[Barrin92]

>but people disillusioned by the establishment parties who then fall prey to the the less extremist public messaging the AfD

In particular in German discourse on fascism there's always been the observation that this is precisely its most dangerous form, a popular term used to be Extremismus der Mitte (literally, extremism of the middle).

In its most serious form fascism is an extremism of the middle-class, the small merchants, the bureaucracy, the policeman, the lawyer, the doctor and so forth. The meathead with the swastika tattoo on his arm looks scary but nobody takes him seriously. One of the strongest backbones of the NSDAP, which people tend to forget, were women.(https://scroll.in/article/959951/why-i-became-a-nazi-essays-...)