All seems well in Bavaria.
The streets are clean, unemployment is practically nonexistent, social benefits are generous and a vibrant sense of identity infuses small villages and big cities alike: Even teenagers sometimes don dirndls and lederhosen for a night out at the disco.
Yet this is the new angry center of Europe, the latest battleground for populists eager to bring down both Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the idea of a liberal Europe itself.
Rich, religious and on the southern border, Bavaria is the Texas of Germany. It is a conservative bastion of the nation most associated with Europe’s open-door migration policy and the ultimate prize in a culture war that has seen populism chip away at consensus on the eastern flank of the 28-member bloc.
Since the 2015 migration crisis, the far right has been steadily gaining support in Bavaria, and local conservatives have responded by veering sharply to the right themselves.
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