Saxony-Anhalt is a mid-sized state in Eastern Germany that has not really commanded much international attention since roughly 1517. In that year, on October 31, in Wittenberg, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door, an act that is considered by many to have triggered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

Certainly, for Americans, the region has rarely been front of mind since. But on September 6, what happened there matters to all of us and our futures. That is because in elections on that day, the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) won the state elections, besting the Christian Democrats (CDU), the party led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, by an almost two-to-one margin.

Merz, after the results were tabulated, told the executive board of his party that the results had shaken the CDU “to its very foundations.” Another senior CDU official characterized the election as “a watershed” for Germany.

Why? Because this is Germany we are talking about here. And the Alternative for Germany party is a hard-right nationalist party of a type that the country has largely tried to steer clear of since its bad experiences with right-wing extremism back in, you know, the last century.

This election is the latest major victory for Europe’s ugly right and for the global ethno-nationalist extremist movement that has been led by Vladimir Putin and other demagogues like Donald Trump, the UK’s Nigel Farage, France’s Marine Le Pen, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei, and has included recently defeated but nonetheless highly visible leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump’s reaction to the victory, a win for a party that openly echoes policies that produced some of Europe’s darkest days in the last century, was exultant. He framed it as a victory for the “Populist Party” in Germany and hailed it as a reaction to “absolutely........

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