Watching the musical chairs as the AfD scores a landslide victory

On a Sunday evening, nine Dutch celebrities played musical chairs in an abandoned warehouse at a secret location. Neon-green chairs lit up the dark room as Nena’s “99 Luftballons” stopped and the contestants rushed to claim a seat.

At the same time, the AfD had scored a landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt. The NOS had reported it two hours earlier, leaving the writer struggling with the combination of words in one headline: AfD, monster, victory. In a German state, neo-Nazis were celebrating. The article says they are well represented in the entourage of AfD leader Ulrich Siegmund, a fact it says can be heard and read everywhere. The question hanging over the scene is how such a party can achieve a landslide victory, despite or because of that association.

The writer kept watching RTL4’s “Destination X.” Contestants traveled through Europe in a van with blacked-out windows, trying to identify their destination from occasional games and clues. A musical-chairs contest offered immunity. Television producer Kiki Bosman said she had once won a large musical-chairs game with 60 people because she knew she was good at it. When the song stopped, one celebrity threw herself at a chair and fell over it. Harry Piekema, the former Albert Heijn advertising man, was eliminated. He thought he was somewhere in Germany, but he was in Brussels.

Switching to NPO1 brought “Beestenboel,” where professional dog dancer Danitsja performed with her dog in a barn lit with fairy lights. Opera singer Francis van Broekhuizen sang “Funiculì Funiculà,” while André van Duin and Janny van der Heijden clapped from a hay bale. The dog hopped on its hind legs with a red rose in its jaws. “Still fun,” André van Duin said.

But the writer found it difficult to enjoy the spectacle while expecting more bad news on the VPRO program “Bureau Buitenland.” It had been a historic Sunday afternoon, the program said. The writer wondered what they would tell people later when asked what they had done during the historic afternoon when the AfD won a landslide in a neighboring country: watched Danitsja’s dog dance.

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So much fun