Party chief Alexander Gauland captured their motivation: “I see Islam as a foreign body which will gradually, through the birth rate, come to dominate this country.” That feeling, exaggerated though it clearly is, explains the rise of AfD. Ironically, the party did best in regions where the foreign-born population is relatively low. AfD supporters are responding, then, not to what is but to what they fear might be. That gives party spokesmen every incentive to go on talking about the dangers posed by immigrants and to propagate stereotypes that keep those anxieties alive.
