In the run-up to Sunday’s election in Germany the political local weather has grow to be extra heated. There have been assaults on politicians and marketing campaign staff, and election posters have been destroyed. Many felt unsettled and even threatened after Friedrich Merz, the chief of the centre-right CDU, proposed a invoice to tighten immigration management that had the backing of the far-right Various für Deutschland.
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Björn Höcke, the AfD’s chief in Thuringia and head of its nationalist wing, speaks on the Domplatz in Erfurt through the social gathering’s remaining marketing campaign occasion earlier than state elections, 31 August 2024.
The AfD, categorized as a suspected rightwing extremist social gathering by home intelligence, celebrated the cracking of the “firewall” towards working with the far-right within the Bundestag. Mass demonstrations erupted in response and the Holocaust survivor Albrecht Weinberg returned his federal order of advantage in protest.
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The brand new-right influencer Ketzer der Neuzeit, actual title Leonard Jäger, interviews the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel after the conclusion of the federal conference in Riesa, Saxony, 12 January 2025. Jäger’s YouTube channel typically options conspiracy concept content material and is aimed primarily at a youthful viewers.
The function of disinformation and social media
The AfD’s rise has been fuelled by disinformation, which accelerated through the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic when the Querdenken motion was based. Throughout this part, elements of the AfD blended increasingly more with conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists. On the identical time, social media apps, reminiscent of TikTok, Telegram and Twitter (now X), grew to become more and more widespread in Germany, permitting content material and narratives to unfold principally unfiltered. No different German social gathering has been as profitable because the AfD on these social media platforms, particularly on TikTok.
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Katrin Nolte, an writer for rightwing media such because the Deutschland-Kurier on-line outlet, movies content material in Potsdam shortly after the announcement of the outcomes of the Brandenburg state elections. 22 September 2024.
There’s an growing try to push conspiracy theories and historic revisionism into the mainstream. In January, the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel falsely claimed in an internet dialogue with Elon Musk that “Hitler was a communist”. The AfD has since invited Musk to a marketing campaign occasion, regardless of him making a gesture that was extensively interpreted in Germany as a Hitler salute. In response, the artists’ group Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS) projected a picture of Musk’s gesture on to a Tesla manufacturing unit in Brandenburg. Sarcastically, ZPS, which has repeatedly campaigned for the prohibition of the AfD, is now beneath police investigation for displaying unconstitutional symbols – the Hitler salute is forbidden in Germany.
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The AfD decorates its election social gathering room within the Hessian state parliament, Wiesbaden, 8 October 2023.
The AfD typically performs with ambiguities or statements which might be near felony offences. The 2025 election marketing campaign slogan, Alice für Deutschland (Alice for Germany), is strongly reminiscent of the slogan of the Sturmabteilung (SA, or Storm Division, the Nazi social gathering’s paramilitary wing) Alles für Deutschland (All the things for Germany). These are ambiguous indicators, however the goal rightwing extremist audiences perceive them completely whereas extra bourgeois voters typically play them down.
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The memorial stone for Habil Kılıç, a sufferer of the NSU terrorist cell that operated as an underground organisation, is partially overgrown by grass. Within the metropolis park in Zwickau, Saxony, the ten victims of the far-right NSU are commemorated on this method. Victims’ associations have criticised the dearth of involvement of the bereaved and households of the homicide victims within the design of the memorial web site. Zwickau, Saxony, 28 Could 2024.
Escalating violence and historic parallels
Help for the AfD is rising quickly, notably in rural areas struggling economically and with poor infrastructure, and the place politicians reminiscent of Björn Höcke, the AfD’s chief in Thuringia, and Maximilian Krah, an MEP and the social gathering’s high candidate within the 2024 European parliament elections, are considered function fashions for a lot of younger males regardless of quite a few scandals. Each particularly enchantment to their younger audiences at marketing campaign occasions and on social media. Höcke, who can also be thought of a robust chief of the nationalist wing throughout the AfD, was discovered responsible by a courtroom in 2024 for utilizing a banned Nazi slogan.
Germany has had a protracted historical past of rightwing violence because the finish of the second world warfare, and lethal assaults have continued. The fifth anniversary of the racist Hanau 2020 assault, which claimed 9 younger lives, was marked simply days earlier than federal elections by which the AfD is anticipated to grow to be the second-strongest political drive. Survivors, associates and relations of the murdered held a banner at a protest stating: “The AfD participated within the capturing.”
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Contained in the Magdeburg regional courtroom the place Stephan B, a rightwing extremist from Halle who killed two individuals and tried to assault a synagogue in 2019, was on trial over his tried jail escape and hostage-taking. Saxony-Anhalt, 29 January 2024. He independently assembled a firearm within the Burg high-security jail and took hostages; the jail guards concerned are mentioned to nonetheless be traumatised.
4 months earlier than the Hanau assault, one other far-right extremist attacked a synagogue in Halle and later a kebab store, killing two individuals. In jail, he managed to assemble a weapon and almost escape. Earlier in February 2025, a younger man was arrested in Brandenburg for allegedly making ready to assault a posh that was housing asylum seekers.
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Funeral march for “SS-Siggi” Siegfried Borchardt in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, 9 October 2021. Native rightwing extremism consultants suspect the neo-Nazi, who was recognized past the area, took secrets and techniques in regards to the NSU to his grave.
A rising tradition of properwing violence
Younger rightwing extremists in Germany have gotten more and more militant. Stories point out that radicalised youths aren’t solely consuming propaganda on-line however forming violent teams. These teams goal minorities, political opponents and journalists, typically glorifying previous rightwing terrorist acts. Coaching camps and self-defence programs with hyperlinks to far-right networks have been uncovered, the place younger males are skilled in fight strategies beneath the guise of “self-protection”. Specialists warn this rising tradition of violence might result in an additional enhance in politically motivated assaults, making the specter of far-right extremism extra quick and tangible than ever.
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Two youngsters show work on their arms at an AfD marketing campaign occasion in Stadtroda, Thuringia, 7 August 2024.
Normalising extremism: from rhetoric to motion
The AfD’s rhetoric dehumanises minorities, utilizing phrases reminiscent of “subsidised knifemen” and “scarf ladies”. The creation of classes of individuals, good and dangerous, is harking back to Germany’s darkest chapter of historical past. In the meantime, the election discourse is dominated by the subjects of migration, border controls and deportation, sidelining points reminiscent of local weather change and technological progress.
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Members of the small rightwing extremist social gathering Der Dritte Weg (The Third Approach) trample over an EU flag at the beginning of a march in Plauen, Saxony, 1 Could 2019. The social gathering continues to search out new younger members.
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A protester making an attempt to dam an entry highway to the AfD’s federal social gathering convention is carried away by police. Riesa, Saxony, 11 January 2025. The big-scale demonstration with highway blockades had an impact: quite a few MPs and main politicians arrived late for the social gathering convention.
The promoting psychologists who advise the AfD know the fears of the German inhabitants very properly: financial decline, violence by migrants, and altering private habits.
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AfD marketing campaign merchandise in its election social gathering room within the Hessian state parliament, Wiesbaden, Hesse, 8 October 2023.
Whereas the AfD seeks to look bourgeois on the federal and state degree with its marketing campaign merchandise and gimmicks reminiscent of rubber geese and sausage rolls, recurring scandals from native social gathering branches and buildings expose a special actuality. Incidents such because the latest distribution of pretend “deportation flight tickets” in Karlsruhe, southern Germany, and related actions have led to police investigations, revealing the social gathering’s extra radical undercurrents. In September 2014, the AfD MP Lena Kotré distributed Kubotans – small keychain weapons – as election marketing campaign presents beneath the pretence of self-defence, additional highlighting the social gathering’s normalisation of violent rhetoric.
A nation at danger
In 2024, the variety of rightwing extremist felony offences was at a document excessive throughout Germany; members of quite a few teams have been arrested who had already armed themselves, making ready for coups.
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Alice Weidel speaks on the federal social gathering convention and swears in members for the election marketing campaign, whereas the AfD federal govt sits within the ranks under the canvas. The social gathering’s far-right wing, which it as soon as opposed, now has larger affect than ever earlier than. Riesa, Saxony, 12 January 2025.
Germany’s fragile political local weather, a weak authorities and growing rightwing violence create a harmful state of affairs. The nation, as soon as dedicated to “by no means once more”, now finds itself perilously near repeating historical past. The AfD is opening the door in Germany to totalitarian regimes and anti-democratic actions worldwide.
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After the publication of analysis by Correctiv, a non-profit German newsroom, on a secret assembly between AfD members and different actors in Potsdam concerning the mass deportation of individuals with a migration background, anti AfD demonstrations came about throughout Germany for weeks. Berlin, 3 February 2024.
Two joint functions to look at a possible AfD ban, submitted in January 2025 by representatives of democratic events within the Bundestag, have acquired solely lukewarm help inside their very own ranks. A co-initiator, Carmen Wegge of the SPD, spoke out in favour of banning the social gathering. “The AfD is a hazard to democracy. Democracy had already been abolished as soon as in Germany by a democratically elected social gathering,” she recalled, “with the Nationwide Socialists profitable the Reichstag elections in 1933”.
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Neo-Nazis rejoice Adolf Hitler’s birthday at considered one of their foremost residences in Dortmund; the morning after, the flags are nonetheless up. Many residents really feel intimidated by the fixed presence of the neo-Nazis. Dortmund, 21 April 2021.
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