Oh, these improper questions about the «Alternative for Germany»!

The historic victory of the “Alternative for Germany” in the election in the state of Saxony-Anhalt (in whose capital, Magdeburg, it smells of socialism already on the platform) is good because it provokes questions that would otherwise have remained beneath the surface.

And we are not talking about tactical, but strategic questions. Tactical ones, like what role the AfD played in the victory — in Germany they say “added mustard” — of the wildly unpopular Chancellor Merz, are not very interesting: they are about the froth of the day.

The banal ones are not very interesting either: why did the AfD’s anti-migrant, isolationist rhetoric go over so well in a state where there are almost no migrants compared with western Germany? Because it did go over well precisely because people fear the unknown: outsiders included. If you never go beyond the three seas, you will also come to believe in people with dog heads.

Nor is the question interesting of why the openly homophobic AfD is led by Alice Weidel — a lesbian married to a Swiss woman born in Sri Lanka. And what, is it different with Putin? He too has “family values” — for the little people, and for himself — mistresses and illegitimate children. As Göring was said, according to legend, to have put it in such cases: “Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich”, — “Here I decide who is a Jew”.

But the question “how did it happen that in a country where anti-fascist rhetoric permeates everything, a semi-fascist party wins?” is very apt. Because it makes one think about why this rhetoric no longer works.

I fear the problem is that the anti-fascist lens in Germany is used almost always to condemn the past, but almost never to discuss the present. Endless anti-Nazi exhibitions, films, and programs for this reason turn into empty, meaningless, hollowed-out gestures.

A good German schoolboy, taken on a field trip to the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference (where the decision on the Endlösung, the “final solution” to the Jewish question, was made), will briskly repeat the memorized definition of antisemitism. But he will never ask the teacher whether Israel, which destroyed Gaza of 2.3 million people, killing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 70,000 Palestinians and at the same time applied Sippenhaftung (the principle of collective responsibility of relatives, used by the Nazis), can be considered a nationalist state.

This is fraught with problems. For the person being questioned, too. Because in Germany the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism (and here it can even lead to criminal liability) is shaky. And Chancellor Merz publicly repeats over and over that Germany’s special historical relations with Israel must be preserved. For me, this means that Germany’s policy is shaped by events to which those living there have no relation, while the events to which they do have a relation are ignored.

So why be surprised that there is a desire to send Merz and his party packing, which in Saxony-Anhalt was very much achieved.

This ignoring of reality, with the repetition of empty mantras from the past, is very typical of Germany. In a month the country will mark yet another dull and official Tag der Deutschen Einheit, German Unity Day. Its name, in the eyes of many eastern Germans, is a lie, because there was no unification of “the two Germanys”. There was an Anschluss, in the course of which West Germany absorbed East Germany. Yes, by mutual consent — but it absorbed it! After all, the GDR’s “wooden” marks were abolished in favor of the hard currency of the FRG. And it was not western, but eastern factories and plants that went bankrupt and were sold off by the sinister Treuhand trust. It was in the eastern states that teachers, judges, and officials were subjected to lustration and lost their jobs. And even the flag of unified Germany turned out to be western... And try to raise rational arguments against the term “Anschluss”!

But in order not to provoke accusations of “justifying the communist regime”, most people got used to keeping quiet and lying, and at the same time not noticing the growing East German resentment. It never occurred to Chancellor Merz, in the manner of Willy Brandt, who once knelt in Warsaw, to kneel in Magdeburg! Meanwhile the “Alternative for Germany” pours balm on the Ossis. It pats them on the head and forgives all their foolishness and nastiness. AfD candidate for prime minister of Saxony-Anhalt Ulrich Siegmund is accompanied by a convoy of decrepit GDR Trabants and equally decrepit Simson mopeds. He is at once on his knees and in your ears.

In fact, today’s victory of the “Alternative” teaches an important lesson: the dangers of ignoring reality. And all I can do is stand in solidarity with Jonathan Glazer — the director of the film about the commandant of Auschwitz, “The Zone of Interest”, who at the Oscars said that he made the film not to say: “Look what they did then”, but to say: “Look what we are doing now”.

And that is hellishly difficult.