Investigating Germany: A history of the AfD

The German federal elections – which will take place this Sunday, February 23, 2025 – are of decisive importance for the future of Europe. With this in mind, Monty Ott delivers for K. an investigation into the history of the AfD, which is growing strongly. Now supported by Trump and Musk, and championing Russian interests, since its creation about ten years ago this party has undergone a process of radicalization leading it towards increasingly anti-European and far-right positions. A dive into the networks and ideology of German sovereignism.

 

Introduction

January 29, 2025 marks a turning point in German post-war history. On this day, a historic vote took place. The CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany/ Christian Social Union in Bavaria) parliamentary group introduced a resolution to the Bundestag. This is a motion that has no legal consequences, but rather is intended as a symbolic resolution to express the will and position of the parliamentary majority. The occasion for this motion, from the point of view of the party and parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz, was a knife attack in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg.

On January 22, a 28-year-old man attacked a kindergarten group. The attacker was an Afghan who lived in an asylum shelter, was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and had been noticed three times in the past for acts of violence. The man deliberately aborted his asylum procedure. Although it was probably not an Islamist attack, this case was put in the same category as a “car-ramming attack” in Magdeburg (also not an Islamist attack) and an Islamist attack in Solingen.

CDU leader Merz announced after Aschaffenburg that he would abandon his previous line. In November 2024, after the break-up of the so-called traffic light coalition (SPD [Social Democratic Party], Alliance 90/The Greens, FDP [Free Democratic Party]), Merz had offered the remaining Social Democratic-Green coalition: “We should agree that we will only put those decisions on the plenary agenda on which we have previously reached agreement with the SPD and the Greens.” This was to prevent a “coincidental or actually brought about majority” with votes from the Alternative for Germany (AfD). They did not want to achieve majorities with the help of the far-right party. On January 11, 2025, Merz reiterated: “We do not work with a party that is hostile to foreigners, that is antisemitic, that has right-wing radicals in its ranks, that keeps criminals in its ranks, a party that flirts with Russia and wants to leave NATO and the European Union.” On January 24, just two days after the attack in Aschaffenburg, he apparently backed down from this position: He said that they wanted to introduce motions into parliament that “exclusively correspond to our convictions” and that they would be introduced “regardless of who agrees with them.” And so it happened.

On the morning of January 29, at the start of the plenary sessions, a ceremony was held in the Bundestag to mark the “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism”. In the subsequent plenary session, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group then tabled its motion for a resolution. After a very emotional and controversial debate, the motion was adopted by a narrow majority of four votes. The votes of the AfD were decisive for this majority. Merz subsequently stated: “I am not seeking majorities in this Bundestag other than those in the democratic center of our parliament. And if there has been such a majority here today, then I regret it.”

The joint vote caused great outrage – not only in the Bundestag. In many cities, people spontaneously gathered for rallies. The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said: “I find it disappointing that the democratic political forces in our country – even in times of election campaigns – were unable to agree on a common approach and thus gave the AfD this platform.” The consequence of this, Schuster continued, “is that right-wing populism and right-wing extremism determine our social debates.”

Shoah survivor Albrecht Weinberg announced that he would return his Federal Cross of Merit. Publicist Michel Friedman – who was a member of the CDU national executive committee from 1994 to 1996 and also the son of so-called “Schindler Jews” – announced that he would end his decades-long CDU membership. Friedman criticized: “For the first time, a democratic party, in this case my former party, the CDU, has made it possible for the AfD to achieve a majority in parliament with this democratic party.” He said it was “a catastrophic turning point for democracy in the Federal Republic”.

But where do these eruptions come from? What is the source of this outrage? This day, which many have called “historic,” can be taken as an opportunity to take a closer look at the history of the AfD. In the upcoming election, the party could celebrate its greatest success to date: current polls show it at a steady 20 percent. That would mean that in the future, one-fifth of the members of parliament would belong to an extreme right-wing party.

Members and officials have relativized and legitimized German crimes such as colonialism, the war of extermination, the Shoah and Porajmos, spread antisemitic and racist conspiracy theories and included the far-right battle cry “Remigration” in their party program. But what is behind the success of this party in opinion polls? What is its relationship to Jews? Does it pose a threat? And first and foremost: How did it become what it is today?

Founding

When the AfD was founded in 2013, it was not yet possible to foresee the development of this party. Right-wing extremist parties such as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD, now: “Die Heimat” [translated: The Homeland]), the Republicans (Rep) and the German People’s Union (DVU; now also “Die Heimat”) had largely slipped into insignificance. They had all been able to celebrate more or less major electoral successes at one time or another.

Two factors appear to have been particularly important for the emergence of the AfD: the crisis of the European Monetary Union and the political direction of the CDU and CSU during the years of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship. In 2010, the international financial market crisis was followed by the crisis of the European Monetary Union. For the founding generation of the AfD, this was a central issue: the widespread resentment against EU bureaucracy represented an important voter potential for them. Political scientist and party researcher Franz Decker identifies March 25, 2010 as the “origin” of the AfD: “On this day, Chancellor Angela Merkel had ruled out direct financial aid to the Greeks, who had been particularly hard hit by the euro crisis, in a speech to the Bundestag, only to agree to the first rescue package for Greece at the EU summit that took place a few hours later.” The fact that Merkel spoke of a decision with “no alternative” inspired the “Wahlalternative” and the resulting AfD when choosing their name.

In 2010, for the founding generation of the AfD, this was a central issue: the widespread resentment against EU bureaucracy represented an important voter potential for them.

In its early days, the party was often seen as “liberal-conservative, ‘euro-critical’, but not yet as a right-wing populist party”. According to an analysis by the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), racist positions and the devaluation of political opponents were part of the party’s repertoire from the outset: migrants were vilified as the “scum” of the social system and the political competition as the “old parties” (meaning above all the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP and Die Linke).

The polemics against Greece and Italy in particular also show that a clear nationalist orientation was already present at that time. In this respect, it was in particular academics such as Bernd Lucke, Jörg Meuthen and Hans-Olaf Henkel who shaped the image of the “professors’ party” to the outside world.

Bernd Lucke, a professor of economics and long-standing member of the CDU, was one of the central founding figures of the party and led it as its national spokesperson until he was voted out of office in July 2015. Together with Konrad Adam, a journalist and also a former member of the CDU, he came up with the idea of an “anti-euro party”. And so the second important factor emerges: many founding members and/or prominent faces, such as Alexander Gauland, Björn Höcke or Erika Steinbach, were former members of the CDU or its youth organization. It was therefore also part of the party’s early phase to distance itself from the CDU in particular and to criticize it for its supposed “shift to the left” under Merkel.

Increasing radicalization

In general, it seems to be the case that a new phase of radicalization has taken place with each deselection of an AfD leader. From the trio of leaders Bernd Lucke, Frauke Petry and Konrad Adam (2013-2015) to the duos Petry/Meuthen (2015-2017), Meuthen/Gauland (2017-2019) and Meuthen/Tino Chrupalla (2019-2022) to the current co-spokespersons Alice Weidel and Chrupalla (2022-today). However, Simone Rafael and Joe Düker emphasize in an analysis for CeMAS that there was already a “flirtation with right-wing extremism” in 2013. Although this was still a “marginal phenomenon” at the beginning, it has developed from there into the “core of AfD politics”.

But it was also the AfD’s electoral successes, particularly in the eastern German states, that increasingly put a supposedly more moderate wing on the defensive. While the party narrowly missed out on entering the Bundestag in the 2013 federal election, it managed to enter the European Parliament in 2014, as it did in the state election in Hesse on the same day. Contrary to what one might expect, this success did not strengthen the liberal economic “economists’ wing”, which had strongly influenced the party’s election manifesto and list of candidates, but instead deepened the rifts in the party. The fact that Lucke and four of his economically liberal colleagues went to Brussels to join the “European Conservatives and Reformists”^[1] faction seemed to strengthen their opponents within the party. Political scientist Simon Franzmann points out that as early as 2013, AfD voters were “uniformly” in favor of positions that were rather “critical of immigration,” which did not apply in the same way to the anti-euro course.

The year 2015 finally became the catalyst for radicalization. To this day, the so-called “refugee crisis” plays a central role in AfD narratives. The Union was associated with the phrase “We can do it,” coined by Chancellor Merkel. For the strategists of the AfD, this was an opportunity to further distinguish themselves from the Christian Democrats by taking anti-immigration positions and to occupy the space that opened up in the right-wing populist to right-wing extremist voter milieu. Frauke Petry, who replaced Lucke as chair, and Björn Höcke, who was increasingly coming to the fore, were particularly representative of these developments.

The year 2015 and the Merkel government’s acceptance of 1.2 million refugees played a catalytic role in the radicalization of the AfD. The refugee crisis has become a central element of its discourse, which is firmly opposed to immigration.

The increasing alienation of the “economist wing” from the party – or the party from this wing? – was reflected not least in the fact that its leading figures gradually resigned: Bernd Lucke and Hans-Olaf Henkel in July 2015 and Jörg Meuthen in January 2022. According to the CeMAS analysis, the AfD changed its appearance at each Bundestag election until “it appeared as a right-wing extremist party.”

The municipal elections held at the same time as the European elections were also a success for the AfD: from then on, the party was to send a total of 485 elected representatives to municipal, district and county councils, among others. In the state elections held that same year, it also achieved notable successes by entering the state parliaments of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. This development continued until 2017, when the AfD received enough second votes (12.6%) to enter the Bundestag for the first time. The fact that the top duo for the election campaign was Weidel/Gauland can be seen as a further success of the völkisch-nationalist forces in the party.

The “Wing”

These forces are creating their own platform within the party. They call themselves the “Wing”. In addition to the Thuringian state chairman and former history teacher, Björn Höcke, the leading figures include the Saxony-Anhalt AfD politician Hans-Thomas Tillschneider and the then state chairman of the Brandenburg AfD, Andreas Kalbitz. Their increasing influence repeatedly leads to internal conflicts with the right-wing libertarian and economically liberal camps. After the Bundestag election, Bernd Lucke’s successor Frauke Petry also leaves the party. Jörg Meuthen, who takes over for Petry, will also share this fate.

Many of Höcke’s early supporters, who shaped this internal party grouping in its early days, are no longer members of the party. The conflict not only led to party resignations, but also to party expulsion proceedings against right-wing extremist members – which were successful or which the individuals concerned avoided by resigning. The aim of the proceedings was also to maintain the party’s supposedly “bourgeois” profile.

André Poggenburg, for example, who together with Höcke built up the first völkisch networks, is no longer a member of the AfD, nor is Andreas Kalbitz.^[2] Höcke and Poggenburg drafted the so-called “Erfurt Resolution”, a first position paper or “founding document” of what later became known as the “Flügel” (Wing). In it, sharp criticism of the party leadership was practiced: the party had, so it was in the no longer online accessible page of the “Wing” to read, “members […], whose profile is indispensable, kept away from bourgeois protest movements and even distanced in anticipatory obedience”.

The “Wing” claimed to speak for the “countless” members who see the AfD as a “patriotic and democratic alternative to the established parties”, a “movement of our people against the social experiments of recent decades (gender mainstreaming, multiculturalism, educational arbitrariness, etc.)” and a “resistance movement against the further erosion of Germany’s sovereignty and identity”. The demand of the “initial signatories”, which all members of the AfD should support, is a “fundamental political turnaround in Germany”, which the “office holders […] of our party in the executive boards and parliaments” should advocate. On the one hand, it is obvious that this was an internal party declaration of war. The “Wing”, this self-confidence speaks from the sentences just quoted, wanted to set the direction of the party. On the other hand, narratives can already be identified here that have arrived at the center of the party. Ideological building blocks, here individual “social experiments” are still spoken of, have grown together into a coherent narrative.

Ideological networks

To this end, the party was able to rely on support from the political fringe of the AfD. The AfD is connected to a wide range of ideological networks in this fringe. These can be traced both to individuals who are or have been active in the AfD and to institutions and actors close to the party. These include movements such as PEGIDA (“Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident”), founded in 2014, the neo-fascist “Identitarian Movement”, as well as German-nationalist fraternities and parts of the Reichsbürger movement^[3], and a number of individual far-right and new right-wing actors. Even though the AfD has a list of organizations that are incompatible with its values, in reality this list is hardly taken into account. When PEGIDA announced its dissolution in Dresden in 2024, this was also linked to the increasing electoral success of the AfD. On the one hand, the AfD seems to have become the parliamentary arm of various extreme right-wing movements, while on the other hand, many of its politicians probably also play a role in networking the right-wing landscape.

To understand the radicalization of the AfD and why it has managed to continue to be successful in elections despite this process, one has to take a closer look at the network of the former “Wing” leader. Because it was a right-wing extremist think tank that developed concepts and strategies that became decisive for Höcke and many “Wing” members. This think tank is called the “Institute for State Policy” (IfS) and was founded in May 2000 by the “neurechte” (New Right) publisher Götz Kubitschek, among others.^[4]

Kubitschek managed to turn the institute into “a kind of intellectual center of the New Right” over time. This included founding the publishing house “Antaios” and publishing the magazine “Sezession”, in which leading minds of the New Right, such as the Austrian Identitarian Martin Sellner, gathered, and organizing workshops and lecture events. This program was aimed particularly at “young academics, national conservatives and disillusioned conservatives in the CDU/CSU, as well as publicists, elected officials and other influential personalities”.

Sociologist Matthias Quent emphasizes the pivotal role of the IfS, describing it as a link between the far right and the democratic right, which draws its ideological inspiration from the “conservative revolution”, an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal movement.

The AfD – especially in Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia – seemed to increasingly enter into a symbiosis with the institute, which is why “the increase in importance [of the IfS] over the years seems to be closely linked to the rise of the AfD”. Höcke had already acted as the “poster boy” of the IfS in the AfD at an early stage. And Kubitschek had already seen the AfD in 2013 as an opportunity for a new era of right-wing extremism in Germany: “Because this topic [criticism of the euro] is the fine topic, the door-opener topic, and our topics […] will come after it, if we just put our foot in the door quickly and consistently enough.”

Last year, the IfS announced its dissolution. This was probably a strategically motivated move, because Kubitschek also stated that the tasks had been “completed or redistributed”. The Saxony-Anhalt state domestic intelligence service (“Verfassungsschutz”) had included the IfS in 2019 as a “suspected right-wing extremist case” and in 2020 upgraded it to a proven right-wing extremist endeavor; the Federal domestic intelligence service followed suit in 2020 and 2023. The actors around the IfS probably expected that the Ministry of the Interior would issue a ban on activities, which would have been accompanied by searches, confiscations and the banning of successor organizations.

During the existence of the IfS, sociologist Matthias Quent had pointed out that it would fulfill a kind of “hinge function” and thus bring together the “extreme and the democratic right”. Quent emphasized that “the anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal ‘conservative revolution’” was the ideological point of reference for the IfS and that, according to Kubitschek, the political mandate was to wage an “intellectual civil war” over the “existence of the nation”.

In the IfS environment, concepts were also developed that were gratefully adopted by the AfD. These included the concept of “self-trivialization”. To understand this, the historical and political context must be taken into account: Germany is both post-Nazi and post-colonial. The demarcation from National Socialism became identity-forming. The ‘new’ Germany sees itself as democratic. At the same time, however, the country has been quite successful in suppressing the continuities of antisemitic, racist, and queer-hostile violence that have run through German history since 1945. Only vulgar neo-Nazism has increasingly been ostracized in public. This self-image has set a certain limit for right-wing extremist parties. Despite some electoral success, none of these parties has been able to successfully attack the democratic culture of this society and influence debates in the long term.

With the AfD, it is different – and the concept of “self-trivialization” plays a major role in this. In 2017, Götz Kubitschek published an article in the “Sezession” entitled “Selbstverharmlosung” (self-trivialization). There he writes that an “emotional barrier” would exist that prevents “an unprejudiced examination of the topics, the personnel, the appearances of the alternatives for Germany”. “[G]reat parts of the citizens” would therefore not even deal with these new offers. Therefore, he proposed a “method [that could be used to solve this task]: a process for which the term ‘self-trivialization could be introduced: It is the attempt to fend off the opponent’s accusations by demonstrating one’s own harmlessness and to emphasize that none of what one demands falls behind civil society standards.”

„Sturm auf den Reichstag“ – davon hatten einige Corona-Leugner seit Wochen geträumt. Heute haben einige hundert Demonstranten ernst gemacht. Die Polizei war kurzzeitig völlig überfordert. #b2908 pic.twitter.com/Bxm6kQ0vvi

— democ (@democ_de) August 29, 2020

 

When the AfD describes itself as “national-conservative” or “bourgeois” it is not defining itself, but rather trying to camouflage its actual intentions. Just because a party participates in democratic processes such as elections does not mean that it also shares democratic values. This fact has been repeatedly overlooked in debates about the AfD. It was assumed that this party would lose its appeal when it came to power and gained official positions. However, the opening session of the Thuringian parliament in September 2024 showed just how wrong these assumptions were. It is customary for the oldest or longest-serving^[5] member of parliament to open the first plenary session and take over the chairmanship of the session. His role is associated with very limited powers. The CDU and Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) wanted to prevent the strongest group from exercising its right to propose the president of the state parliament by means of a motion. The oldest member of the AfD who was parliamentarian president on time did not allow the motion to be put to the vote, the session turned into a farce and had to be broken off after four hours with several interruptions. The state constitutional court ruled that the actions of the oldest member were unconstitutional.

Further election results and radicalization

Since 2017, the importance of the “Wing” has gradually increased. This repeatedly led to conflicts because the domestic intelligence service began to observe the group. In March 2020, it was classified as a “secure right-wing extremist endeavor”. In the 2019 European elections, the momentum seemed to have dissipated. The AfD won 11 seats, but fell short of its own expectations. This trend continued until 2021 – at least in western Germany. In elections in Bremen (2019), Hamburg (2020) and Baden-Württemberg (2021), the AfD only made slight gains. The situation was quite different in the eastern German states of Brandenburg (2019), Saxony (2019) and Thuringia (2019), where the party was able to increase its second vote result massively. The 2021 federal election gave the now former “Wing” a further boost. Officially, the grouping had to disband when it was classified as “proven right-wing extremist” and placed under surveillance by the domestic intelligence service, but informal networks remained.

When the AfD describes itself as “national-conservative” or “bourgeois” it is not defining itself, but rather trying to camouflage its actual intentions. Just because a party participates in democratic processes such as elections does not mean that it also shares democratic values.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the AfD took some time to find a course. Initially, it briefly supported the measures, but then made a radical U-turn. Its representatives called for a reversal of the infection control measures and the vaccination requirement for certain professions. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine as a whole on February 24, 2022, became another topic. Here, too, the AfD positioned itself in opposition to the government line as a supposed “peace party” – which was not least fitting given that many of its representatives cultivated sympathies and close ties to the Russian regime. The topic of migration policy has also been given more attention in recent years, with a position from the former “Wing” also managing to prevail: the concept of “remigration” was increasingly pushed from the “Identitarian Movement” via the “Junge Alternative” (translation: Young Alternative) to party conferences and ultimately even made it into the election program for the 2025 federal election.

Representatives repeatedly linked criticism of migration policies with their rejection of common European approaches. Other central issues in which it hardly differs from the far right in other European countries or the USA were its rejection of equality policies, the fight against an alleged “gender ideology” and for backward-looking role models, its hostility towards alleged “mainstream media” (which it denigrates as “lying press”) and the rejection of queer life models.

Similarly, the AfD pursued the concept of “cultural hegemony,” originally developed by the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci and nonetheless popular among the New Right. This is how, as political scientist Steffen Kailitz describes it, “the political situation” is to be revolutionized.^[6] Gramsci assumed that political change can only be sustainably achieved if one enters into the competition of political ideas: An “Asocial group can and must even be a leader before it conquers governmental power”. That is why it is necessary “to win the hearts and minds of civil society on the road to power. This debate concerns places where people voluntarily meet to engage in the informal discourse of democracy en passant – the fan curve in the football stadium, the regulars‘ table, the private party, all summarized under the term ’pre-political space’.” One could add: YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, games, music.

The AfD seems to have recognized the digital counter-public as a means. In the brochure “Die Umsturzpartei” (The Insurrection Party), Andrea Röpke and Andreas Speit analyze that various online presences “flank individual social media presences of mandate and function holders in order to be able to spread unfiltered information and positions.” She has created a “digital Falange” that is orchestrated by “individual online activists who act in a highly professional manner.”

Antisemitism and Jews in the AfD

In 2018, more than 40 Jewish organizations signed a “Joint Declaration against the AfD”. It reads: “The AfD in no way represents the interests of the Jewish community. A party that has nothing to offer but hatred and agitation and no viable solutions for the current challenges facing our society cannot be an alternative for anyone. No citizen of this country who cares about our democracy can identify with this party.” The reason for this statement was the founding of the “Jews in the AfD”.

At the beginning of 2025, the top candidate and co-party leader Alice Weidel stated in the talk show “Caren Miosga” that this group now had “hundreds of members”. They would even be “[a]lmost in the four-digit range”. Author and publicist Ruben Gerczikow responded on X (formerly Twitter) to this statement: “In an interview with JAfD chairman Artur Abramovych (November 2024), there is talk of 20 members. Are you lying?” Did Weidel here transfer the perceived importance of the JAfD into numbers? Gerczikow alludes to a research project he published in the daily newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” in April 2024. There he reported: “At least quantitatively, the JAfD is probably not a success story so far. Currently, it still has only about 20 members. But observers say that they have earned a place within the party and have established contacts within the extreme right, which extend to the German Bundestag.” After the Miosga show, journalist Annika Leister presented current figures. She had spoken to Abramovych, who stated: “The ‘Jews in the AfD’ have 22 full members and around 60 supporting members [who in turn do not have to be Jewish].”

The AfD distances itself from taking responsibility for antisemitism in Germany by exploiting the fact that antisemitism also exists in Muslim communities in order to speak out in favor of an “antisemitism of the others”.

Gerczikow reports that the JAfD is repeatedly accused of serving merely as a “fig leaf” to relativize or negate the antisemitism and extreme right-wing politics within the AfD. In some cases, remarkable networks emerge, as Gerczikow has shown. He writes about Abramovych that he is not only involved in the JAfD and on the board of trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation, but has also written for the magazine “Sezession”.

How many members the JAfD actually has is not so crucial. Its existence itself already fulfills an important function for the AfD. The AfD instrumentalizes Jews to underscore its own “civility” and externalize antisemitism. Former federal chair Frauke Petry said in an interview with the daily newspaper WELT: The AfD “is one of the few political guarantors of Jewish life even in times of illegal antisemitic migration to Germany.”

In this way, the AfD distances itself from taking responsibility for antisemitism in this country as a problem of society as a whole. Antisemitism in Germany has not been “imported” or come to Germany as a result of migration, as representatives of the AfD never tire of claiming. Rather, the AfD exploits the fact that antisemitism also exists in Muslim communities – which, after all, confirms its prevalence in society as a whole and does not question it – in order to speak out in favor of an “antisemitism of the others”. In their preface to the collection “Antisemitismus in der Migrationsgesellschaft” (Antisemitism in the Migration Society), cultural studies scholar Tobias Neuburger and historian Nikolaus Hagen explain how this process takes place with regard to Muslims and migrants: “Externalization follows a familiar pattern: while the perpetrators are symbolically expatriated, antisemitism is simultaneously disposed of. As a result, antisemitism is seen as a problem carried into Europe from the outside, or as an export product from the Islamic world, or always only as the antisemitism of the others.”^[7]

Hannah Rose, a British-Jewish researcher on right-wing extremism, sees the AfD’s portrayal as pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli not as an isolated case, but as a global phenomenon of the New Right in its dealings with Judaism and antisemitism: “The shift from antisemitism to philo-Semitism has its origins in a fundamental re-conceptualization of Jewishness, in which Jews and Judaism are understood through far-right frameworks. This is done to legitimize existing ideologies. For example, by seeing Jews as European, pro-Israel and anti-Muslim, the far right is able to redirect philo-Semitism towards its own interests.”^[8]

Rose emphasizes that the supposedly ‘positive’ feelings are ultimately rooted “in the same processes as antisemitism”. The Jewish state is imagined as a “European border” against the Arab world, Jews are marked as anti-Muslim and thus seen as allies in the fight against the enemy image of ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamization’. This fits well into the world view of “ethnopluralism”, a respectable “racism without races”, where “cultures” should be separated from each other. Jews should be persuaded to leave so that their own nation can become ethnically pure. The supposed positive relationship with Jews or the state of Israel is thus at its core only a strategy.

Racist attitudes and prejudices that are widespread in Germany also exist within the Jewish community. If around 20 percent of Germans want to vote for the AfD in the 2025 federal election, then in all likelihood Jews will also be among them. According to Rose, the reasons for Jews’ interest in right-wing and far-right politics are often the same as in mainstream society.^[9] Not infrequently, the naming of Muslim antisemitism or a pretended solidarity with the state of Israel was the origin of this sympathy. Nevertheless, some Jews who sympathize with the AfD find it difficult to vote for the self-proclaimed alternative party because antisemitism in its own ranks is ignored, as are right-wing extremist activities such as those of the former “wing” or close ties to the Identitarian movement.^[10]

At the same time, the AfD’s apologists suppress the fact that antisemitism is not a fringe phenomenon within the party. It is now often described as a core element of the party’s program. In 2021, political scientist Lars Rensmann stated: “Although hostility towards Jews is not at the center of the AfD’s political campaigns and mobilizations, antisemitic ideologemes and conspiracy thinking, alongside völkisch nationalism, are an integral part of the radical right-wing populist party.”

Conspiracy narratives and the denial of remembrance are regularly employed. The narrative of the “Great Replacement” has now found its place in the AfD’s program, in symbiosis with the term “remigration.” In the past, strategic restraint has always prevailed. For example, psychologist Pia Lamberty and political data scientist Josef Holnburger explain for the analysis “Conspiracy Narratives and the AfD”: “It turns out that the AfD has repeatedly reproduced the classic elements of conspiracy narratives in the past and adapted them to their issues – but was also willing to tone down the vocabulary used in order to avoid being monitored by the domestic intelligence service.” In the past, the AfD used codes from the conspiracy theory milieu and enabled “influential individuals from this milieu to gain access to the political establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany.” However, the AfD has gradually abandoned its reluctance to do so. Not only in the context of conspiracy theories.

Antisemitism can be found “among leading political actors and among a significant proportion of the AfD’s electorate”. Such ideas are “present and evident at all levels of the AfD, from AfD members of parliament and leading figures at the district level to AfD members at the local level, in programmatic statements, political campaigns, and on the official social media channels of the party.”

A telling example of the speed with which the strategy was changed can be seen in the 2024 EU election campaign and the 2025 federal election campaign. The top candidate for the EU Parliament, Maximilian Krah, had to accept harsh sanctions for violating the tacit agreement not to openly relativize the crimes of National Socialism. Shortly before the 2023 European elections, he had denied in an interview that anyone “who wears an SS uniform is automatically a criminal.” At the party conference in the second weekend of January 2025, Weidel received strong approval in the acclamatory designation as the top candidate, despite her violation of this agreement: Just days before the party conference, she had spread historical revisionist theses on social media. In her conversation with the probably richest person in the world, tech billionaire and owner of “X”, Elon Musk, she stated that Hitler was “a communist” and thus “exactly the opposite” of right-wing. In an interview with WELT, Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, explained that there was a calculation behind this seemingly confused statement: “If you have a nationalist, authoritarian, extreme right-wing agenda, then – if you hope for greater support in society – you have to try to free your own thinking, your own ideology, from the stigma of National Socialist crimes.” The calculation, then, is this: If Hitler was actually left-wing, the AfD can be all the more open about its extreme right-wing, nationalist, racist and antisemitic positions. It wants to open up spaces of possibility. To do that, it needs to reinterpret history.

Rensmann notes that antisemitism can be found “among leading political actors and among a significant proportion of the AfD’s electorate”. Such ideas are “present and evident at all levels of the AfD, from AfD members of parliament and leading figures at the district level to AfD members at the local level, in programmatic statements, political campaigns, and on the official social media channels of the party.” Likewise, the AJC’s 2022 representative survey found: “It is hardly surprising that antisemitic attitudes are particularly widespread among the voters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).” At the same time, the AfD repeatedly tries to gain the power of definition over what is understood as antisemitism.

Epilogue

As recently as 2024, CDU member of parliament Marco Wanderwitz again initiated a debate on a ban. Wanderwitz himself eventually became the co-initiator of a group application for a ban procedure against the AfD. The Federal Constitutional Court was to be called upon to determine the unconstitutionality of the AfD. In his speech at the first reading of the motion in plenary, Wanderwitz stated: “They are enemies of the constitution, they are enemies of our democracy, they are misanthropes.” Political scientist Matthias Quent also supports the call for a ban on the AfD: “There would be enough evidence to ban the AfD. Based on the AfD’s program, I therefore think that the chances of a ban proceeding are generally good.” Nevertheless, this question should be examined primarily by constitutional lawyers, Quent continues. What is clear, however, is that from an academic perspective, it is “a party of the extreme right”.

Despite the concrete evidence, reactions to this application remain divided. On the one hand, memories are awakened of the prohibition proceedings against the NPD. Two attempts have been made to ban the far-right party. The first time, the application failed due to the large number of informants from the domestic intelligence service, who are said to have been represented in the party’s highest bodies. In the second attempt, it was determined that the party was “ideologically clearly unconstitutional”, but that “at present there is a lack of concrete evidence of weight that would make it appear possible that its actions would be successful.”

The far right has formed a global network. Its parties learn from each other, share resources, and have thus managed to conquer the pre-political space in many countries. The close ties between the AfD and the FPÖ are a prime example of this.

At the time of writing, it is still unclear whether the group application of the MPs around Marco Wanderwitz will receive the necessary majority. What is clear, however, is how the AfD is already endangering democracy and undermining democratic processes. In 2024, for example, Bayerischer Rundfunk published an analysis that concluded that the AfD faction in the German Bundestag and its members of parliament employ more than 100 staff members “who are active in organizations that are classified as right-wing extremist by German domestic intelligence agencies. Among them are activists associated with the ‘Identitarian Movement’, ideological thought leaders from the ‘New Right’ and several neo-Nazis.” Even if there is a lack of surveys to support this assessment, it can still be said with justification that running into these people in the buildings of parliament has an influence on marginalized groups and anyone who is marked as an enemy of the AfD. In addition, as the authors of the brochure “Die Umsturzpartei” (The Insurrection Party) noted, any “chumming up with their political demands […] exhausts social interaction. Right-wing agitation destabilizes society. Democracy is noticeably under pressure.”

The conflicts that have arisen between the supposedly ‘moderate’ and the völkisch-nationalist forces within the AfD have been described. Meanwhile, it can be stated that with Jörg Meuthen’s departure from the AfD, the attempts to counter the course of the former “Wing” members have come to an end. Quent emphasizes: “Despite all the substantive differences that still exist in the party, there is no longer any significant current that fundamentally opposes the shift to the right in the party.”

It seems that an environment has emerged that unites a broad spectrum from the national-conservative to the neo-Nazi right, presumably even right-wing terrorists. In November 2024, eight men were arrested who, as part of the “Saxon separatists,” allegedly prepared for a “Day X.” The group was accused of planning a coup that would have included “ethnic cleansing” or a second “Holocaust.” When the group was uncovered, it also became known that three of its alleged members were AfD members – whereupon the party quickly initiated party expulsion proceedings. In December 2022, the “Reichsbürger” group “Patriotic Union” was uncovered, which allegedly planned an armed coup. In addition to members of the police and the military, this group also included former AfD member of parliament Birgit Malsack-Winkemann.

In 2022, political scientist Claus Leggewie wrote that the “crucial question around the globe is […] whether conservative parties will hold out against the radical right or give in.” The “wobbling of the conservatives”, as Leggewie explained in the essay, has contributed to the “democratic regression” that “has been observed worldwide since the turn of the millennium”. And this wobbling has also reached a whole new level in Germany: with the prospect of an election victory, many proclaimed taboos seem to be dissolving with great fanfare. At least that is the impression currently being given by the CDU. Although the Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz has long used his authority as the CDU Chairman, to maintain the “firewall”, so the exclusion of cooperation with the AfD, but it seems to crumble with decreasing time to the election day. From the clear message “no cooperation” was a “we will bring in, regardless of who agrees with them.” At the subsequent party conference, the chancellor candidate linked his political future with an exclusion of any cooperation with the AfD. The Union should have enough reasons to maintain this exclusion. For example, one of its members, CDU politician Walter Lübcke, was murdered in 2019 by a right-wing terrorist who was close to the AfD. Unfortunately, the name Walter Lübcke only seems to be known to a few CDU politicians today.

The events of the last week of January, however, have caused an enormous earthquake. Many people, especially if they have a migration history, are black, queer or Jewish, spoke about an enormous sense of insecurity. The AfD has already undergone an enormous transformation in the short time since its founding. In the process, nationalist forces have increasingly shaped the party’s agenda according to their will. Thus, antisemitism and racism are increasingly coming to the fore. The far right has formed a global network. Its parties learn from each other, share resources, and have thus managed to conquer the pre-political space in many countries. The close ties between the AfD and the FPÖ are a prime example of this. The solution to this problem is as simple as it is obvious: political and historical education. There are already many people who have taken on this task. Nevertheless, in recent years the opportunity to secure this work financially has been missed. It is imperative that we change course. Because, without exaggerating, the preservation of democracy probably depends on this question. 

 

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Monty Ott