A shift to the hard right! The Nazis may be coming back to power! There is a sense of alarm in the responses by many media outlets and European politicians to news that the Alternative for Germany, a far-right anti-immigrant party, had won a plurality of votes in the Sept 1 elections in the German federal state of Thuringia.

The victory was undoubtedly historic. It’s the first time a German far-right party has notched such a score since – dare we say it? – Adolf Hitler scored big in German elections back in 1933. Nor is this just a fluke; the party did equally well in the elections in Saxony, another German federal state. Furthermore, opinion polls indicate that the party is poised to make deep inroads in Germany’s general elections, which must be held in a year.