Germany's Nationalists Join the 13-Percent Club

The Alternative for Germany's 12.6 percent result in Sunday's election wraps up an important political season for European nationalist populists. It's a showing that has worried many both in and outside Germany; but, all things considered, it's another defeat for the far right, which appears to have hit its ceiling in Western Europe for now.

The AfD was promptly congratulated by Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) won 13.1 percent of the vote in the Netherlands in March, and by Marine Le Pen, whose National Front won 13.2 percent in the first round of the French legislative election in June. Many see the the AfD's performance as more significant than that of the rest of the 13 percent club, since it's a German party and German nationalism has an especially scary history. But 72 years after the Nazis' defeat, they're no more dangerous than those in neighboring countries.