Apocalyptic fiction is meant to be a warning, you know. And it can be explosive and unnerving in its admonishments, urging you to take action to avoid the forecast disaster. The fire and brimstone that are headed in your direction are vividly described as a horrifying certainty if you don't change your direction immediately.
Or it can be slyly subtle. Painting a softer picture that starts with, 'Imagine if...' and quietly rearranges a familiar, cozy dreamscape into what is supposed to be a nightmare scenario. Where those things that supposedly represent comfort and stability are stripped from the canvas one by one, and replaced with uncertainty itself, and a nebulous, looming, indistinct menace of 'change.'
The issue with apocalyptic visions and those promulgating them, whether because they are true believers or are looking to influence others into believing, is the subject on the other end receiving the warnings.
That person or group has to be receptive, or it's just more Henny Penny sky-is-falling noise, and one can wind up a Nostradumbass rather than a prophet of doom.
We have a lot of that, especially the really noisy, flamboyant type of doomsayers.
Think about them. I'll bet you can name six examples off the top of your head in less than a minute.
I used the most obvious one yesterday.
https://t.co/f9AkyjjKE1 pic.twitter.com/9oGcc3PnIR
— tree hugging sister 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) August 26, 2026
Girls in red dresses.
Demonstrators dressed as handmaids from the series “The Handmaid’s Tale” out near Minneapolis City Hall today pic.twitter.com/vASOerDHlH
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 22, 2026
The worst of the worst still bleating 'danger to democracy.'
The greatest danger to our democracy comes from a President threatening to interfere in our elections.
— Senator Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) August 22, 2026
That's why I'm working every day to anticipate, plan and protect the right to vote. pic.twitter.com/jIV1IUyNyR
It's much the same in Europe, where years of ruinous governance by traditional state-sanctioned parties, blithely ignoring the increasingly angry voice of voters expressed via the ballot box to change, have led to the populist rise of once unthinkable personalities and parties in the well-ordered and structured European political sphere.
The French have seen the rise of Marine LePen's National Rally (RN), now poised to sweep next spring's French national elections. And, in spite of all the political and legal machinations they tried to throw at her, Le Pen herself will take the helm as RN's presidential candidate.
In Germany, much the same thing has happened, and with lightning speed in contrast to the normal sclerotic pace of German politics. The rehabilitation of Alternative for Germany (AfD) from vilification and isolation as Nazi remnants to the precipice of power is very nearly complete. In less than two weeks, Alice Weidel's renegade populists may well win their first outright regional victory in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, meaning they will have the legislative seats to govern alone, without being forced into a coalition or forced out of governing by a coalition forming without them.
An AfD triumph in the September 6 election is a terrifying prospect for the historically unpopular Christian Democratic Party (CDU) leader and current German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. It would be the ultimate catastrophe for a center/center-left/leftist political establishment that has spent the past decade doing its best to marginalize, criminalize, and ostracize AfD members while working overtime in the courts and through government channels to outlaw, ban, and eradicate the party once and for all.
Every effort has not only failed, but apparently backfired spectacularly.
And yet, these entrenched, combined anti-AfD forces have their pointed fangs bared and will keep going at the populists and their supporters to what seems like the very last second.
The Euro-centric political establishment has its ardent adherents within our own liberal elite here, as one would imagine. And these overeducated brahmins are equally as disturbed by the thought of a party of distasteful, knuckle-dragging class proletariat soiling the sacred halls of power.
The prospect of Saxony-Anhalt falling to the horde has so alarmed the lavender-sniffing barons of prose at The Atlantic that they felt compelled to alert their readers to the danger that the halcyon Germany of their junior college year abroad was slipping from their kid-glove grasp. Perhaps they hoped to warn a few Teutonic readers at the same time of what they stood to lose if the barbarians breached the gates.
I mean, just imagine...
BE AFRAID, GENTLE READERS - BE VERY AFRAID
The AfD, a far-right party, might govern a German state for the first time since World War II, @isaacstanbecker reports. https://t.co/Z0VXfwYRd6
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) August 27, 2026
Wreathed in 'Just imagine...' the nightmare emerges from the primordial populist, right-wing soup of this fever dream.
This is called "a good start"
— GeorgeSmith2 (@WestMichP2) August 27, 2026
JUST IMAGINE...
- emergency remigration
- revoking residency if accused of a crime
- reviewing all naturalization decisions
- asylum programs canceled
- detainment if scheduled for deportation
- European Union flags removed
This is not being received as perhaps the piece's author meant it to be. It has people imagining - dreaming, in fact - of everything listed and more, instead of recoiling from the horror I believe it was meant to invoke.
Quite a bit, and quite a few dreamers.
MSM continues to try to isolate the AfD by calling them “far right”. But their beliefs are held by a large amount of Germans - how can you be “far right” when it’s a common view.
— Bummer99 (@hdt99) August 27, 2026
The Left has not learned that scary has no power anymore.
center right. not far right. the scary labeling is not working any longer. centrists are refusing such intimidation tactics from an increasingly out-of-touch left-dominated establishment
— A. Klarke Heinecke (@a_klarke) August 27, 2026
And what is 'scary' to the political establishment and The Atlantic is what German voters have voted for in the past two election cycles, and they have not gotten any of it, for all the CDU's broken promises.
Nothing demonstrates the detachment of the legacy media better than this piece from the Atlantic.
— Ralph Schoellhammer (@Raphfel) August 27, 2026
90% of what they describe here as the worst case scenario is the very reason why people are voting for the AfD in the first place. pic.twitter.com/gihrfKsrFy
German establishment politicians are as arrogantly assured of their moral superiority and deaf to the will of their citizens as any Cornyn, Ryan *spits* or other infamous RINO ever was.
They get elected by making the correct noises to voters and then continue on their merry way.
Die Boomer-Politiker Kaste Westeuropas kann einfach nicht anders als die gesellschaftliche Mitte in die Arme der Rechtspopulisten zu treiben.
— Ben Raho 🇪🇺 🚲 (@BenAntRaho) August 26, 2026
Es ist so, als ob sie einfach nicht in der Lage sind nachzuvollziehen, warum die selben Stehsätze welche sie seit 30 Jahren in ihren… https://t.co/hNCmYz2jn7
...The Boomer politician caste of Western Europe simply can't help but drive the societal center into the arms of the right-wing populists.
It's as if they simply aren't capable of grasping why the same canned phrases they've been wearily reciting for 30 years in their interchangeable slop speeches fail to resonate.
As if there's zero awareness of why AfD, FN, FPÖ, Reform, VOX etc. are seizing power and why broad swaths of the population see them as the lesser evil.
The credentialed class is clueless when expressing their misplaced umbrage and what the boomerang will be.
...I gotta be honest, I got to the kicker and almost had to take a cold shower. Honestly, it reads like an advertisement to build support for AfD.
It’s also an outright fever dream. For a guy who’s a self-styled expert on Europe – which honestly is about as masculine as being an expert on figure skating – you’d expect him to know that stuff like abolishing asylum, stripping immigration status, or reviewing naturalization going back to 2000 are not things a “Land” level government can do (imagine the difference between state and federal jurisdictions).
He is right about one thing, however; all of this is explicitly a part of AfD’s platform. And if they’re polling nearly ten points ahead of the next leading party, which is also aggressive on immigration and asylum claims, is it fair to characterize these views as “far right”?
Perhaps for an over-credentialed doofus working a laptop job from a condo outside DC or in a brownstone in New York City, where the consequences of loose immigration and crime policies basically only exist on Fox News, which is never watched.
But the election continents away underscores a growing problem for neoliberals everywhere: The stuff they hate is not actually fringe; it’s wildly popular.
Stuff like merit, earned wealth, policing that arrests and imprisons criminals, even mass deportations and finally especially that men cannot be women.
The subset of people who believe the opposite is increasingly cloistered, both geographically and intellectually. You either live deep in a city and have multiple useless degrees, or you are a sane person with normal views.
Every time they attempt to cast these things as abnormal, fringe or “far right,” they are simply telling on themselves.
If a country is lucky, eventually those 'normal' people say 'enough.'
Weidel and the AfD ought to send a schweet little 'Danke schön' note to author Isaac Stanley-Becker for his in-kind campaign contribution.
With one of the most memorable opening paragraphs since 'It was a dark and stormy night...,' it was one of the lousiest hit pieces ever and has Germans dreaming big.
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