Occasionally, history does dish out poetic justice. It can also be exceedingly funny, if in a merciless way. Germany’s well-known tragedy – or let’s say, one of them – is that it suffers from chronic irony deficiency, so many Germans will fail to see the funny side of what has just happened. And yet, there is something very deserved as well as ironic about the recent catastrophe of the country’s establishment parties in three turning-point regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin.
The stunning successes of the new-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in two of them (Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) have attracted most attention. And rightly so: For one thing, any remaining establishment delusions about marginalizing the AfD out of German politics by a “firewall” are now where they have belonged for a very long time: on the trash heap of history. Last desperate firewalling efforts may continue for a little longer here and there, but it’s a Zombie now: not only ugly and brainless but dead to boot.
