Nobody can know whether Donald Trump would have become US president even without the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. But he benefited massively from the climate of uncertainty – just like the AfD does now.
15 years ago, the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in New York. The financial crisis, the hot phase of which began on September 15, 2008, is long over, but it has permanently changed the social climate in the West. The optimism after the end of the Cold War gave way to deep distrust of the economic system. This expressed itself, particularly among European intellectuals, in a diffuse anti-capitalism. In the United States, the Lehman crisis triggered a wave of right-wing populism that has now become a threat to American democracy.