“...It is really a tough time for the German government under any circumstances, but it's also coming towards a government that has not found its stride in simply governing," said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former German diplomat and director of the Counter Extremism Project. He said no mainstream party had ‘found a recipe’ to counter the AfD's narrative. An air of constant infighting in Mr. Scholz's coalition ‘gives the impression that it's a really dysfunctional government,’ even if in fact it can point to certain successes such as ending Germany's reliance on Russian gas imports, Mr. Schindler told The National. An explosion of voter anger over migration has sent German politics into a tailspin. Refugee centers have been filling up for months with more than 174,000 asylum claims lodged this year, almost a third of them from Syrians.”