who worry in particular, perhaps, about Islamism, very uncomfortable.

Having said that, I think it's important to recognize stress that Saxony-Anhalt where this election has taken place is in East Germany which is the poorest part of Germany and actually is one of the parts of Germany that doesn't really have many migrants living there but nevertheless of course people have TV they have the internet they have streaming they have newspapers they can see that in other parts of the country there are lots of migrants and of course that allows people on the far right to whip up the idea that somehow those migrants are responsible for some of their woes.

You know, they're taking their jobs, they're relying too much on welfare benefits, you name it.

There are all sorts of accusations made.

It's also true, of course, that in the east of Germany there is a degree perhaps among migrants older people or at least middle-aged people not so much older people who actually lived through it and could remember it quite well but there is a degree of what's sometimes called in other words nostalgia for uh the communist past of east germany where in some senses although your freedom was severely curtailed.

You didn't have to worry too much economically.

There were jobs for everybody.

I don't want to downplay the consequences of Angela Merkel's decision, but there are other factors in play.

Just grinding it out.

We, uh, And at that time, you know, playing a bunch of different countries, a lot of shows in Germany, Italy.

And when we played some of the shows in Germany, you know, that's really only a couple of years since the wall had come down between East and West Germany.

So we were playing in like some of the old East Germany cities.

And it was a trip, man, just to see like a lot of the old propaganda flyers and stuff up.

for the DDR and stuff.

That's probably why.

There was a camera manufactured in East Germany where you like look down and there's a technical term for it, which slipped my mind at the moment, but it was called Reflective.

It was only in business for two years and that was out.

And it was spelled with a K. It's like, well, that plus AI, can we have that? Yep.

But, you know, the Holocaust Museum is in Washington.

It's not, it's not in East Germany or Eastern Europe.

And so going to a place like Auschwitz, um, that is so site specific.

I mean, it's very present in the Memorial Museum as well.