The AfD's election win in Saxony-Anhalt was based on record level turnout of 77.8% and what that tells you is that people turned out to vote about issues they really care about.
This is the kind of turnout that if it had happened in a Russian election would have been ridiculed as yet another example of authoritarian compulsion but this is Germany and not Russia.
The strange thing about this 'right-wing extremist party' is that on the face of it, the party appears less exteremly right-wing than the current 'center-right' German government.
It is the current government that has tried to ban the AfD and in effect sanction its members from gaining any political power.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/cdu-spd-block-afd-parliamentary-posts/
It is the current government that supports Ukraine's celebrations of Nazism by not sanctioning the Ukrainian leadership.
It is the current government that has presided over the biggest setback to the German economy since the end of WW2 after Germany decided to ditch the cheap Russian energy that had fuelled much of the past economic success for decades.
Not only that, it is the current government that wants to divert billions to remilitarise to make the Budeswehr the most significant military force in Europe and help develop a European-level nuclear deterrent that can be deployed against guess who.
It is the current government that talks up the Russian threat just as the threat of 'Bolshevism' was talked up in WW2, despite the fact that Germany previously played a leading role in facilitating the Russian revolution and the rise of Bolshevism for its own ends in WW1.
A bit like the US did in Afghanistan by arming the Mujahadeen againsts the Soviet Union, creating ISIS and then using Islamic 'terrorists' for its own ends when it wanted to, as it did in Libya and Syria.
But then again, maybe this is all a cunning plan by the AfD.
Let all the 'center' parties do their work for them, gain power and then reveal some Hitler-like figure whom they have hidden in their ranks as the Fourth Reich's new Fuhrer.
Maybe these right-wing 'thugs' are cleverer than we thought?
Or maybe this AfD hysteria is simply 'legacy' parties just desperately trying to hold on to power?