#Alternative für Deutschland

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tim Ganser at The UnPopulist:

Since the end of World War II, Germans had by and large steadfastly resisted voting for far-right populists. That norm was shattered in the last decade by the success of the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which seemed to gain more traction as it radicalized into a full-blown, hard right populist party. A year into its existence, spurred by widespread discontent with German fiscal policy, the AfD won seven seats in European Parliament. In 2017, after undergoing a hard-right turn, it won 94 seats in the German federal elections, good for third place overall. For the past year, the AfD has consistently ranked second in Politico’s poll aggregator tracking the public’s voting intentions.

In this Sunday’s European Parliament elections, roughly 1 in 6 German voters is expected to cast a ballot for the AfD, whose members have trivialized the Holocaust, encouraged their followers to chant Nazi slogans, and participated in a secret conference where they fantasized about forced deportations of naturalized citizens they derisively call “Passport Germans.” Worse still, the AfD is predicted to be the strongest party, with up to a third of the vote share, in the three elections for state parliament in Saxony and Thuringia on Sept. 1 and in Brandenburg on Sept. 22. And in generic polls for a hypothetical federal election, the AfD fares even better than it did in any previous election. How did Germany get to this point?

The AfD’s Origin Story

The AfD was founded in early 2013 by a group of conservatives, led by the economics professor, Bernd Lucke, greatly disillusioned with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fiscal policy. In their view, the European debt crisis had revealed deep instability within the eurozone project as smaller nations found themselves unable to cope with the economic demands of membership, and they believed Merkel’s focus on saving the euro was coming at the expense of German economic interests. This was, however, the opposite of a populist complaint—in fact, the AfD was initially referred to as a “Professorenpartei” (a professor’s party) because of the party’s early support from various economics professors who were more interested in fiscal policy than catering to popular will. In its earliest days, the AfD could best be characterized as a cranky but respectable party of fiscal hardliners. Its anti-establishment posture stemmed entirely from its belief in the necessity of austerity. Even its name could be construed less as nationalistic and more an answer to the dictum coined by Merkel—“alternativlose Politik” (policy for which there is no alternative)—to defend her bailouts during the eurozone crisis.

Although the AfD had launched an abstract economic critique of Merkel’s policies that could be hard to parse for non-experts, its contrarian stance resonated with a significant portion of Germans. Right out of the gate, the AfD obtained the highest vote share of any new party since 1953, nearly clearing the 5% threshold for inclusion in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament, in its first electoral go round. Its success was also measurable in terms of membership, passing the 10,000 mark almost immediately after its formation. The rapid increase in membership, however, helped lay the groundwork for its turn toward right-wing populism. Perhaps due to pure negligence—or a combination of calculation and ambition—the party’s founders did little to stop right-wing populists from swelling its rolls. And as the German economy emerged through the European debt crisis in good financial shape, fiscal conservatism naturally faded from the public’s consciousness. However, a new European crisis having to do with migrants came to dominate the popular imagination. The AfD hardliners seized on the growing anti-migrant opinion, positioning the AfD as its champion, thereby cementing the party’s turn towards culture war issues like immigration and national identity.

Starting in late 2014, organized right-wing protesters took to the streets to loudly rail against Germany’s decision to admit Muslim migrants, many fleeing the Syrian civil war. The AfD right wing’s desire to become the political home of nativism led to a rift within the party that culminated in founder Bernd Lucke’s being ousted as leader in 2015, and his replacement with hardliner Frauke Petry. Lucke left the party entirely, citing its right-wing shift, following in the footsteps of what other party leaders had already done and more would do in the coming year. Up until this point, the AfD unwittingly helped the cause of right-wing populism. If the reactionary far-right had tried to start a party from scratch, it would have likely failed. The AfD, after all, was created within a respectable mold, trading on the credentials of its earliest founders and leaders. But with saner voices now pushed out, right-wing populists had the party with public respectability and an established name all to themselves. And they deliberately turned it into a Trojan horse for reactionary leaders who wanted to “fight the system from within.

[...]

A New Normal in Germany

As right-wing populist positions have become part of the political discourse, Germany is now in the exact same position as some of its European neighbors with established hardline populist parties. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni ascended to the premiership in October 2022 as the head of her neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, which is poised to perform well in the upcoming European Parliament elections. In France, the Marine Le Pen-led far-right Rassemblement National (RN) is set to bag a third of votes in those elections, roughly double what President Macron’s governing coalition is expected to obtain.

What makes the situation in Germany especially worrisome is that, unlike in France and Italy, far-right parties had failed to garner any meaningful vote share in nationwide elections until just seven years ago; indeed, until the 2017 federal election, there had never been a right-wing populist party that had received more than six percent of the national vote in Germany. The nation’s special vigilance toward far right ethnonationalism in light of its history of Nazi atrocities was expected to spare Germany the resurgence of far-right populism. But it actually led to complacency among mainstream parties. By 2017, the AfD—already in its right-wing populist phase—received nearly 13% of the vote in the federal election to become the third-strongest parliamentary entity. And by then it had also made inroads in all state parliaments as well as the European Parliament. The norm against it was officially gone.

To be sure, the AfD is not on track to take over German politics. It currently has the fifth most seats among all German parties in the Bundestag, fourth most seats among German parties in the European Parliament, and is a distant eighth in party membership. Nor is it currently a threat to dominate European politics—late last month, the AfD was ousted from the Marine Le Pen-led Identity and Democracy (ID) party coalition, the most right-wing group in the European Parliament. Le Pen, herself a far-right radical, explained the AfD’s expulsion by describing the party as “clearly controlled by radical groups.” But none of the above offer good grounds for thinking the AfD will be relegated to the fringes of German or European politics.

After the election, the AfD could rejoin ID, or it could form a new, even more radical right-wing presence within the European Parliament. Some fear that the AfD could potentially join forces with Bulgaria’s ultranationalist Vazrazhdane. Its leader, Kostadin Kostadinov, said that AfD’s expulsion from ID could create an opening to form “a real conservative and sovereigntist group in the European Parliament.” Also, ID’s removal of the AfD wasn’t due to its stated policy platform being out of step with Europe’s right-wing populist project. Rather, it was because the AfD’s leading candidate, Maximillian Krah, was implicated in a corruption and spying scandal involving China and Russia, and because he said he would not automatically construe a member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) to be a criminal. Absent these entirely preventable missteps, the AfD would be in good standing with right-wing populist partners in Europe.

Seeing far-right Nazi-esque Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) rise in prominence in Germany is a sad sight.

[kjell-e]

Hey, international besties, once again the German fascists are talking about deportation of people they don’t see as part of the German society and I am not looking forward to the elections next year

[phlebasphoenician]

today a fascist won an election for the first time since 1933. here, in germany.

i don't care if it's just one (out of 16) states. björn höcke is a fascist. a court decided not long ago that it's allowed to call him a nazi. bc he is one. not "far right" or "conservative" - he is a nazi.

here. in germany. and he just won an election.

it hasn't even been 100 years.

i am scared.

[dawum-de]

[atsvensson]

Extremhögerns framgångar i de tyska valen

För första gången sedan nazismens fall 1945 har ett högerextremt parti blivit det största i ett val i Tyskland. Med 32,8 procent av rösterna blev Alternative für Deutschland, AfD, största parti i delstatsvalet i Thüringen och med 30,6 procent hamnade partiet bara en procent efter högerpartiet CDU i Sachsen. Detta samtidigt som valdeltagandet ökade avsevärt från 2019 i båda delstaterna, från…

[suzimiya]

' #Stolzmonat ist nichts anderes als eine Aktion von Pädophilen, damit man sich gegenseitig bekannt machen kann. Die unterschiedlichen Rotfarben soll die Entjungferung von Jungen Mädchen symbolisieren. Der Übergang in das Gelbe zeigt, dass man auf Kinderurin steht. '

Q https://x.com/yumanodachi/status/1795188489543123290 via @yumanodachi

[nerdwelt]

Alice Weidel fordert von Scholz vollständige Aufklärung über LNG-Geschäfte

18.08.2023 – 11:58 AfD – Alternative für Deutschland Berlin ((Mit OTS Quellen.)) Medienberichten zufolge hat Bundeskanzler Scholz persönlich die Auftragsvergabe zum Betrieb von LNG-Terminals in der Ostsee gesteuert und von der Koalition ohne angemessene Prüfung genehmigt. Es gibt den Verdacht, dass die versprochenen Finanzierungsgelder möglicherweise nicht verfügbar waren. Alice Weidel,…

[lorenzlund]

Alles längst schon etablierte Part Eier selber auch!

(in Berlin wird derzeit neu gewählt!)

Selbst bei der AfD!

‘AfD tickt jetzt wieder mehr rechts! Bei ihr sind mehr extreme Rechte als zu Gründungszeiten noch auch dieser Part-ei!!’

“Ein Weißer, der immer wieder aufsteht!’ *orig.: ein Zombie

“Partei drohte mehrfach die Spaltung!”

“Alles Herren im gesetzten Alter ... und gegen alle Widerstände der (auch noch) anderen Part-eien!!”

“Nach den Grünen hatte sie die meisten Er-folge, und so ist es möglich, geht der Aufstieg weiter!!” (Trotz Widerständen!)

“Sie hatte auch schon ledigliche Zwischenhochs!!”

“Auch galt man schon als totgesagt!”

“Die Rechtspo-puhlisten sie sind gekommen um zu bleiben! Geht damit um!!!”

“Besonders stark ist sie im Osten, mit der meisten Kraft!”

“Nicht überall aber konnte sie zurückkommen! Es gab kein Comeback!!”

“Sie verfügt aber über sehr stabile Apparate, gilt für cleverer als frühere Rechts-part-eier!”

“Mal gibt sie sich bürgerlich, mal offen rechtsextrem. Was wohl mit der Hetero-Vergangenheit zu tun hat ihrer Parlamentarier und gesammelter Erfahrung bzw. Erfahrungen!!” heterogen

“Mut zur Lucke!”

“Sie gehört als Partei aber nicht den organisierten Glatzen an!” *gemeint ist hier sehr wahrscheinlich: unter Männern!

“Eine ähnliche Strategie verfolgt Marie Le Pen mit auch ihrem Esemblement in Frankreich!!” Ass-emblement, die Ansammlung, Gruppenansammlung, Gruppe, Gruppierung gemeinsame

[beardedhandstoadshark]

Hey. Fun fact.

Germany is replaying the beginning of the Third Reich now.

The Too-German-Didn’t-Read is that main guys of the right-extremist party that is currently on a major rise, AfD, met with actual neo-nazis discussing plans to deport millions of people, those being anyone whose families came here after WW2 + anyone helping immigrants and refugees, to a fucking "Model State in North Africa“ specifically conscripted for the sole purpose of keeping them there.

And a good chunk of the other politicians plus the main law council itself that could do anything against it is saying it can’t ban them because the AfD isn’t proven to be acting in incitement enough.

Fun.

[harleydirkbieder]

VW-Insider: Regierung zerstört Deutschland! (Uwe Hück) - Marc Friedrich

Zu Gast ist heute Uwe Hück, der sich vom Leben im Waisenhaus zum Betriebsratsvorsitzenden der Porsche AG hochgearbeitet hat. Außerdem ist er Welt- und Europameister im Thaiboxen. Für Ihn zählt Disziplin, Anstand und Respekt – das ist sein Erfolgsrezept! Leider hat Deutschland genau jene Tugenden verlernt, vor allem auf politischer Ebene. Uwe Hück sieht einer grundlegenden Transformation in…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Kate Connolly at The Guardian:

A German aristocrat who hosted Samuel Alito at her castle in 2023 has revealed new details about her friendship with the rightwing supreme court justice, including that they share a mutual friend who played a key role in JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism. Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, a onetime party girl turned traditionalist Catholic activist who has faced criticism for her defense of far-right politicians in Germany, told the Guardian that she first met Alito in Rome – she could not remember what year – and that both were friends of Dominic Legge, a priest and Yale Law graduate in Washington who Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, has often cited in discussions about his adult conversion to Catholicism.

The relationship between the 64-year-old noblewoman and Alito sparked media interest after the supreme court justice revealed last week in a financial disclosure form that he had accepted concert tickets worth $900 from the billionaire, who refers to herself as a princess even though Germany’s aristocracy was officially disbanded after the first world war. She later told the German press that Alito had overestimated the cost of the tickets, but did not elaborate. The supreme court justice has previously faced scrutiny for failing to report free travel on a private jet from a wealthy conservative billionaire who had business before the court, a story first reported by ProPublica that is a part of a broader ethics scandal that has engulfed the high court in recent years. Alito faced a separate controversy earlier this year after it was discovered that his household had flown an upside-down flag, a symbol of Stop the Steal campaigners who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, as well as a second flag at a beach property that was associated with the Christian nationalist movement. Alito’s disclosure about the free tickets are significant for another reason: they reveal new insights into Alito and his wife Martha-Ann’s apparent personal ties to a European aristocrat who is deeply entrenched in an international rightwing movement that is seeking to advance conservative Catholic policies.

Allies in her fight include the rightwing nationalist Steve Bannon and the ultra conservative German cardinal Gerhard Müller, who she once called the “Donald Trump of the Catholic Church”. Her circle is known to be fiercely critical of Pope Francis – who is seen as too liberal by orthodox and traditionalist sects of the Catholic church. Legge, who leads the Thomistic Institute in Washington, is a prominent member of an elite circle of traditionalist Catholics in the US capital, and sits on the board of an organization – the Napa Legal Institute – alongside Leonard Leo, the powerbroker who is widely seen as having used his influence to install Republicans’ conservative supermajority on the supreme court and reportedly recently called for conservative activists to “crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society”.

[...] Von Thurn und Taxis compared herself to the late British Queen Elizabeth – whose family she noted was of German descent – and said the role of the aristocracy in Germany was to unite people and “keep politics out of the salon”. She also claimed in an email not to know that the decision that overturned abortion rights is called the “Dobbs decision”. But an examination of von Thurn und Taxis’s own activities shows that the woman who was known during a punk phase – before her turn to conservative Catholicism – as Princess TNT, for her explosive personality – has deep political ties that have given her access not only to supreme court justices, but inside the Trump White House.

[...] “This is not just about the arrogance of a powerful man already embroiled in controversial ties to billionaires. It is also about the company he keeps: choosing to accept very expensive concert tickets from a woman who embraces far-right politicians who are aligned with her outspoken hostility toward abortion access and marriage equality,” said Lisa Graves, the managing director of Court Accountability and a former deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Graves added: “Their alliance is unsurprising though very troubling since Alito has been using his position on the supreme court to advance a parallel regressive agenda into law.” In October 2019, at a speech in Washington in which she effusively praised the Trump administration, von Thurn und Taxis personally thanked Leonard Leo for setting up meetings for Cardinal Müller, who she was traveling with, to visit the White House and meet with people who were directly advising Trump on religious liberty and free speech.

She warned that, if Trump was not re-elected, ��they will come after us” and that “nothing less” was at stake than the right to worship. Democrat Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, later won the 2020 election, but neither he nor Nancy Pelosi, another prominent Democratic Catholic politician, are seen as authentic Catholics by traditionalists. During that trip, von Thurn und Taxis also met and was photographed with Alito, Cardinal Müller, the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Brian Brown, who was then the head of the anti-LGBTQ+ group National Organization for Marriage (NOM). According to reporting by the New Yorker, NOM was actively lobbying the court on cases involving gay rights at the time of the meeting.

This year, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April called Threats to Faith and Family, von Thurn und Taxis served up a series of grievances about the state of the family in Europe, complained that “only homosexuals want to get married”, while unmarried heterosexual couples were opting for pets instead of children. She also criticized – in an apparent reference to the availability of reproductive rights in Europe – how leaders continued to “finance the killing of our offspring”, which she said would exacerbate future labor shortages on the continent. “Does this make any sense? Is there some kind of racism? Are we not supposed to reproduce?” she asked rhetorically, before launching into praise of Hungary, which she said was an outlier in supporting families with children. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian autocratic leader, has been a guest at the noblewoman’s festival.

The Guardian has a explosive report that SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito has ties to far-right German aristocrat Gloria von Thurn und Taxis.

[crimethinc]

In 1930, the German state of Thuringia was the first in which the Nazi Party won the elections. This week, the fascist party Alternative für Deutschland won the highest number of votes in Thuringia. The resurgence of fascism in Germany is reflected in a wave of Nazi street violence around the country.

Around the world, neoliberal regimes have brutally repressed anti-capitalist movements, creating a situation in which fascists can pretend to represent the only alternative. Fascism will continue to gain momentum until we create grassroots movements that can crush it while addressing the problems capitalism creates once and for all.

Background:

https://crimethinc.com/Germany2024

[dawum-de]

[jloisse]

[mariacallous]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/17/samuel-alito-leonard-leo-gloria-von-thurn-und-taxis-napa-institute

Well then.

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito and a German aristocrat and “networker of the far right” from whom Alito accepted expensive concert tickets, are both linked to an ultra-conservative Catholic US group whose board members include the dark money impresario Leonard Leo and the founder of a hardline anti-abortion Christian group, documentation reviewed by the Guardian shows.

In 2018, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, told the New York Times about attending a dinner hosted in Rome by James Harvey, an American cardinal and hardliner, and sponsored by the Napa Institute, a group founded by Timothy R Busch, a conservative Catholic businessman and political activist.

Leo, 59, is an activist and fundraiser who worked on the confirmations of all six rightwing justices who now dominate the supreme court, Alito among them. Now controlling billions of dollars in funding for rightwing groups, Leo is a director of the Napa Institute Legal Foundation, also known as Napa Legal Institute, and the Napa Institute Support Foundation.

Also among Napa Legal Institute directors is Alan Sears, founder of the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF was the principal driver of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the supreme court ended the federal right to abortion, with Alito writing the ruling handed down in June 2022.

In 2017, the Napa Institute hosted a two-day symposium at the Trump hotel in Washington, during which Alito attended a dinner.

Writing for the Washington Post, John Gehring, an author and reporter, said the symposium “mixed traditional Catholic religious practices with moments that felt uncomfortably nationalistic”, including a “reading in the rosary booklet from [the Confederate general] Robert E Lee that [seemed] … stunningly insensitive at best … at a time when the ‘alt-right’ and white nationalism are basking in the glow of renewed attention and proximity to power”.

Alito is not the only supreme court justice with links to the Napa Institute. In September 2021, as part of a series sponsored by the group, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at the University of Notre Dame.

“The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch and we may have become the most dangerous,” Thomas said, attacking judges he deemed to be “venturing into areas we should not have entered into” – meaning politics.

Thomas and Alito, however, have been the subject of numerous reports about undeclared gifts from rightwing donors, fueling an ethics crisis now stoked by news of Alito’s acceptance of concert tickets valued at $900 from von Thurn und Taxis.

Von Thurn und Taxis, 64, is a former punk turned billionaire, also known as Princess TNT, with close links to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. News of her gift to Alito was accompanied by reporting of further links between the two, including a picture of Alito and another rightwing justice, Brett Kavanaugh, posing at the supreme court in 2019 with the German socialite; Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a German hardliner; and Brian Brown, a prominent US anti-LGBTQ+ campaigner.

Von Thurn und Taxis told German media that Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, attended a concert at her castle in Bavaria last year as “private friends”. In emails to the Guardian, the aristocrat clarified: “We never speak about politics nor religion at the table, because we believe it limits the possibility to make friends.”

The socialite, who rejects the label “networker of the far right”, also said it would “never occur” to her to speak about “touchy subjects” like abortion with someone she knew socially, and claimed not to know that “the Dobbs decision” referred to the supreme court abortion rights ruling written by Alito.

In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels last April, von Thurn und Taxis said European leaders were “financ[ing] the killing of our offspring” in an apparent reference to the availability of reproductive rights in Europe. She added: “Does this make any sense? Is there some kind of racism? Are we not supposed to reproduce?”

Alito and his wife have also been outspoken about abortion and other hot-button cultural issues. In June, the progressive activist Lauren Windsor released recordings in which Justice Alito agreed that the US should “return … to a place of godliness” and said, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left”. Regarding her supposed persecution from those on the left, his wife said: “Look at me, look at me. I’m German. I’m from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.”

Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, which campaigns for court reform and which highlighted links between the German socialite, the Napa Institute and Alito, said: “When a supreme court justice like Samuel Alito pals around with influential rightwing figures like Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and Leonard Leo, it raises concerns about fairness and impartiality.

“These relationships aren’t just about gifts. They reflect a deeper effort to manipulate our legal system in ways that could impact the rights of everyday people.”

Ciccone added, “What’s disturbing is that this happens behind closed doors – at parties at the Bavarian castle – away from public scrutiny. We’re talking about relationships that can affect everything, from reproductive rights to environmental protections” – both the subject of recent supreme court rulings widely seen as victories for the political right.

“The American people deserve a judiciary that serves justice impartially,” Ciccone said, “not one that can be bought.”