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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Deborah Cole in Berlin

Firewall compromised: has Friedrich Merz blown ‘democracy’s last shot’?

A large crowd protesting against the AfD gathers with flags and signs at the Brandenburg Gate
Demonstrators at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Monday to protest against the rise of the far-right AfD party. Photograph: T Seeliger/ hutterstock

A cataclysm. A 9.0 earthquake. A five-alarm fire. A bitter rejection of Germany’s joyous reunification three decades ago, and a threat to the democratic postwar order.

Sizing up the repercussions of last weekend’s win for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in the former communist state of Saxony-Anhalt, German commentators expressed a sense of doom, panic and helplessness in the political establishment.

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