A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
The granddaughters of Vincent Lingiari, Trisha and Rosie Smiler, with the winner of the Vincent Lingiari Art Award by Elizabeth Ngwarraye Bonney. (ABC News: William Green)
In short:
The biannual Vincent Lingiari Art Award is celebrating 50 years of land rights in the Northern Territory.
Elizabeth Ngwarraye Bonney of Artists of Ampilatwatja has won the $10,000 art award for her paintingMy Grandmother's Country.
What's next?
The 35th Desert Mob continues in Alice Springs across the weekend.
When Elizabeth Ngwarraye Bonney received the prestigious 2026 Vincent Lingiari Art Award, she was not there to accept it.
She was sitting under the stars on her country a few hundred kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of people who have died, used with permission.
"The land holds stories, and when we are there, we feel them," she said in a statement read on her behalf.
Elizabeth Ngwarraye Bonney says her mother has been fighting for their country for 40 years. (Supplied: Central Land Council/Artists of Ampilatwatja)
Her winning painting, titled My grandmother's country, is layered and deep, featuring river systems, desert wildflowers, hills and valleys and gums — almost alive and moving.
Ms Bonney, of Artists of Ampilatwatja, is a traditional healer and painter.
Her mother, Eileen Bonney, fought for her country as part of the Wakaya-Alyawarre land claim for 40 years.
Elizabeth Ngwarraye Bonney's painting, My Grandmother's Country. (ABC News: William Green)
"[It was] one of the longest-standing land claims in the Northern Territory, and now she is passing it over, so we can pass it over to our children," Ms Bonney said.
"My mother had to fight because this was her mother's country."
Intersection of art and land rights
The theme of this year's Vincent Lingiari Art Award (VLAA), presented by the Central Land Council (CLC) and the peak for central Australian Aboriginal art centres, Desart, on Thursday night, is Our country, our culture: 50 years of land rights.
The famous image of Gough Whitlam and Vincent Lingiari. (AGNSW: Mervyn Bishop)
In the room of finalists, the artworks are as diverse as the nine CLC regions they hail from, all across the central Australian desert.
The exhibition features ceramics, soft sculpture, traditional topographical paintings of land, painted fuel caps and even a Kaytetye Ned Kelly who wears bright pink pants.
Dr Josie Douglas says the power of Aboriginal art has always been central to First Nations political power. (ABC News: Elsie Lange)
CLC general manager Dr Josie Douglas said Aboriginal art remained integral to fighting for country and land rights.
"The power of our art has always been central to our political power,"
Dr Douglas said.
"You can see that in the 1988 Barunga Statement and the artwork from that statement, which was danced up and presented to prime minister Bob Hawke.
"You can also see it in 1993, ahead of the Mabo decision, when the former chairman of the CLC, Wenten Rubuntja presented prime minister Paul Keating with a painting titled Yeperenye Dreaming."
Josie Douglas says Aboriginal art is frequently used to substantiate land claims. (Supplied: Central Land Council)
Dr Douglas said her favourite painting in the collection was the Kaytetye Ned Kelly.
It's a self-portrait by Ned Kelly, who continued to fight to keep his country safe, culminating in a High Court ruling last month to set aside the NT's largest groundwater extraction licence at Singleton Station.
The artworks in the VLAAs are as diverse as the regions they hail from. (ABC News: Elsie Lange)
Warumungu and Luritja curator of the VLAA, Kelli Cole, said it was important to celebrate all Mr Lingiari had achieved.
She said marking the 50th anniversary of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, through the exhibition, felt vital.
Warumunga and Luritja curator of the VLAA Kelli Cole says celebrating Vincent Lingiari's legacy is vital. (ABC News: Elsie Lange)
The diverse range of works linked to the award theme, 50 years of land rights. (ABC News: Elsie Lange)
Land council award
Last month, more than 1000 people gathered in Kalkaringi for the Freedom Day Festival to mark the 60th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk Off, led by Vincent Lingiari in 1966.
Photographs of the VLAA finalists were taped to the side of council four-wheel-drives in a travelling bush exhibition so that CLC representatives at the celebrations could crown the winner of the CLC Delegates Choice Award.
They chose Warumungu leader and translator Joseph Williams Jungarrayi's arresting piece 'Three Brothers'.
Mr Williams said his piece, depicting three faces against an old mining map of the Tennant Creek area, was about reclamation.
Joseph Williams Jungarrayi says his painting is about reclamation. (Supplied: Central Land Council/Anna Miers)
"Transforming a document that once marked extraction and disruption into one that carries culture, story and identity," he said.
"Fifty years on from land rights, this work speaks to reclamation — of land, of narrative and of identity.
"It honours the enduring presence of ancestors and recognises that our stories are still embedded in country, no matter how it has been mapped, divided or used."
Desert Mob, now in its 35th year, continues across the weekend in Alice Springs with artist talks today, a marketplace and workshops on Saturday and satellite events at various art centres on Sunday.
Stefan Rahmstorf took this photo while on holidays as south-west France was gripped by fire emergencies. (Supplied: Stefan Rahmstorf)
In short:
Climate data has confirmed August 2026 was the hottest month on record globally.
The recorded surface air temperature for August 2026 was 1.65 degrees Celsius above the estimated pre-industrial 1850-1900 average.
What's next?
Scientists predict ocean temperatures will continue to rise as an El Niño pattern reaches its peak.
Climate data has been released confirming August 2026 as the hottest month on record after heatwaves and severe drought dominated Western Europe's warmest summer.
The recorded surface air temperature for August 2026 was 1.65°C above the estimated pre-industrial 1850-1900 average, with the period from June to August 2026 the joint-warmest on record globally, on par with 2024.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service, which authored the report with data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), found the extreme conditions had coincided with exceptionally low river flows from the Rhine to the Danube, and had intensified wildfires across Indonesia.
Samantha Burgess, from the ECMWF, said the observations revealed "how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans".
"The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies and ecosystems across the world," Ms Burgess said.
Earlier this month, a landmark report from the UN warned the world was unlikely to keep global warming below 1.8C, predicting that global temperatures would likely pass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2030.
The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty signed in 2016, requires countries to take action to avoid dangerous warming by keeping temperature increases well below 2C and as close to 1.5C as possible.
Scientists have repeatedly advised that keeping temperatures at or below the 1.5C target would "significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change".
The Copernicus report authors found that parts of North America, northern Siberia, central Asia, the Maghreb, and much of northern Australia were also drier than average in the same period.
El Niño turbocharges warming
The world's ocean temperatures also hit a record high in August, with scientists predicting the water would continue to get hotter until an El Niño weather pattern reached its peak.
University of Adelaide climate scientist Georgy Falster said the record was not unexpected due to the combination of ongoing global warming and the El Niño event.
"El Niño itself is changing with climate change. So, this El Niño, it's likely to be very large, possibly the biggest one on record," she said.
"And it is possible, although not guaranteed, that the strength of this El Niño is related to climate change."
Dr Falster said it was critical to mark the records as they took place.
"We as a species need to keep reminding ourselves that what is happening is unprecedented," she said.
"So, I think it is actually very important to mark every time another record topples over."
Dr Falster said she was hopeful that the extreme weather spurred governments to act.
"There is absolutely no point at which we should stop trying to reduce the effects of future climate change," she said.
"No matter when we start acting, or increasing our efforts, all of that makes the world a better place in the future."
Australia has broken from the pack in not adopting the trade sanctions against West Bank businesses. (ABC News: Callum Flinn)
It's almost 12 months since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined 10 other countries in recognising the state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly.
And at that time, the prospects of a Palestinian state ever emerging were already pretty grim, with Gaza largely reduced to rubble and Israel in the process of expanding settlements in the West Bank at a record pace.
In the intervening year, with the world's attention distracted by the conflict with Iran, and by Israel's invasion of a vast swathe of Lebanon, the Israeli cabinet has defied growing criticism from the international community by only escalating its efforts to make a Palestinian state a physical impossibility.
The overnight move by the international community, spearheaded by the United Kingdom but including Canada, France and other European nations, is a significant escalation of attempts to stop Israel from doing that.
The move is not just significant because it escalates penalising actions into trade sanctions.
It is important because of what goes with that, as well as the changing context of Israel's actions.
Israel believes the West Bank 'belongs to us'
In the past, Israel has justified many of its moves to clear Palestinians from their homes — in Gaza, in Jerusalem or the West Bank — on specific security grounds: that houses and the people who lived in them were responsible for, or represented, a security threat.
Even many Israelis who are not fans of the settlement movement will say that, while they don't like them, their presence makes them feel more secure.
But settlers themselves tend to justify their takeover of Palestinian land in the West Bank on the grounds of an assertion of sovereignty, based in the Bible, rather than any immediate security threats emanating from any particular village.
Those past security concerns, and UK Labour's fraught history of allegations of antisemitism, have been part of the reason why Westminster has hesitated to adopt findings against Israel in the international criminal system.
As British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Tuesday, "For too long, we have been hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel."
On Tuesday, local time, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the House of Commons that the British government "agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank — perpetrated by settler terrorists".
"And all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians," he added.
"Now for a long time, the British government has rightly said settlements are illegal.
"But we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole, which in 2024 the International Court of Justice concluded was unlawful.
"Today I announce that the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful."
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announces ban on imports from Israeli settlements
The significance of this is that the UK — along with countries like Australia — previously legally separated the status of the settlements from the status of the military occupation of the West Bank as a whole.
The occupation was viewed as a temporary, unresolved political dispute — even though it has been in place since 1967 — to be settled via bilateral negotiations.
Miliband also foreshadowed the likelihood of the International Court of Justice making a finding of genocide against Israel, and that the UK would accept such a finding, and the possibility of further actions at the UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his pledge at the time of the UN move last September, saying his government was "going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state".
"This place belongs to us," he said.
Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York City last September. (Reuters: Jeenah Moon)
In March this year, Israel announced another 34 settlements in the West Bank, as well as allocating billions of shekels to fast-track infrastructure, roads, and security connectivity for these sites.
In August, it provocatively pushed ahead with a development that Miliband described to the House of Commons on Tuesday as "crossing a long-standing red line": the issuing of tenders for more than 1,200 homes in a 12-square-kilometre tract of land immediately east of Jerusalem known as E1.
The proposed housing development would start to cut the West Bank — Palestinian territory — in half, and also cut it off from Jerusalem, destroying the prospect of a viable Palestinian state.
Sanctions significant, but may be difficult to implement
While settlements — and the increasing violence shown by settlers towards Palestinian landowners (tolerated or even sometimes perpetrated by the Israeli military) — are the most visible signs of Israeli actions in the West Bank, it is also in a state of virtual war on the West Bank economy.
While settlers physically attack Palestinians, they also uproot their trees and divert the water supplies of villages, which make them viable.
But on a larger scale, Israel has increasingly made economic life impossible.
Israel has withheld tariffs and revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority — which is supposed to fund its provision of day-to-day services. It leaves the Palestinian banking system in a perpetual state of uncertainty by refusing to guarantee it will offer exchange services with the Israeli banking system.
It puts strict limits on how much paper money — even though it is Israeli shekels — can be exchanged between the Palestinian and Israeli economies.
The settlements themselves are often economically unviable. They are not just the odd caravan on a hill but often mini cities.
Though the Israeli government does consider informal settlements, known as outposts, illegal, they often later authorise them as formal settlements.
The Israeli government doesn't just tolerate the violence; it provides massive subsidies to encourage people to move to the settlements, including reduced income tax rates, security gear for unauthorised or "young" outposts as well as funds to purchase vehicles, drones, security cameras, generators, electric gates, and perimeter fences.
That's what makes the various economic trade sanctions announced overnight by the UK, France, Canada and 12 European countries both so significant and also so potentially difficult to implement.
They are also one of the reasons Australia has, on this occasion, broken from the pack of other nations in not adopting the trade sanctions against West Bank businesses.
Australia remains exposed, but may act further
The argument goes that it will be almost impossible for international companies to distinguish between Palestinian businesses in the West Bank and settler businesses, or between sanctions that only hurt settlers and those that might also hurt the Palestinian economy.
The Albanese government knows it remains exposed by its position, which one Labor source described as "rhetorically less impressive", but there are signs it may act further in the coming weeks and months.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Senate on Tuesday that the "Netanyahu government's actions in the West Bank, the rapid expansion of settlements, the proposed E1 settlement development and flagrant settler violence are extinguishing the possibility of a two-state solution".
Australia is "not, at this time, pursuing a blanket style import ban", she said, because "we have concerns about the implementation of a blanket ban and unintended consequences for Australian businesses, for Palestinians and for Israelis".
Penny Wong tells the Senate that Israel's actions are "extinguishing the possibility of a two-state solution".
The real effectiveness of any blanket bans is likely to be in the realm of finance, rather than sanctions on, say, date farms in the West Bank.
A particular issue for the UK in recent months has been investor "expos" inviting people in Britain to come along and find out how they could invest in the West Bank, in illegally occupied land.
The UK signalled action "against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion", Mr Miliband said.
It will also ban the advertising in the UK of illegal settlements.
Just what specific actions France and Canada will take in support of the UK position are unclear, although they have said they will also ban the import of goods from illegal settlements.
The Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway have already either banned goods or are in the process of doing so, while Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden also pledged to take further action overnight.
To date, the US has been notably quiet about the UK actions, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio not condemning the UK action but saying the US would "obviously" not be going along with it either.
"Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did. We saw their announcement today, but I don't have any comment on it right now," Rubio told reporters in Miami.
The US does not want to see "anything destabilising going on right now in the West Bank with so much going on in the region", he added.
"We were made aware that they were going to make this decision," he said.
"We heard their arguments as to why. But we share the goal of stability. We don't want to see some uptick in violence or an uptick in conflict or tensions in the West Bank at a very tenuous time in the region."
The ABC recently spoke to a West Bank villager who was under siege by settlers.
But there already has been more than an "uptick" in conflict on the West Bank, and little sign that the US-led peace initiative for Gaza is making any progress.
Some analysts have expressed concern that the Israeli government would be quite happy to see a full-scale uprising on the West Bank ahead of next month's Israeli elections.
And that raises another aspect of this story: that international actions against Israel often galvanise public opinion in favour of the government.
The man who has emerged as the greatest challenge to Netanyahu at next month's elections is Gadi Eisenkot.
While he supports maintaining established settlement blocs in the West Bank and opposes Palestinian statehood, he has also opposed unilateral annexation, criticised provocative outposts, settler violence and controversial construction plans like the E1 development, in part because of the diplomatic toll such moves impose on Israel's international standing.
In the Israeli landscape of 2026, that is quite a different position from that of the current government. But it's unclear whether it would be enough of a change to satisfy an increasingly frustrated international community.
Researcher for Anthropic Jacob Coxon has quit the AI company, explaining his fears in a social media post. (Illustration via Reuters: Dado Ruvic)
In short:
An Anthropic researcher is quitting the AI company saying those building the technology "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade".
Jacob Coxon is one of a growing number of AI experts to call on the industry to slow down.
What's next?
Hundreds of employees from leading tech firms in July urged the US government to support an international effort to develop tools for managing the pace of advanced AI development.
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has quit the AI company, saying those building the technology "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade".
Mr Coxon said he had spent the past three years doing pre-training research at Anthropic and OpenAI.
"Neither company is acting responsibly," he posted on X.
"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."
Superintelligence is considered to be the stage of AI when machines surpass human performance in every field.
Anthropic Alignment Science lead Evan Hubinger posted a reply on X saying Mr Coxon was correct.
"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10 per cent within the next decade," he wrote.
"I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to."
Mr Coxon is one of a growing number of AI experts to call on the industry to slow down.
In July more than 1,300 employees of frontier AI companies signed a statement saying there was a "real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems".
The letter called on the US government to support an international effort to develop tools that can "deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development".
CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, Dario Amodei. (Reuters: Denis Balibouse)
Responding to the initiative in July, called Pacing the Frontier, Anthropic said in an X post: "Our own research on recursive self-improvement, published last month, points to the need for tools to deliberately pace the frontier of AI development so society can prepare".
OpenAI also responded to the letter, posting on X at the time: "We believe that, at some point in the future, AI acceleration for frontier model development may be so high that the world will need to pace the rate of AI advancement."
AI could pose 'existential' risk, UN warns
The "alignment problem" for superintelligence is that an AI system may not share human values.
On Monday, United Nations rights chief Volker Turk also warned that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to humanity and pledged to press AI firms to reduce risks that his office said included disruptions to services, communications and democratic systems.
He called for "cast-iron guarantees" to secure AI in a speech ahead of the start of his unprecedented second term.
"I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity," Mr Turk told the body in Geneva.
"I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late."
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has had a record-breaking success in a state election. (Reuters: Fabrizio Bensch)
Europe has witnessed a steady series of incursions from the far-right of politics in recent years, from Austria and Hungary to France, the UK and Italy.
From an Australian perspective, these incursions seem to reflect the same trends we see in Australia with the resurgence of One Nation: a populist far-right party, trading particularly on anti-immigration sentiment and long-running simmering resentment over stalling living standards.
The weekend win is troubling because Germany has been so particularly sensitive to the rise of the far-right in the past, and has tried to guard against it, because of its history.
Ulrich Siegmund, whose face is seen on the sign, was AfD's top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. (Reuters: Thilo Schmuelgen)
The AfD wants to stop the teaching of Germany's Nazi past and see school classes focus instead on the glory days of Prussia, the Napoleonic wars, German unification, the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck and the founding of the German Empire in 1871.
The party's branch in Saxony-Anhalt has been designated a "right wing extremist organisation" by the state's domestic intelligence service (which the party says it will abolish if it wins government).
That is not just because of what it called the party's "numerous Islamophobic, racist, and even anti-Semitic statements".
It is because it says the AfD aims to "abolish parliamentary democracy in its current form" and "continually strives to denigrate the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany, its institutions, and their representatives in order to fundamentally erode public trust in them".
The intelligence agency notes there have already been open calls within the AfD in the state "for a military coup against the German government".
Many of its policies, particularly its anti-immigrant stance, are echoes of those of other far-right parties across Europe.
But what is most alarming to other countries in western Europe is a central pledge of the AfD, which has a particularly strong support base in the old East German states, to pursue a rapprochement with Russia.
It wants to expand Russian-language instruction in schools, end sanctions against Russia imposed since the Ukraine war began in 2022, reject and even expel Ukrainian refugees, and cut support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Germany has been the largest bilateral supporter of Ukraine in Europe, not just providing billions of euros in financial support but also being a crucial conduit of weapons as the US has withdrawn from supplying them.
If the AfD's win on the weekend was to put pressure on the national government's pro-Ukrainian policies under current Chancellor Friedrich Merz, it could decisively change the balance of the war.
AfD's state win can have national impact
In a leaf out of Donald Trump's playbook, the party has promised mass deportations of migrants as well as more detention pending deportation, mandatory work for asylum-seekers, and a cut to all state funding for integration programs.
Children who do not have permanent residency in Germany would be stopped from attending regular schools, as would children with disabilities.
A proposal to allow "citizens watch" groups, essentially police auxiliary forces, to help crack down on "left wing extremism" has sent a particular chill through those who remember Germany's past.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has had a victory in state elections, prompting protests in Berlin. (Reuters: Maryam Majd)
They say the groups would be tantamount to vigilantes let loose in a legal system that would be reformed to allow more freedom of expression by limiting the enforcement of "so-called hate crimes" and cutting funding to pro-democracy education campaigns.
The AfD wants to change the school curriculum to stop the "perpetuation of a guilt complex" by educating children about the country's Nazi past.
Schools would also be banned from flying rainbow flags, as part of a general move against LGBTQ+ communities, but would be required to fly national flags and sing the national anthem.
It wants to boost the birthrate by introducing "welcome money" for couples who have children, reducing childcare costs, and offering free school meals.
The party itself is quite open about the fact it has seen this state election as the springboard to national power at the 2029 elections in the largest economy in Europe.
Its campaign slogan was "It starts here", and the party is leading the national polls with 28 per cent of the vote, compared to the CDU — Merz's Christian Democratic-based centrist party which has dominated post-war German politics — on 20 per cent.
Ulrich Siegmund says the party has "made history". (Reuters: Liesa Johannssen)
Even without any further parliamentary wins, its influence will be felt in the national parliament, the Bundestag, because the states have representation in the upper house, the Bundesrat, where the AfD can exert influence on policy areas on which it has particularly campaigned in the state election: education, culture and domestic security.
There is also anxiety about the security implications of a party with ties to Russia gaining access to intelligence briefs.
Many of the AfD's policies are not ones directly in the control of state governments. For example, it has been campaigning against climate change policies and the Paris climate agreement. But specifically in the very rural Saxony-Anhalt, it has been campaigning against wind turbines.
And the irony of its anti-immigrant policy is that Saxony-Anhalt has faced a major decline in its population since reunification in 1990. The many people who have left to find work elsewhere have left it with the oldest and most sharply declining population in the country.
It is therefore dependent on migrant workers to fill jobs in areas like healthcare.
AfD victory a 'serious moment in Europe'
The states do have some say over cultural policy. The AfD's targets include cutting funding from public broadcasters, which it argues are rife with "leftwing propaganda lackeys", as well as rejecting Bauhaus architecture, which had its roots in Saxony-Anhalt, as "too globalist".
"We have made history in this country," said Ulrich Siegmund, the party's 35-year-old leader in Saxony-Anhalt.
The win, and a staggering loss of support for Merz's party, have led to widespread speculation that the CDU may crumble internally as MPs from the old Eastern states either desert it for the AfD or pressure Berlin to change course.
The AfD's state election win has sparked protests in Berlin. (Reuters: Maryam Majd)
The AfD is also hostile to NATO, and the EU.
The AfD's win was welcomed by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who praised a "historic win for the pragmatic AfD", as well as by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
But France's Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, described the win as "a serious moment in Europe", warning that "nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution".
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that "in Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany".
Until now, the rise of the AfD has been largely a phenomenon confined to the old East.
There is a strange mix of nostalgia for the days of state supply of services and a blurred memory of the repression which accompanied the old regime, as well as a possible greater tolerance for authoritarian leaders that has not been displaced by the experience of democracy.
Ulrich Siegmund, the party's state leader, told the Financial Times that his parents' experience of communist propaganda and pervasive Stasi surveillance taught him to question authority from an early age.
"That is somehow culturally ingrained here," he says. "People simply won't let themselves be taken for a ride."
But the AfD is now leading national polls and has gained significant support in the old West too.
Not everything has been going the far-right's way in Europe recently.
Notably, we witnessed the downfall of Viktor Orbán in Hungary in April, replaced by the centre-right government of Péter Magyar, who has quickly moved to dismantle pro-Orban state media and reform the courts and constitution.
The right's Giorgia Meloni, who has just become the longest uninterrupted prime minister in Italy since World War II, has significantly moderated her positions to much more pragmatic ones since coming to office.
She has taken a more pro-European position, as well as firmed up her support for Ukraine and NATO, even though she has continued to support conservative identity politics and strict controls on migration.
But if the AfD is able to form government in Saxony-Anhalt — it is still a few seats short — and then secure wins in state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania later this month, it could embolden the right across Europe.
As we have seen in Trump's America, an unleashed political force prepared to break all the rules and that finds itself politically rewarded rather than punished, only becomes bolder.
