Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other parties in many countries don’t seem to understand that if they try to solve the immigration issues more seriously - many right-wing parties would disappear as they have nothing else.
It’s not about immigration. If it was, then mainstream parties WOULD fix immigration. It’s about national identity, “us and them”. If it wasn’t about immigrants it would be about “experts”. If it wasn’t about experts it would be about “the gays”. This kind of thing doesn’t go away with appeasement: orgs like AfD just point their weapons at somebody else. It has always been the way with facists.
The AfD aren't fascists and the attempts to win elections by just screaming slurs until they lose all meaning has stopped working. People have realised that calling everything "racist" or "fascist" or "Nazi" or whatever doesn't mean it actually is, and the left's entire political strategy is just labelling things it doesn't like with bad words.
And yes part of the issue with immigration is national identity. Germany is a nation-state and always has been, just like France and Poland and Italy and Spain and Portugal and Czechia and Hungary and Ireland and Greece are. There are still some non-national states in Europe like the UK (which contains multiple nations: England, Scotland and Wales, arguably part of Ireland (although some claim Northern Ireland has been separate long enough to have its own national identity) and arguably Cornwall if you listen to Cornish nationalists which you probably shouldn't).
Economic migrants, falsely claiming to be refugees, from Somalia and Syria, aren't German. Or French. Or Italian. Or Greek. They are Somalian, or Syrian. To pretend migration policy debates don't raise issues of national identity is fucking insane.