Olga Zeveleva, PhD Candidate from the Department of Sociology, features in the Huffington Post with an analysis of immigration, racism, and the responsibility of centrists and conservatives for the successes of the far right in Germany's election
The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is about to take up its seats in German parliament. How did we get here? Mainstream media in the West has been quick to point at the Kremlin as the source of the unprecedented number of votes for the far right. Indeed, the AfD has estimated that about one-third of its support comes from Russian-speaking voters. But should we really blame foreign countries and immigrant voters for the rise of the right? If we do so, we'll be sure to miss the toxic role played by Germany's own political elites. In fact, the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) has done a great deal to form and to fan Russian-Germans' right-wing leanings.
