The far-right AfD is leading the polls in former GDR regions \u2013 and longstanding bias in German media and politics is partly to blame<\/p>\n
The Berlin Wall \u201cwill be standing in 50 and even in 100 years\u201d, Erich Honecker, the leader of socialist East Germany<\/a>, prophesied in January 1989. Not for the first time, he was spectacularly wrong. The wall fell just 10 months later, in November 1989. But not all barriers to German unity fell with it. Honecker\u2019s German Democratic Republic (GDR) may have been wiped off the map by subsequent events, but like an afterimage that won\u2019t fade, its contours remain etched on Germany\u2019s cultural, economic and political landscape.<\/p>\n In 2024, the east of the country remains in sharp focus as the heartland of anti-establishment movements. Three of the five states that once formed the GDR will hold regional elections in September, the outcomes of which are anxiously anticipated ahead of the general election set for next year. The far-right party Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/a> (AfD) is leading the polls<\/a> in all three, while also being the second-strongest<\/a> party nationwide. In the frantic search for answers that might help explain and combat the rise of extremism, many ask: what is wrong in the east?<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The far-right AfD is leading the polls in former GDR regions \u2013 and longstanding bias in German media and politics is partly to blame The Berlin Wall \u201cwill be standing in 50 and even in 100 years\u201d, Erich Honecker, the leader of socialist East Germany, prophesied in January 1989. Not for the first time, he … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}