Yet to claim that the AfD and Die Linke are in any sense comparable absent such evidence is itself a radical position—one that can only be held by those who are clinging desperately to a rapidly disintegrating political consensus. Such a position not only endangers what had been a successful government for the 2.15 million inhabitants of Thuringia; it also necessarily fuels the AfD. It legitimates its positions by making them seem no more radical than those proposed by Die Linke.