Germany’s local elections usually don’t matter to anyone but Germans. But Sunday’s contest in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was an exception: It could very well produce the first far-right government anywhere in Germany since the Nazis.
Alternatives für Deutschland (AfD), a party so extreme that Germany’s intelligence services put them under surveillance, won 43.8 — a plurality that puts them just shy of a majority of seats in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament. Since the election, AfD’s leadership has been negotiating with other factions to form a coalition government; it’s unclear at present how likely they are to succeed.
On its own, Saxony-Anhalt is
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