This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Joseph Sternberg,

editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

He's in London. He writes political economics about the alternative for

Deutschland, the AFD, successful in its opinion to win 152 seats in the new Bundest.

However, the background on the AFD is important.

And Joseph gives us a quick chronology, including some of the most recent remarks that make it

deliberately dubious. Here's Joseph Sternberg on the AFD, where it came from and where it might

be going. More of this later.

Well, I think that one of the problems that the AFD has and has had for the entirety of its history,

it's about 13 years old now. And remember, it started as a small kind of libertarian protest movement

by university professors who were unhappy about the

euro currency and all of the bailouts of Spain and Portugal and Ireland and Greece that were

going on in Europe 15 years ago.

And so the party started out with that kind of very respectable libertarian leaning,

but it has come to be home for some people who do make the kind of comments that you're

talking about.

I mean, one of the most prominent party figures is a fellow named Bjorn Hookah, who is the

party, the AFD leader in the state of Turingia,

who has been convicted a couple times of using in campaign rallies a slogan that was associated with Hitler's stormtroopers.

And of course, he has said that he didn't know the historical associations. Now, he's a former history teacher, so you can make of that what you will, and is appealing those convictions. But I think that that sort of thing is very worrying. And then you also have another politician in the state of North Rhine, Australia, who, you know, has sort of, you know, made that comment you referred to, John billing himself as the friendly face of national socialism.