I think it is important to understand what gave them their recent power. The self imposed neoliberal austerity and self imposed paralysis of the current government of social demcorats, greens and liberals had pushed the small fissures that developed through rising inequality over the past 30 years in Germany into fully blown open cracks. Especially the failure to address the economic and social impact the Covid pandemic had swiftly followed by the huge inflation with Covid and the invasion shorty after, cracked a lot of people. Meanwhile the conservative CDU just went into full right to far right populist attack mode, actively sabotaging both the federal and local governments.

Russian has been playing its propaganda game for at least a decade before that, but instead of addressing the systemic issues in Germany, politics ever only chased the next few years and Merkel just smothered the country into sleep, while the problems grew.

Now the solution would be to address necessary investments, providing a vision for a secure and positive future. Instead the government runs after far right populist ideas, becoming ever more authoritarian and racist. And this only further helps the populists of AfD and BSW presenting these as “solutions”.