I'm tired of calling it protest votes. The last idiot in a cave should have heard by now that they are literally Nazis. People who voted for them are Nazis. Which gives me the creeps as a citizen of Germany.
But on the national issues thing I'm full on your side.
There is CDU and CSU. Together they form the Union. CSU is only active in Bavaria, but they are even more conservative than the CDU. Both would cooperate with the far right tho so we can sink most of Germany
Bavaria voted CSU, which is Bavaria's own, even more "conservative" splinter group of the CDU that has run Bavaria as a de facto one party state for the most part of its post WW2 history. One of the reasons why the AfD doesn't score that high in Bavaria is that the domestic Bavarian parties are so far right that there is virtually no demand for a dedicated Nazi party.
Most of the creative and ambitious people left the GDR when the wall came down.
I heard a theory recently from someone that was part of the peaceful revolution in Leipzig and now thinks that many people actually didn't mind the government telling them what to do and then not really having a choice in the matter and being under constant surveillance as long as they had a decent life. And that the protests in hindsight probably were more about them seeing how much better the life in the west was than about the personal and political freedom since the GDR apparently did a pretty good job to get rid of those concepts (at least for many citizens).
Now those same people are again voting only for their personal gains and not for freedom for everyone to live however they want as that was never in their interest to begin with
I don't know how you can look at a map clearly showing the aftereffects of decades of communism and blame it on capitalism. Why would east Germany vote fascist due to rampant capitalism but the rest of Germany not do that? I just don't understand.
The left-leaning parties disappointed me with their posters this election. There was 1 that said "Set a mark against fascists" and showed an anti-afd protest, and another with a similar message.
I know they are the nazi party, I want to know what YOU stand for. I'll have to guess political scientist found out nobody really changes their mind from a poster, so the only thing they do is remind people of their party that they need to go out and vote.
If that's the case, the poster may be better than I give it credit for. Still, doesn't seem to have worked.
if you're driving through East German cities you know why they're voting populist right wing parties. there's no work, poverty and half of the houses are empty because a lot of the people already left.
It's fascinating that the DDR has elected nazis, because over here in Czechia, which was essentially a non-German DDR, the election was won in half by our CDU and in half by our careerist populist party (but not a nazi). It seems to be a specifically East German thing...
Has to do with how people in the east are basically being dragged behind by the west. They are getting paid less, but have to pay the same amount as westerners for electricity, gas, water, internet, and everything else except for rent and sometimes food.
A lot of the folks I talk to remember how the "west" turned the previously state owned railway company into a private company which caused almost ~75% of the at that point running rail network to be shut down for profit reasons.
People are upset, nothing is being done, they are being fed propaganda, and the results can be seen as clear as day