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You seem to think that everyone who is voting for the AfD is radicalized, which couldn't be further from the truth. Many people who voted for them just saw it as the only option for change. We had CDU/SPD for over a decade where the standard of living declined constantly, then we had red yellow green which tanked it completely - that's almost every party we have available on a national level. The only options are left and AfD, and I'm gonna be honest, the left does not sound appealing to people who understand economics.
Knocking the AfD down to sub 10% would be rather simple - politics just has to shift into a direction where it's pro-population, not pro-top1%. Plenty of stuff could be done to ease the economic pressure of the population, but they rather ensure that people stay at the right I guess.
You're right, these change-for-change's sake people do exist. And I don't know what to say to them, except maybe that if they just excitement in their lives, going bungee-jumping might be better than voting neonazis into power. Their existence seems like a failure of political education too.
But, there's another, probably much larger group of people who were sucked into propaganda channels that run divide & conquer strategies on society. Much like the change-people, they are barely political but they can be mobilized by irrational fears, like Lidl selling chocolate bunnies being a precursor for their own forced islamization.
In your post, the combination of this "The only options are [...] AfD" and this "politics just has to shift into a direction where it's pro-population, not pro-top1%."
... is utterly baffling. Right-wing parties, AfD, Fdp, CxU, etc., are quite explicitly pro-special interest, not pro-populace. The further right, the more special the interests. And sure, these parties claim they are proposing common-sense "non-ideological" "sane" ideas while actually ignoring science, ignoring precedent, ignoring negative outcomes for society. That's their whole MO. If you don't want the 1% to profit, then maybe just don't vote anything right of the SPD (and even SPD is a questionable choice in that regard).
Interestingly enough, the economic proposals contained in the last election platform of the Left party were the most financially solid among all parties in that election (as detailed by multiple institutes, e.g. ZEW [de-DE]). The Left were the only party where the state was least burdened with unexplained money outflow that would be prohibited under the debt brake.
Is it possible that by "people who understand economics" you mean the group of people that currently profits from existing inequality? I.e. the 1%ers and the 10%ers. Because that's the people who would "suffer" from the Left's proposals (actually, while they'd make less money, they'd most likely live in a much more physically secure society).