Spring Time For Petry

As her right-wing party rises in the German opinion polls, is Frauke Petry the most dangerous nationalist in Europe?

- Yardena Schwartz

But in the dawn of the Trump era, one political party formerly on the fringes of German society has been glowing: the anti-immigrant, anti-EU Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Four days after Trump’s inauguration in January, I met AfD’s party leader, Frauke Petry, who represents the district of Saxony, at her office in Leipzig, where she compared Trump’s victory to Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Both events, she said, inspire parties like hers, which are critical of the EU because they show that the increasing consolidation of power in Brussels is not inevitable. “It shows us at least that change is possible,” she said.

While other prominent right-wing leaders, like Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party, have received more attention for their fiery brand of politics, the AfD’s Petry may, in some ways, be the most consequential of all the nativist European politicians.

The AfD has gained political influence extraordinarily quickly. Just four years after its founding, the once peripheral party has become a major force, having won seats in 10 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. It succeeded in some surprising places, defeating Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), in the chancellor’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and in September 2016, it won 14 percent of the vote in liberal Berlin, the highest showing there for a far-right party since World War II.