The counter-revolution of 1989/1990, market reforms and associated recession and unemployment, Nazi gangs forming out of poor youths attacking leftists ("baseball bat years"), the Party for Democratic Socialism (SED successor, later known as the Left Party after merging with a left-SPD splinter group) getting into coalition governments with social democrats and supporting neoliberal policies leading to a loss of credibility, pro-Russian foreign policy sympathies that only the AfD openly supports, nationalism being seen as the answer to social problems and, of course, racism.