I asked my German friends why AfD is more popular in the erstwhile GDR than in the erstwhile RFNo. They couldn't answer that simple question.
And I would like to share specified a life experience. Well, in 1977, I was in Dresden for a sporting event, where I met Juergen, a small older than me. We became friends due to the fact that we were both physicists (I to be, He was already an assistant at the University). We wrote each another letters (there were inactive no emails!), but somewhere around 1980 Juergen stopped answering, but after a fewer years I received a long letter from Him. Turns out he managed to escape to Switzerland. In his letter, he explained to me why he didn't want to live in East Germany. He wrote that people around him became convinced that the Nazis were the ones from Germany, and in East Germany they were the anti-fascists who fought Hitler.
The absurdity of specified conviction is obvious, but I believe Juergen was right. The totalitarian systems, whether it's Nazi or Stalinist, have a thing for people to survive, they gotta halt thinking. Contrary to appearances, this is simply a intellectual comfort- reasoning only hinders people's lives.
35 years of freedom gave East Germany comfort in life, but took distant the comfort of thoughtlessness. That's why they're voting for AfD.
Michał Leszczyński
