What Germany’s Neo-Fascist AfD Plans and How We can Stop it

Philipp Ruch, 2024, It is 5 to 1933 – What the AfD Plans and How We can Stop it, Ludwig Press, 223 pp., £13.93, ISBN: 978 3 453 28175 2.

Posted by Thomas Klikauer

In two recent elections in the two former East-Germany states – one held in the state of Saxony, and one held in the state of Thuringia on the same day – a far-right political party called AfD, or “Alternative for Germany” gained a whopping 30.6% and 32.8% respectively. In Thuringia, the Neo-Nazi AfD became by far the strongest political party with the conservative CDU trailing by a distant 23.6%. If Germany is to hold an election next Sunday, Germany-wide, the AfD would receive about 20% of voters’ support. Throughout Germany, the AfD is the second most successful political party today.  

Yet, many ask “what is the AfD all about?”. Philip Ruch who heads Germany’s “Centre for Political Beauty” argues in his German language book, that Germany has reached a crucial gateway. For Germany, it is “5 to 1933”. Ruch outlines similarities between the year 1933 and today, as well as between today’s AfD and Hitler’s Nazi party of 1933.

Since the party’s foundation eleven years ago, the AfD’s marvellous propaganda machine has been hammering Germany with its right-wing extremist ideology. This has paid off in one electoral success after another. Strangely, Germany’s state does little to stop the AfD. The Neo-Nazi party has not been declared illegal, instead, the state simply lets the AfD be. However, things were very different in the year 1930 – three years before Hitler rose to power. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning’s “Law for the protection of the republic” was a serious hit against Hitler’s Nazi party.

Around that time, 80 Nazi newspapers were made illegal, the wearing of the Nazi uniforms was prohibited, Hitler’s storm troopers – the SA – was also forbidden, the NSDAP wasn’t allowed to march, and this also included its Führer, Adolf Hitler. Also at that time, Bavaria’s minister of the interior, Karl Stützel had done more for democracy than today’s democratic state. He banned all meetings and rallies by Hitler’s Nazi party. All this seems to have worked as Hitler’s Nazi party never got even close to the magical 50% margin to enable them to govern Germany. 

Nothing comparable exists in Germany today. Germany’s state is not fighting against the AfD. The motto seems to be, let democracy fight it out for itself. Yet, in 1933, this idea was not really successful. Hitler was made chancellor of Germany with the kind assistance of other, mostly conservative, yet democratic parties.

Worse, today’s AfD is framed as a “party of protest”. But not all agreed with that. The premier of Germany’s most populous state and Germany’s foremost industrial region – North Rhine–Westphalia – called the AfD “a Nazi party”. Ruch argues that before it is too late, like it was in 1933 when German conservatives made Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany, it is actually rather easy to get rid of the AfD. Simply make the party – illegal.

To do that, the state must convince Germany’s supreme court that the AfD wants to destroy Germany’s democratic constitution, its political parties and its pluralist institutional structure. Such a move wouldn’t be new. Already in the year 1951, the German state acted against the then Neo-Nazi party SRP by outlawing it. The SRP was declared “enemy of that state”. 

Six years after Germany’s liberation from Nazism, the SRP was made up of ex-Nazis who were indeed enemies of the state. It was a time when the term “enemy of the state” wasn’t thwarted by the likes of Donald Trump. Instead, the SRP violated human rights, fought for the elimination of Germany’s newly established democratic multi-party system, and was staunchly anti-Semitic.

Barely thirteen years after all that, a new Neo-Nazi party appeared in Germany called the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD). The NPD remained marginally and has recently renamed itself as “Homeland Party”. Its deceptive name did not quite work out as in the case of the equally deceptively named AfD, Alternative für Deutschland. Ever since the setting up of the AfD, most former Homeland/NPD supporters have switched their allegiance to the AfD that is, after all, Germany’s most successful Neo-Nazi party. This does not stop AfD apparatchiks like Herr Maier to call “the NPD as the only political party that stood by Germany” – a form of Nazi nostalgia, perhaps.

The AfD’s Maier is not alone. The AfD’s “behind the scenes” leader Björn Höcke – some say, the new Führer – is also supportive of the NPD. As a young German Neo-Nazi and writing under the pseudonym of Landoff Ladig, Björn Höcke was praising Germany’s traditional Neo-Nazi party, the NPD. The AfD’s “official” boss, the simple-minded Chrupalla believes that “Germany’s democratic constitution is not set in stone”. In true dog-whistling style, this means that democracy can be replaced by an AfD-led dictatorship. What happened in 1933 can – under AfD leadership – happen again. 

Meanwhile, the AfD’s head of parliamentarian affairs says, “this democratic state or whatever they call it … we do not want it … we will eliminate it”. The AfD’s member for Germany’s federal parliament Herr Böhm agrees. He believes that “the recruiting of volunteers for mass executions shouldn’t be a problem”. This is the AfD’s plan after his very own Machtergreifung – Hitler-style. Böhm also made it clear as to what he thinks of democratically elected parliamentarians, “those pigs are nothing but puppets of the victorious forces that ended World War II”. It is a favourite theme among German Neo-Nazis to portray Germany as being run by foreign forces.

Meanwhile, the AfD’s Herr Springer is ready to “eradicate the rule of political parties” ending democratic Germany. His off sider, the AfD’s Hünich agrees, “after we gain power, we will obliterate all political parties”. At the same time, some inside the AfD dream of so-called “foreigner-free zones”. It is imagined not just in the former East-Germany where this has already, in parts, been achieved. Once, Hitler tried to make Germany “judenrein” – creating zone-free of Jews. Such zones can hardly be created in a democracy. Hence, AfD seeks to get rid of Germany’s democratic parties. The AfD seeks to do this in the same way that is used to “separate household rubbish: at first Germany’s neoliberal FDP, then its social-democratic SPD, and finally, the conservative CDU”.

To do that, AfD state parliamentarian Stein who once threatened pub goers with a weapon, smuggled a backpack full of arms and knives into a state parliament. At his home, he had a depot full of weapons. All this, and much more, makes a mockery of the hallucination that the AfD is composed of two camps: the radical right and the moderates. If they ever existed inside the AfD at all, the moderates were an isolated fringe group. In reality, the AfD has roughly 8,000 far right extremists in its midst, according to Germany’s state police.

It comes as a no surprise that one of the AfD’s founding fathers, the right-wing extremist Mr Gauland, frequently belittles the Holocaust. Even more active on this is the AfD’s federal member of parliament, Ms Malsak-Wickelmann. She also featured as a Reichsbürger dreaming of re-establishing Imperial Germany. Her well-armed and extremely violent Reichsbürger group of “Prinz Heinrich Reuß VIII” came close to a coup d’état in 2022. The target was to eliminate Germany’s democracy. After the putsch came to light, the AfD’s Malsak-Wickelmann even gained 0.2% in voters’ support in a local election. This is Germany today. And currently, the AfD’s Malsak-Wickelmann and her squadron are facing court.

Just when one might think it cannot get worse with the AfD, it does. AfD apparatchiks and Neo-Nazis held a secret meeting at Potsdam’s Wannsee in 2023. It planned the forced deportation of millions of non-Germans from Germany. At the secret meeting, the AfD was duly represented by its parliamentarian Gerrit Huy and AfD apparatchik Roland Hartwig, personal advisor to AfD-deputy boss Alice Weidel. The AfD/Neo-Nazi Wannsee meeting resulted in nation-wide anti-AfD rallies in early 2024.

Meanwhile, the meeting was, according to AfD apparatchik Springer not that ‘secret’. Writing on Twitter (now ‘X’), he said, “we will return foreigners to their homeland … millions of them. It is not a secret; it is a promise.” For years, Springer was a staffer of AfD’s lifetime member Gauland.

Pretty much all of this adds up to the AfD’s goal of destroying Germany’s parliament – from the inside of parliaments while AfD officials are happy to receive income and other perks from the much-hated state. This goes as far as a state-sponsored trip by AfD strongman Bystron to South Africa. It was camouflaged as an “official” state visit. In reality, it was to meet far right South Africans for weapons’ training. Worse, the known Neo-Nazi Maximilian – of whom Germany’s MI6 sees as a dangerous right-wing extremist – was made an AfD staffer in Germany’s federal parliament.

At the same time, the AfD’s spokesman Lüth announced himself in front of live cameras to be a “fascist” wanting to “gas and shoot foreigners”. He once also declared himself to be a “violent Neo-Nazi ready for action”. AfD man Lüth has been convicted of grievous bodily harm.

Estimates suggest that up to one-hundred Neo-Nazis found employment with the AfD serving as political advisors and staffers in various parliaments. The AfD is represented in all of Germany’s parliaments. It is just as Gobbels wrote in 1928, “if democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and state salaries [so that we can destroy it], that is its own business.” Author Ruch warns, those who did not take note of those words, have paid a bitter price.

The AfD is a party that not only desires to deport about 25 million non-Germans, but it also wishes to abolish Germany’s democratic parties. To achieve this, AfD strongman Bystron announced in 2017, that people who support democracy have to be “disposed of” like common household rubbish. This is the Neo-Nazi language of dehumanisation. Worse, the AfD plans a “heart attack for democracy” once in power.

It is a grave mistake not to take the AfD seriously even though some of its announcements sound farcical, laughable, and ridiculous. The AfD is a political party that is represented not just in all parliaments but is also furnished with plenty of tax money. To hope that the tiny group of remaining moderates inside the AfD will outrun the right-wing extremists is a failed hope. To see two factions inside the AfD is like believing in good and bad fascists. The AfD is a staunchly Neo-Nazi party in which, in 2022, some party members even planned to create a “would-be like Gestapo”. The AfD’s new Gestapo was to work inside the AfD to assure that the AfD is composed of what AfD state parliamentarian Halemba calls Herrenmensch – the ‘master’ race.

Much of this is uttered by AfD members, functionaries, apparatchiks, officials, and leaders. It testifies that the AfD is comprised of many hard-core Neo-Nazis who stick to their cause by showing that they have not been manipulated by Germany’s democratic society. This includes statements like those made by the AfD’s mini-Führer Björn Höcke on “well-tempered cruelty” that he wants to administer to those the AfD perceives as enemies. The AfD’s “well-tempered cruelty” may lead to things that aren’t, according to Björn Höcke, “pretty sights”.

That all this isn’t just idle talk can be seen on Neo-Nazi killer Stephan Ernst who has assassinated the CDU politician Walter Lübcke in 2019. Before that, Ernst distributed AfD election flyers at a nearby market square. And indeed, a recent study showed that just 13% of AfD supporters do not hold right-wing extremist views.

Meanwhile, the AfD has been near perfect in masking all this by issuing a clean party programme. The party programme is rather often analysed by well-minded academics and others, only to find what the AfD wants them to find: that the AfD is a petit bourgeois party and not an outright Neo-Nazi party. The AfD knows how to camouflage itself.

Naturally, when AfD leaders like Frohmaier advocate that the “lost land of the East needs to be conquered”, the AfD is not going to say this in its party programme. It is just as Frohmaier says, “something like that, you do not put in a party programme … you do it when you are in power”.

To obscure the AfD’s Neo-Nazism, its parliamentarian operator Witt also knows what to do: just “pack the AfD’s far right ideology in nice looking candy wrappers” he once suggested. Meanwhile, a spokesman for a regional parliament also understands what to do, “we must appear peaceful and accommodating … our political enemy must taste the sweetness of honey we have put in their mouths … later we will put them against a wall” to execute them. 

This smokescreen the more vile and violent part of the AfD. For example, Lübcke killer Ernst who was a member of an AfD discussion group, attended AfD rallies, handed out brochures for the AfD, marched with AfD mini-Führer Björn Höcke in Eisenach, and paraded his Neo-Nazism in Germany’s top Neo-Nazi city: Chemnitz. AfD supporter Ernst did all this until he shot Walter Lübcke from behind with a revolver.

Virtually, the same goes for the mass killer David Sonboly who shot people appearing as migrants to him in Munich. He, too, was a known supporter of the AfD. It also goes for AfD supporter Frank S. who stabbed Cologne’s mayor Henriette Reker by attempting to cut her throat. It also applies to the deeply anti-Semitic and far right Halle assassin Stephan Balliet who tried to break into a synagogue to kill Jewish people. The AfD had encourage his violent anti-Semitism.

Cunningly, the AfD’s youth setup is called JA (Junge Alternative) rather than HJ (Hitler’s Youth). The JA’s violent Neo-Nazi boss Mr Ufer once drove his car into an anti-AfD rally and was prosecuted for it. Much of this is done by AfD devotees in the belief that there is, as the AfD’s leader Baum says, “a silent genocide orchestrated against the German Volk”. AfD hardliner Baum escaped from East-Germany in 1988. Then as today, he believes that “Germany must remain German.” Meanwhile, other AfD apparatchiks do not shy away from wearing T-Shirts depicting the number “88”. 88 is a Neo-Nazi code. It stands for the 8^th letter in the alphabet hence, 88 stands for “HH” which is short for “Heil Hitler”.

Perhaps in the minds of AfD supporters, Hitler and now the AfD can protect them from the enemy. For the AfD, the prime enemies are migrants, refugees, and foreigners. And indeed, 77% of AfD supporters say that they are fearful of migrants while only 22% of Germans overall think that. In the newly elected AfD-state of Saxony, 64% believe that the state is overrun by foreigners. Saxony has 7.3% non-German residents. In other words, the Neo-Nazi does not need the migrant next door to be a Neo-Nazi.

What the Neo-Nazi and the AfD backer need is to be disconnected from mainstream media. AfD supporters resent and avoid Germany’s mainstream media. Instead, they fancy the “digital storm troopers” of the Internet. We know them as far right propagandistic filter bubbles. These are online platforms like Twitter (now ‘X’), Telegram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc. Indeed, a whopping 76% of AfD followers believe that “the media is guided from above”. At the same time, only 17% of all Germans believe that. 

Unlike Germany’s democratic political parties, the AfD has been extremely successful in using online platforms. A clumsy video, for example, by the AfD’s European leader Krah recently reached 1.4 million viewers. No other German party can match that. The AfD’s investment into online platforms works fabulously well. Today, 12% of those aged between 18 and 34 carry far right ideologies. While among the 64-year-olds, it is just 4.4%. Importantly, for the AfD, digital media are key mobilisation tools. In short, the AfD is conducting a digital war against democracy. 

In its far-right chat rooms, online channels, and filter bubbles, AfD apparatchiks like Baum insinuate that they are “lobbyists for bio-Germans” – the code-word for Aryans. Much of this isn’t new. Already in 1982, German Neo-Nazis issued a pamphlet suggesting that the importing of foreigners leads to racial suicide. Today, the AfD’s propaganda claims that Germany’s environmentalist Greens party is “organising the genocide of Germans behind our backs.” It also conjures up the AfD myth of a “biological fight for the survival of our Volk”.

Deceitfully, the AfD sets migrants against the Volk. And indeed, 43% of AfD fans believe that migrants have disadvantaged them. Overall, only 6% of Germans believe that. For AfD supporters this also means a “felt disadvantage”. Since AfD supporters have never experienced being disadvantaged by immigrants, they claim to “know” this from Telegam, WhatsApp, and Facebook.

Once, the AfD demanded to know, in the state parliament of Saarland, what the most common names of men who committed knife attacks are, the answer, to the displeasure of the AfD were: Michael, Daniel and Andreas. Undeterred, 96% of AfD supporters expect crimes to go up. However, according to statista.com, crimes in Germany has actually declined between 1993 and 2023. In other words, never let the facts get into the way of good propaganda. 

Former AfD leader and deserter Franziska Schreiber says, “keeping fear alive is the life blood of the AfD.” Meanwhile, a real fear like the fact that air pollution killed 253,000 people in Europe in 2021 is of no concern to the AfD. Instead, the AfD’s propaganda seeks to make people believe that “corrupt elites get criminal foreigners into Germany to decimate Germans.”

Today, all too many are still convinced that nobody believes in such nonsense. Yet, in 1928, for example, nobody believed the nonsense of Hitler’s racism and that humans, like dogs, have a race and that the mixing of races is to the detriment of Germany. Yet, Hitler sacrificed millions for this sort of nonsense.

Racism is by no means new to Germany. And yet, in the East-Germany state of Saxony, street thugs fought against a so-called “Islamisation” of Germany. At that time 0.48% of people in Saxony were Muslims. Conjuring up fear, xenophobia, and racism is part of the AfD’s sophisticated and highly successful propaganda apparatus. It is also part of the AfD’s most effective social media strategy that, as Ruch says, “puts everything Julius Streicher has ever done to shame.” In other words, the speed and reach of the AfD’s propaganda cannot be matched even by the most hateful and antisemitic demagogue Hitler had to offer.`

What the AfD has truly achieved is that today, AfD thugs run amok in Germany’s streets, display the Hitler salute, beating up journalists and foreigners, setting homes and cars alight while some even plan to “dispose of the dead bodies of the AfD’s enemies deep down in the disused mines of East-Germany’s Erzgebirge.” 

Like a magnet, the AfD attracts Neo-Nazis and far right killer squads. The AfD is the party of Lübcke’s killer just as it is the party of “Hoonaras” – hooligans, Neo-Nazis, and racists. The AfD draws in “Blood & Honour” brutes just as it draws in members of violent Neo-Nazi outfits like the infamous “Nazi-Boys” and “Combat 18” (18: 1=A, 8=H which makes “AH” for Adolf Hitler). Not to be forgotten is a Chemnitz-based thuggish gang called “Adolf Hitler Hooligans”.

Given all this, it comes as a no surprise that AfD supporters fancy a dictatorship 4.7 times more than ordinary Germans. To get to this, the AfD follows a distinct communication strategy that invites others to debate the issue with AfD officials. Yet, nothing makes the AfD appear more important than when people wanting to engage with the AfD. It levels up AfD issues and gives the AfD access to TV, radio, and newspapers. This is precisely what the AfD craves for. However, engaging with the AfD is like playing soccer with the AfD bringing its own umpire along. It is like debating a political party that does not play by the rules. Instead, the AfD wants to eradicate the rules of democratic engagement in favour of an authoritarian dictatorship.

Bio: Born on the foothills of Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer (PhD, Warwick University) is the author of over 1,000 publications including a book on Alternative für Deutschland: The AfD – published by Liverpool University Press. 

Photo: (source: Amazon.de)

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