When Vice President JD Vance criticized his German hosts last week for sidelining far-right parties, he did not mention by name the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD. But soon after his speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he stunned the room by comparing democracy in today’s Europe to Soviet-era totalitarianism, Mr….
On Thursday morning, an Afghan refugee deliberately plowed a car into a crowd in Munich, motivated by what the police called an “Islamist orientation.” A 2-year-old girl and her mother were killed, and nearly 40 others were injured. A day later — in a country where migration has been a major election issue — that…
The American vice president visited a concentration camp on Thursday afternoon. He laid a wreath at the foot of a statue, made the sign of the cross and paused before a memorial wall where in multiple tongues, including German and English, the words “Never Again” were written. JD Vance told reporters he had read about…
On Thursday morning, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee drove into a union demonstration in central Munich, killing a 2-year-old girl and her mother and injuring nearly 40 other people. The police say they are investigating whether the driver, who confessed to a deliberate attack, acted alone. The attack happened just 10 days before federal elections that…
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago. A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their…
Vice President JD Vance’s defense of a divisive far-right political party in Germany was the latest jarring example of his willingness to embrace a provocative political issue and showed how hard-line immigration policy has emerged as the thread tightly knitting together a global patchwork of populist movements. The thrust of Mr. Vance’s speech on Friday…
Vice President JD Vance told European leaders on Friday that their biggest security threat was not military aggression from Russia or China, or election meddling from Moscow. Rather, he said, it was what he called “the enemy within” — their own suppression of abortion protests and other forms of free speech and the sidelining of…
Last week, Stephan Protschka, a member of Parliament for the far-right party Alternative for Germany, took to Facebook and Telegram to share a sensationalist article. The country’s Green Party, it claimed, was conspiring with the Ukrainian government to recruit migrants to stage terrorist attacks — and blame his party. As intended, the post enraged Mr….
A chorus of criticism greeted Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become Germany’s chancellor, last month when he broke a taboo against working with a hard-right party to pass legislation. But it was a lone voice of dissent that rocked the country’s political scene: Angela Merkel, the once-beloved former chancellor, who called Mr. Merz’s decision simply…
The man who is favored to be Germany’s next chancellor has opened the door to working with the Alternative for Germany to pass tough new immigration restrictions, potentially breaking a longstanding effort to shun a party whose flirtation with Nazi language has made it anathema to the political mainstream. The opening by Friedrich Merz, the…