@MrWebster
but I think there were undercurrents through media outside of Germany to make it an issue inside of the German media landscape. You would have to ask lotlizard, she was in Germany the whole time, I assume, and would know better.

Googling it I find mostly US think tanks and media talking about it.
The impact of Russian interference on Germany’s 2017 elections

I think it was an issue, one that nobody wanted to really be discussed in public. The Social Democrats with Sigmar Gabriel still want the traditional policies of the Willy Brandt and Egon BAhr era, ie. get along with Russia through Change by Rapprochemnent.

They are divided in their approach with regards to sanctions against Russia and Syria triggered by the Ukraine Crim conflict and Assad's usage of chemical weapons over 20 times and because of the photos by military photographers "Caesar" which were shown in the UN headquarter in 2015 and showed tortured prisoners of the Assad regime. Well, how much trust do you have in the UN?

With regards to Russia influencing German elections the Germans seem not to buy into propaganda of that sort, but know "spying and propaganda influence by Russians" is always there and never goes away. Therefore the US media said that the German campaign was "boring", because they didn't make it a big media issue. But in fact it is an issue, just kept somewhat low key and under the lid to not allow the media to abuse the issue.

Really, you ask the wrong person. Here is the take by Deutsche Welle:
How to influence voters and tamper with the German election I mean it's all games on your mind. We have a lot of Russian-Germans. Apparently they are not that much liked anymore, because they seem to vote for the extreme right in Germany.
Battleground Berlin: Will Russian-Germans vote for the far right? - For some in the community, its reputation for xenophobia is a call to action.

If you read the article, you understand that it's a complex and difficult issue to judge. I can't.
I hope Joe will find relevant opinion pieces on that in Monday's EB. Sorry for that messy answer.

I did not see anything about this in American media so maybe not so important as American media would have gone in hyperbolic mode if this was a debated issue in German.

@mimi
I can't believe it. It's upsetting me a lot.

DW exclusive: How German companies donate secret money to political parties
Looky at this:

Should read that article. Money talks. Especially dirty money, always stinks like something 'brownish'.

Wow I had no idea:

German donation laws make it easy for major contributors to transfer a lot of money without much scrutiny. While parties must immediately report all donations of over 50,000 euros to Germany's lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, which publishes the information on its website, any individual contributions of between 10,000 and 50,000 euros are not disclosed until 18 months later, when each party's accounts are published. As for donations of less than 10,000 euros: Parties are under no obligation to disclose the donors at all.

Other countries have much lower disclosure thresholds. In the United States, the identity of any donor giving more than $200 directly to a party or candidate must be disclosed.

German companies are not slow to exploit the legal loopholes, by splitting donations and giving many times more money to political parties than is revealed to the public – at least at first. Since the last election year, 2013, all of Germany's major parties have received sums amounting to over 50,000 euros per year that have not come to light until much later – which means companies and wealthy individuals can easily hide any political influence.

That is shocking.

@lotlizard @lotlizard
as I didn't live in Germany the last 35 years, the whole pro-EU, anti-EU arguments which I picked up along the way, were difficult for me to judge or even understand despite the best efforts of Joe Shikspack's collection of articles that covered those issues.

.. Brussels-based bureaucratic bubble of globalists and lobbyists, doing whatever they want unconstrained by a powerless Potemkin parliament, who live a luxurious life far removed from the lives of ordinary people and are insensitive to the latter’s needs and concerns.

That seems to be the case in the US as well and the question arises, as of when can you count yourself as "ordinary people"? Even here on the c99p there are many, who seem to have a somewhat secure life, with no worries to lose their homes and enough retirement money to not fall into poverty once they are old. I guess the only issue they have to fear is their lacking health care coverage. (Imo the only reason why Sanders sticks to his guns on health care and is relatively silent - as Merkel is - on foreign policy issues. They know those foreign policy issues are political suicide). In any case, those folks are ordinary, but with less worries and needs than the "real ordinary" people.

There are millions of ordinary Americans, who fear every day that they lose their small underpaid jobs, gigs, temporary part-time positions, lose their shelter, have not enough money to buy food and fear not to get health care, and not enough money to go to college. That is not the case in Germany.

So, I ask myself, how bad of a life do the 'ordinary people' in Germany have to have, so that they feel compelled to vote for a party that can easily be abused - at least rhetorically - for racist ideological issues?

As far as I know, an 'ordinary German' has not to fear to go bankrupt, because he gets sick, he has not to fear to lose a rental contract, just because the landlord feels it's time for his tenant to go, a tenant has tremendous protection in Germany and after a certain number of years, a landlord can't get rid of their tenants anymore.

The only 'hardship' I see, ordinary people in Germany have, is losing their jobs or having none to begin with, which is obviously a greater issue in former East German regions. Still, compared to the US, they are better protected against hire and fire at will conditions you could find in the US. And as I mentioned in other posts, the AFD voter's motivation was not only class related, but "law and order" related. Am I wrong to believe that the 'ordinary German' still lives quite securely with his "Euro" and doesn't really need "a Deutsche Mark" back in his portemonnaie?

See, I have no "guts feelings" for the "EU issues". I would have to live in Greece or Portugal or Spain to understand the hardship of its 'ordinary people', which are caused by EU austerity measures. I have difficulties to distinguish from factual and honestly truthful articles to those who seem to be more partisan and propaganda orientated.

I remember a bit some videos of Yanis Varoufakis and the Syriza government. Most of the economic issues were beyond my paygrade. I am an ordinary woman and no academic (ok, not true, but not in a history, economy or political science field and am no professional and no writer, just ordinary... you know). Therefore I am a little insecure and keep a distance to issues around the EU's economically "imperial" tendencies. But I must admit that the article I posted helped me understand more than I had before.

May be ordinary people are those who are not academics, but workers on bottom line. Like a Walmart worker, or a landscape / maintenance guy. People, who wouldn't necessarily read sophisticated academically worded articles about austerity measures of the EU and who imposes them. Those ordinary people I know, are way too tired to read much after a day of work.(at least here in the US)

I talked to my 'ordinary' and 'elderly' sister in Germany today. She has not a clue and just said the AFD is a crazy little group, nobody takes seriously here, and I just thought OMG how can she be so ignorant. But you know it's my sister, she is over 74 and slowly fading. Like so many ordianry people. Still she is tremendously safe and she will never lose her shelter, nor her health care, on top of that she never earned her own living and therefore has no clue, how it feels to have not such securities.

I need to come home to Germany at other locations than my parents house, I grew up in, and smell the coffee on the streets...Through the intertubes I smell something else. May be I am manipulated and live in a bubble?

Thanks for coming here. Please come again. I learn from your comments and links and would miss them a lot.

Of all the parties with a realistic chance of entering the Bundestag, the AfD was the only choice if a voter wanted to express a thumbs-down on the E.U. in its present form.

The current E.U. certainly comes across to many as a Brussels-based bureaucratic bubble of globalists and lobbyists, doing whatever they want unconstrained by a powerless Potemkin parliament, who live a luxurious life far removed from the lives of ordinary people and are insensitive to the latter’s needs and concerns.

@lotlizard
What is that? Shizophrenia? A Mental Health Problem? Sigh. The article is from 2006. Are they still there? The "Anti-German" Germans? Or did they change colors? Like a chameleon?

and also among some people who — like the founders of the political weekly Jungle World — support Israel and U.S. neocon foreign policy, and have split from the rest of the German Left for that reason.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/28/germany.lukeharding

Meming celebration of Harris, architect of the Royal Air Force’s destruction of the city — oh, now that’ll win friends and influence people in Dresden, eh? </sarcasm>

Also, Dresdeners have good reason to be suspicious of the sudden recent efforts by “historians” and “researchers” (gatekeepers for whom?) to lowball the number who died in the firebombing of Dresden at “only” 25,000. When, in contrast, for sixty years after World War II there was a consensus that, since the city was full of uncounted families fleeing from the East, no one would ever know for sure, but that estimates like 100,000 or 150,000 were not out of line.