European churches say growing flock of Muslim refugees are converting

[pampango]

42. RW populists are gaining in Europe and the US. Much of the left is fighting their anti-refugee

policies. You are right, mainstream politicians will bend whichever way they think the political wind is blowing and it is blowing to the right at the moment.

In March's Germany provincial election, the RW populist party AfD got almost 1/4 of the vote in one province.

The populist Alternative for Germany, which focused its campaign on opposition to Ms. Merkel’s migrant policy, won nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The result—several percentage points higher than recent polls had suggested—represents the party’s best total in a regional election since its founding three years ago. “We have a very clear position on refugee policy: We don’t want to take in any refugees,” AfD deputy chairman Alexander Gauland said on German television. “All who voted for us stand behind this policy.”

But the results laid bare the extent to which the migration crisis has polarized German society. Left-of-center proponents of a welcoming refugee policy also recorded wins Sunday, even as Ms. Merkel’s conservatives suffered. Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union lost two close races, falling to the center-left Greens in Baden-Württemberg and the center-left Social Democrats in Rhineland-Palatinate.

In the traditionally conservative state of Baden-Württemberg, one of Germany’s economic powerhouses, the refugee-friendly Greens surged to first place behind their popular incumbent premier, Winfried Kretschmann. Ms. Merkel’s CDU failed to win first place in the southwestern state for the first time since World War II. The AfD, meanwhile, won 15%—the best postwar result for a populist or far-right party in the state.

Despite Sunday’s setbacks, Ms. Merkel remains in a relatively strong position at home. Her approval rating stands at 54%, a decline from 67% last summer but still high compared with the leaders of many other European democracies. ... In Sunday’s exit polls, a majority of voters in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate said Ms. Merkel was doing a good job handling migration.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/germans-head-to-polls-in-test-of-merkels-refugee-policies-1457857810

The anti-immigrant far-right is rising in Europe and in the US. The question is how long their rise continues and what, if anything, reverses it. Many politicians in the middle will 'triangulate' their migrant policies to appease the right. We can hope that most on the left will not but who knows.