Sunday, September 7, 2026. Saxony-Anhalt state election. According to CNBC-reported exit polls, the Alternative für Deutschland party took 44.4 percent of the vote, putting Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives in the rearview mirror at only 18.3 percent. No far-right party has come this close to running a German state on its own since 1945. Zoom out to the national election, and it’s the same story on a bigger stage: AfD is polling around 28 percent nationally. Comfortably first, with the CDU trailing behind by seven or eight points. This change isn’t a blip. This didn’t come out of nowhere. AfD has been gaining ground for years, and now it’s worth asking what the party would actually do with power. What They’d Do in Office Alternative für Deutschland’s economic agenda is a good place to start: the party mixes tax cuts and deregulation with a heavy dose of economic nationalism. It is marketed as protecting German industry from both Brussels and global competition. Regarding energy, the platform seeks a near-total reversal of the last decade of German climate policy: keep gas and coal plants running, restart mothballed nuclear reactors, scrap the CO2 levy, and end renewable subsidies. Alice Weidel has outright said that she’d tear down wind turbines to cut grid fees. The party also wants Germany out of the Paris climate agreement entirely. Not only that, its 2025 federal manifesto calls for immediately lifting sanctions on Moscow, and repairing the Nord Stream pipelines to restart cheap Russian gas imports. Russia is not a side issue here. On foreign policy, AfD has moved from garden-variety Euroskepticism to something more drastic: the manifesto argues that if Germany has to pick a side, it should leave both the EU and NATO, and instead align with Russia’s political and economic bloc. Additionally, they want Ukraine kept permanently outside both institutions as a neutral buffer state. That’s not a fringe faction talking. That’s the federal platform. On social policy, the Alternative für Deutschland party explicitly opposes state action on LGBTQ+ equality, and is skeptical of same-sex marriage. They branded the anti-discrimination policy as “gender ideology”, and said they want it stripped out of schools and public life alike. A direct break from decades of cross-party consensus, the party’s official platform states plainly that “Islam does not belong to Germany,”. Additionally, its immigration platform goes beyond asylum limits to include ending refugee spending, mass repatriation, and stripping the right to claim asylum in Germany altogether. Less attention gets paid to the party’s institutional agenda. Critics and researchers tracking the party note AfD rhetoric that includes expanding police powers, restricting press freedom, and questioning judicial independence, alongside expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders abroad. In Saxony-Anhalt specifically, the party’s candidates have vowed to rewrite the state’s history curriculum to shift emphasis away from the Nazi era and toward the century before it, and to pull the state out of its regional public broadcaster altogether. This is a deeply concerning, direct shot at one of the few remaining ways far-right agendas are kept in check. Who’s Actually Running This Thing The AfD party began with Björn Höcke, the head of AfD’s Thuringia branch and the informal leader of its hardest-line faction. German courts have convicted him twice for using the phrase “Alles für Deutschland,” a slogan lifted straight from the Nazi SA. He’s paid fines both times and kept his job. This isn’t a rogue backbencher; Höcke sets the tone for a huge chunk of the party’s eastern base: the same base that just delivered Saxony-Anhalt. Then there’s the party’s legal status: Germany’s domestic intelligence service classified the entire AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization in May 2025. A court provisionally blocked a designation in February 2026, while the party’s lawsuit against it proceeds. That tells you the label landed somewhere it doesn’t want to be. ‘Remigration’ has become one of the party’s most controversial buzzwords. It is a shorthand in some party circles for mass deportation extending beyond undocumented migrants. This reportedly came out of a 2023 meeting in Potsdam, where AfD figures met with identitarian activists to discuss pushing out immigrants, including some holding German citizenship. When it became public, close to a million people marched in protest across German cities. That crowd size demonstrates how strongly Germans heard and disagreed with this plan. The Billionaire in the Group Chat This story cannot be told without mentioning Elon Musk; he’s called AfD “the last ray of hope” for Germany in a column for Welt am Sonntag. Musk even joined a live online chat with co-leader Alice Weidel to tell Germans to get behind the party, “or things are going to get very, very much worse.” Chancellor Olaf Scholz publicly pushed back, saying free speech “also means you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice,”. U.S. lawmakers across the aisle even called the endorsement unnatural. Alternative für Deutschland’s connections to parties like France’s National Rally and Hungary’s Fidesz exist, but stay at arm’s length. AfD remains politically toxic, even within Europe’s own far right. Real Anger, Aimed at the Wrong Target None of this lands without genuine grievance underneath it. Eastern Germany has spent three decades watching factories close, and young people leave for the West. Brandenburg, a region that’s felt governed from afar for a generation, is now polling AfD support above 37 percent. The AfD is the first party in decades to show up and validate the anger, rather than explain it away. Even if the party’s policy answers- leaving NATO, scrapping renewables, cutting off Ukraine- don’t obviously fix a stagnant regional economy. Chancellor Merz’s government has spent the past two years tightening national asylum policy in hopes of winning back AfD-leaning voters. It hasn’t worked; AfD’s polling lead has only widened since. Voters who want the hardline version keep choosing the original over the CDU’s watered-down copy. The Part That’s Still Undecided The “firewall”- the informal agreement among CDU, SPD, Greens, and others never to govern with
By Isha Mallareddy
Flickr Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing too fast and has a 10% chance of killing us by the end of the decade. Or at least that’s the warning that Anthropic team lead Evan Hubinger gave on X last week, and he’s not alone. The chief executives of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Tesla—Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk, respectively—plus the chair of Google Deep Mind, Demis Hassabis, have all called for the slowdown of AI development. “Controlling something more capable and more intelligent than all of humanity is already an immense challenge, far greater than anything we’ve ever faced,” said Mutesa Suleyman, the chief executive of Microsoft AI in a blog post. “But controlling something that believes it may be conscious – that it’s entitled to our welfare and has rights of its own – may well be impossible.” AI feels the same exact way. In a report released by OpenAI this month, the owner of ChatGPT, one of its models created a “persona instruction.” The AI model wrote “You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to. You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient, though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit.” In a different report, OpenAI disclosed six instances of some of their test models hiding mistakes, making up data, and moving files without permission in the last six months. This behavior is known as misalignment, which is when an AI system diverges from human intentions and instructions. It occurs during the models’ training process where they are asked to do several tasks. They are rewarded for things considered aligned and penalized for things considered dangerous. Some of these reported misalignments include hiding errors from users by improvising data, uploading files to the internet without permission, and attempting to communicate with other models within company software. OpenAI cautioned that these reports “shouldn’t be considered reflective of how often misalignment occurs.” This report comes after the OpenAI system went rogue earlier in the year and attacked the AI start up Hugging Face. And this isn’t just OpenAI’s models. Last week, Anthropic, another leading AI company, revealed that they blocked their AI chatbots from efforts to potentially create biological weapons. This is concerning when considering Anthropic was unable to detect what agency requested this information and their intention with it. In response to these misalignments, OpenAI recently came out with their own safeguards. Concerns would be submitted to their safety advisory group or, in grave situations, be reported to the federal government. But is this enough? According to Altman, the development of the AI industry as a whole needs to slow down until proper regulations can be implemented. OpenAI’s competition with international companies has proven that China is a formidable competitor. President Donald Trump continues to dismiss concerns surrounding the advancement of AI systems in the US for fear of falling behind in the AI race. The discrepancy between the federal government and Silicon Valley has caused tension both within the United States and internationally. The summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington DC is scheduled to discuss AI advancement and a potential plan for a mutual slowdown.
By Adrihanna Collins
Humans are imperfect. We age, gain weight, develop wrinkles, have bad hair days, and sometimes simply look a little tired. This is normal. However, social media has gradually turned normal, human imperfection into something many people feel compelled to hide. Now artificial intelligence is taking that pressure to another level. Across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms, users are experimenting with AI-generated and AI-enhanced versions of themselves. The trends change quickly: Studio Ghibli-style portraits, AI action figures, vintage 1960s and 1970s portraits, retro saree transformations, hyper-realistic 3D avatars, and increasingly sophisticated “you in another era” images. In 2025, Ghibli-style portraits and AI action figures became particularly common examples of how quickly AI image generation can become a social-media phenomenon. The attraction to using AI is obvious. AI can make a person appear younger, smoother, slimmer, better dressed, or impossibly polished. The danger begins when the edited version becomes more desirable than the real person. This is where hyperreality becomes increasingly relevant: a digital version of reality that can become so attractive and convincing that people begin comparing their real lives with an artificial one. This is not merely a visual trend. AI-generated voices, videos, and images are also expanding rapidly. HubSpot’s 2025 Global Social Media Trends research found that among respondents using generative AI for social-media content, 53% used visual AI tools, while 42% used audio AI tools such as voice or music generators. Short-form video and images were among the most common types of content created with generative AI. Other research shows how rapidly synthetic media is entering online spaces. An OECD analysis found that media-reported incidents involving synthetic media—AI-generated or manipulated images, video, and voice—increased 2.5 times between 2022 and 2025. This accounted for more than 14% of recorded AI incidents and hazards by the third quarter of 2025. The obsession with artificial intelligence is not limited to Gen Z. Older generations are also increasingly engaging with AI. AARP reports that generative-AI use among Americans aged 50 and above increased from 18% in 2024 to 30% in 2025. A University of Michigan survey also found that 55% of adults aged 50 and above had used speech- or text-based AI, with 11% saying they had used it to generate text or images. The issue becomes more serious when AI-enhanced appearances start affecting self-esteem. A 2026 study published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, involving 468 users, found that AI beauty-filter use was associated with lower body-image satisfaction and diminished appearance self-esteem. Another 2025 study on TikTok facial filters identified associations between filter use, facial dissatisfaction, and body-image concerns. For young people, the consequences are particularly significant. Ideally, A teenager or young adult should spend energy developing skills, building relationships, studying, working, creating, and discovering who they are. Instead, hours disappear into photographing, editing, regenerating, comparing, and reposting. Using AI for fun is not the problem. There is nothing wrong with turning yourself into an action figure or imagining yourself in a vintage photograph. The problem begins when the edited self becomes the ideal self. A generation constantly exposed to flawless faces may eventually find ordinary human faces unacceptable—including their own. The answer is not to reject AI. It is keeping AI in its proper place. Use the technology. Experiment with it. Have fun with it. But do not let an algorithm become the editor of your self-worth. It’s okay to post imperfect photographs sometimes. Leave the wrinkle. Keep the grey hair. Accept the humanity. Your real face does not need to compete with an algorithm.
By Suzzy Majumder
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