#Alternative for Germany AfD

[l-in-c-future]

The Future of Germany and her new vision for the future of Eurasia

In exclusive interviews with Alice Weidel, foreign policy spokesman Matthias Moosdorf and powerful ideologue Björn Höcke, DW’s Richard Walker and Rosalia Romaniec scrutinize the AfD’s views on Germany’s alliances and NATO Article 5 commitments to the Baltic states and Poland, its skepticism of the United States, possible future architectures for European defense, who should have nuclear weapons, future ties with Russia and China, and how Germany should act in a Taiwan conflict scenario.

Includes analysis from leading international experts on Russia, China, the US and Europe: Alexander Gabuev (Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center), Amanda Hsiao (International Crisis Group), Katarzyna Pisarska (Warsaw Security Forum), Peter Rough (Hudson Institute), and Judy Dempsey (Carnegie Europe).

What do AfD's ideologies and policies imply? 1. Possible Germanic exit of NATO and EU.

2. Prussia back but this Prussia is Pro-Russia. Plausibly the entire Germany will become the new "East" Germany if this party becomes future Germany government. Join the pan-Russian new empire under Putin.

3. AfD 'downplayed' Nazi ideology doesn't mean they do not endorse such ideology. It is just a carpeted political expression.

4. They wrongly pin that Germany 'should have' closer relationship with PRC because Germany has already have quite close economic relationship with PRC. Germany is far less much political hostile to PRC in previous governments compares to USA and other EU members. However, the 'closer ties' under the pro-Putin plus package (including Xi) will mean an AfD government will not be a friend of Taiwan. 5. While USA is under the seige of internal political turmoils, demanding ALL US troops and bases to leave Germany is a whole different matter. It is more than a 'Germany first' rhetoric (ironically, this echoes with D Trump's MAGA and America first ideology regarding NATO). Therefore an AfD government has much broader consequences on NATO.

6. If an AfD Germany government executes NATO exist , it will have destructive consequence to the Allied forces because Germany is not the only country being affected by the rise of far-right and right wing nationalistic and ethnic 'purity' driven populism. Germany is one of the greatest power within EU and NATO on Europe. The recent EU election already revealed prevailence of right wing 'conservative' parties. The early signal of what the future of EU might look like already on the horizon. If AfD becomes a Germany government, this regime will further EU further towards far-right wing.

7. Implications to global security is dim. Both sides of the Atlantics resembly terribly close to the prevailing ideological and political landscapes in 1930s before WW2. This is unprecedented since the beginning of last century. Whether it was the rise and competition of fascism and communism between the global powers, it is a high fire political seasons for conflicts and wars. Yet worse than the 1930s, the current Western democratic world doesn't have strong countering forces to deter far right emergence internally and attacks of foreign autocratic superpower Russia because the people's belief about alliance and democracy fades like a rapidly dying person. Whether these populistic parties become authoritarian governments BECAUSE PEOPLE CHOOSE them and therefore such governments tighten relationships with other existing autocracies such as Russia, China and ANY other similar regimes, the future of democracy of Eurasia doesn't look bright.

Conclusion

As I wrote before, unless the Western governments have will to address the root causes of the rise of populism and ultra-nationalism to smooth people's anger and disenfranchising and distrust of the existing establishments, the fires of extremisms will burn down the current democratic world order.

EU needs to reflect its ways of handling politics and polices. Member nations are grunting and grudging because they feel like losing too much national sovereignties while EU is bureaucratic, rigid, and too imposing without regarding individual countries' circumstances.

What the Western world MUST learn from history is that it was their own disintegration and internal divisions that caused the demises of every previous empire and kingdom.

Not that just the side of Russia, China or whoever may break the last straws of their long broken dockey necks. They should be aware that it doesn't need Russia and China to officially invade them. Rottening from inside out was the more true cause of the demise of a country BEFORE external forces come in. Russia surely has historical great motive to break the democratic Eurasia but China doesn't seem to benefit much from a WW3 given her current dim economic situation. Any external political turmoils are as bad as to China as the rest of the world. "China" is not a one type fit all generic excuse and explainations for ALL problems of the Western politics. A wall doesn't suddenly collapse unless it is already weakened significantly.

[ireton]

Alice Weidel - AfD candidate to replace Scholz in the February 2025 federal election.

AfD - Alternative für Deutschland - Alternative for Germany

[a-typical]

Why is right-wing populism outmatching left-wing populism across the Globe?

It’s so much easier to make people feel afraid than it is to make them feel hopeful or safe or supported. Right wing populism preys on people’s fears and stokes pre-existing anxieties, while also providing an individual “strongman” that people can look to for resolution. Simple and effective.

If we look at left-wing policies or general ideological talking points, they require both:

an inherent empathy/sympathy for strangers and community alike

a strong persistence to work against pre-existing institutions/structures to achieve that which isn’t often simple

It requires more effort, more funding, and occasionally can’t be simplified into layman’s terms, which ostracizes those who can’t reach higher education. This, above all else, is what makes right-wing populist rhetoric so effective - it’s approachable. It doesn’t ask you to care for others (quite the opposite) outside of your own interests. It’s comforting to have a powerful leader who “isn’t afraid to speak the truth” or “tell it like it is”, when the preceding leaders have all spoken outside your comprehension and made you feel isolated from your country in their education, class, and/or status.

Really, right-wing populism is in vogue because it’s so much easier to understand and so much easier to exercise. It doesn’t ask for much - it certainly doesn’t ask for us to follow rules or facts. It’s chameleon, and its rhetoric shapes to what would reach the most people regardless of how plausible, reasonable, or respectable it is.

[justforbooks]

Elon Musk makes surprise appearance at AfD event in eastern Germany

Tycoon tells 4,500 people at campaign event in Halle to be proud of German culture in speech via video link

Elon Musk made a surprise appearance during Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election campaign event in Halle in eastern Germany on Saturday, speaking publicly in support of the far-right party for the second time in as many weeks.

Addressing a hall of 4,500 people alongside the party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, Musk spoke live via video link about preserving German culture and protecting the German people.

“It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Musk said.

Last week, the US billionaire caused uproar after he made a gesture that drew online comparisons to a Nazi salute during President Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities.

On Saturday, he said “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents”, apparently referring to Germany’s Nazi past.

“There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” he said.

Musk, who spoke of suppression of speech under Germany’s government, has previously attacked German chancellor Olaf Scholz on X.

For his part, Scholz on Tuesday said he does not support freedom of speech when it is used for extreme-right views.

Musk spoke in favour of voting for the far-right party. “I’m very excited for the AfD, I think you’re really the best hope for Germany’s fight for a great future for Germany,” he told onlookers.

Weidel thanked him, said the Republicans were making America great again, and called on her supporters to make Germany great again.

Earlier this month, Musk hosted Weidel in an interview on X, stirring concern about election meddling.

Despite winter weather, anti-far-right campaigners were out in force on Saturday, with about 100,000 gathering around Berlin’s Brandenburg gate and up to 20,000 in Cologne, including people of all ages carrying colourful umbrellas.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[coochiequeens]

Germany.......

By Marielena Meder December 7, 2024

Germany’s Free Democratic Party (FPD) is seeking to prohibit the re-election of two female members who voted against the nation’s radical self-identification law. Katja Adler and Linda Teuteberg are the only two women in the FDP who voted against the law, with both expressing concerns about the implications gender ideology has for women’s safety.

In April of 2024, the German Bundestag voted for the Self-Determination Act, which allows people to simply change their sex and first name at the registry office and threatens with a fine of €10,000 if someone reveals their previous first name and real sex. With 251 votes against, two women from the FDP, Katja Adler and Linda Teuteberg, also voted against this proposed law. 

In a personal statement, Adler pointed out that the law would result in women having fewer rights to single-sex spaces, and that it contradicted with the German Constitution’s guarantee that “men and women have equal rights.” Adler argued that the clause would be rendered unenforceable if men were capable of declaring themselves “women” at any time.

During an��online event with women’s rights group Frauenheldinnen, Adler also expressed concerns about how the law impacted minors. The Self-Determination Act allows parents to change their child’s name and sex marker from birth, but also allows children to seek legal name and sex marker changes without parental consent via a youth court order. Reflecting on the dramatic changes, Adler said: “I cannot and will not agree to that.”

See rest of article

By Marielena Meder December 16, 2024

The German federal state of Saxony has released records on the amount of trans-identified males housed in women’s prisons, but only after demanding an egregious €1,100 fee. The effort, spearheaded by Let Women Speak, revealed that a number of male sex offenders were being housed with women.

In May of 2024, Initiative “Let Women Speak” (Lasst Frauen Sprechen) began to file Freedom of Information requests requesting data on the amount of males being housed with women in various state facilities across Germany. Most of the states responded with data which indicated that trans-identified males had been transferred to women’s prisons far ahead of any federal law requiring them to be accommodated according to their “gender identity.”

The Ministry of Justice in Saxony, a region led by the pro-trans Green Party, was the only federal state which demanded a prohibitive fee of €1,100 to access the records. As a result, Let Women Speak was forced to withdraw their request and requested local assistance in getting the information.

In response to their call for help, right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) submitted an inquiry asking how many individuals with a “deviating gender identity” had been imprisoned in the state of Saxony since January 2020. The Ministry of Justice responded to their request, admitting that there were nine people with “deviating gender identities” in their facilities. However, they did not provide any information about what sex these people are or where they had been accommodated. The Ministry further revealed that inmates who legally changed their gender identity prior to being imprisoned would not be recorded as having a “deviating gender identity.”

German outlet NiUS also facilitated a request for similar information and received a response from the Ministry of Justice in Saxony indicating that three males had been housed at the Chemnitz correctional facility for women between 2023 and 2024. The inmates had criminal records indicating assault, sexual assault, sexual harassment and assault on law enforcement officers. One of them was convicted of rape.

While the identities of the men are not known, multiple female inmates have come forward this year to report that they had been housed with a sexually abusive trans-identified man in Chemnitz.

According to the women, who spoke to Freie Presse earlier this year, the trans-identified male inmate repeatedly ambushed them during activities and was aggressive, verbally abusive and threatened to beat them.

The man had also reportedly forced the women, including female correctional officers, to watch him masturbate. According to Freie Presse, he was eventually transferred back to the men’s prison.

In another incident out of Chemnitz, a trans-identified man identified as Jan Daniel K. almost murdered a female correctional officer by strangulation. According to BILD, Jan Daniel was a violent criminal and pimp who had been sentenced to 13 years in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. He declared himself “female” during his sentencing hearing, and was transferred to a women’s prison shortly after.

Jan Daniel targeted the female correctional officer after being penalized by her, and took his revenge by dragging her into his cell during routine checks and strangling her. It is unclear whether he was transferred back to the male estate or was allowed to remain in the women’s facility.

Despite there being several known problems in Chemnitz as a result of male inmates being moved in, the Saxon Green Party initiated a change to the state’s prison law in December 2023 intended to further satisfy “trans inmates.”

The draft of the law states its intention is to improve the treatment of “transsexual, intersex and non-binary prisoners” and “prisoners with diverse or no sex marker” in their legal documents. The law includes “sexual identity” as a protected characteristic, thus removing the principle of separation between male and female inmates as soon as a detainee proclaims he is a “woman.”

The law would further strengthen Germany’s already-radical gender Self-Determination Act (SBGG), which came into force November 1. The SBGG allows individuals to change their name and sex with few restrictions and imposes harsh punishments for those who fail to treat individuals in accordance with their self-declared gender identity.

Speaking to Reduxx, Hanna-Katarina Zippel of Let Women Speak said that she was “shocked” with the information released by the Ministry of Justice in Saxony, which demonstrated that the government was moving men into women’s prisons even before they were legally obligated to.

“It was shocking to learn that so many men were already being held in women’s prisons even before the self-identification law came into force. At the same time, however, the fact that so many media outlets and also some politicians took up our research shows me that it was worth making the inquiry to begin with,” she said.

“In order to fight for the withdrawal of self-identification law, it is crucial to educate people, especially women, about what it really means for them and to show them real-life examples. I hope that with our research we have reached many people who were not aware of the consequences of the new German self-ID law and that we have encouraged many people to speak out critically, so that hopefully one day no woman will have to endure being incarcerated with a man anymore.”

Despite female inmates having come forward about abuses they have suffered, all 16 federal state ministries deny that any sexual assaults have taken place in female facilities as a result of trans-identified males being housed with women.

René Müller, Federal Chairman of the Association of Prison Officers in Germany, has publicly expressed doubts about the official information. Speaking to Die Welt, Müller said that not every incident would have been recorded or reported by those affected. In its response to the AfD, the Ministry of Justice in Saxony also admitted that the sexual abuse or harassment of female inmates by trans-identified males would not be recorded.

[spetura]

youtube ad: do you want to travel? do you want to learn new skills? do you want to meet fun people and do team building exercises?

me: no i will not be joining the army

youtube ad for the fucking AFD: aw :( we’ll ask again later

[xtruss]

© AP Photo/Wally Santana, Thursday April 10, 2025, Sputnik International

What Is USAID’s Scandalous Legacy In Six Nations It's Made A Comeback To?

USAID Operations, Reportedly Rebooted in Syria, Somalia, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Ecuador, Were More a Curse Than a Blessing For These Countries.

Here’s Why:

Syria: Funding infamous White Helmets - key players in staging chemical attack frame-ups that triggered Western strikes on Syria. $44.6M USAID program implicated in embezzlement and cash diversions to armed groups in Idlib.

Somalia: USAID, responsible for 40% of aid, faced claims of fraud vulnerability and fund diversions, with congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) accusing it of bankrolling terrorist groups, including Boko Haram.

Lebanon: USAID took credit for laying the groundwork for Lebanon’s 2005 Cedar Revolution, boasting years of funding before protests forced Syria’s exit. US aid tripled in the early 2000s - from $15M to $45M.

Ecuador: Then-president Rafael Correa accused the agency of funding opposition to destabilize his government. WikiLeaks-uncovered cables revealed US actions to derail his 2006 run. US State Dept sent a $20K grant for Ecuadorian drag theater, DOGE found.

Jordan: Funding of infrastructure and services sparked accusations of creating fiscal dependency, with aid used as leverage for policy alignments, including forcing Palestinian refugee repositioning, per The National News.

Iraq: Halliburton, Bechtel accused of reaping windfalls of post-war reconstruction; watchdog groups claimed funds were siphoned off, and used to shape politics to fit US interests.

Guess Who's Back: USAID Operations Rebooted in Several Crisis Zones

Flowers and a sign are placed outside the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington. - Sputnik International © AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana. April 9, 2025

US President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk have repeatedly accused USAID of fraud, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency had long “strayed from its original mission.”

At least 6 previously terminated USAID programs are being revived for emergency food assistance funding in Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Jordan, Iraq, and Ecuador, Reuters reported.

The move reportedly followed pressure from inside the administration and from Congress.

US president Donald had previously frozen foreign aid and dismissed hundreds of USAID employees as part of DOGE-led efforts to slash federal programs and departments with little oversight, with Elon Musk calling labelling the agency a “criminal organization.”

By bankrolling so-called civil society groups, USAID has long functioned as a covert enabler of American influence, sowing unrest and paving the way for regime change while packaging it all as “promoting democracy."

USAID or SorosAid? How US Tax Dollars Fund Chaos Worldwide

© AP Photo/Kin Cheung. February 07, 2025, Ekaterina Blinova, Sputnik International

Soros’ vast NGO network has spent over $20 billion since 2000 on radical liberal causes across the world. Tens of millions or even billions of US taxpayer dollars were funneled through USAID, observers suspect.

The Soros-linked East-West Management Institute received over $260 million from USAID to influence foreign affairs in Georgia, Uganda, Albania, and Serbia.

Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, backed by Soros, began receiving USAID grants in 2014 - the same year the US-backed Euromaidan coup ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych with neo-Nazi support. Over $1 million has been funneled by USAID to the center.

In August 2024, a coup against Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was allegedly fomented by USAID, IRI, and Soros-linked groups. Her successor, Muhammad Yunus, is a known Clinton and Soros ally. According to The Grayzone, US taxpayer money funded rappers, transgender activists, and LGBT* initiatives to create a "power shift."

Soros and USAID have long sought to unseat Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has actively opposed the globalist billionaire since 2017. During the 2022 elections, the Soros-linked NGO Action for Democracy funneled $7.6 million to his opposition.

Election Meddling at Home?

Soros-linked groups, backed by USAID, led resistance efforts against Donald Trump during his presidency, influenced the 2020 election through Black Lives Matter protests, and worked to flip battleground states in 2020–2021.

Soros funded the Electoral Justice Project, Black Lives Matter’s voter mobilization effort, and gave $22 million to Tides Advocacy, which supported the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s pre-election nationwide protests aimed against Trump in 2020.

USAID and Soros allegedly spent $27 million on anti-Trump prosecutions, claims journalist Mike Benz. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was also accused of being “bought” by Soros.

Why Soros' Soft Power Empire Is More Vulnerable Than Ever With Trump Back At the Helm

© Photo: Social Media, January 25, 2025, Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik International

Top Trump ally Elon Musk has publicly thrown down the gauntlet to the world's leading liberal 'philanthropist' and his NGOs' color revolution-fueling soft power influence operations. Sputnik asked a leading independent political commentator what this could mean under Trump 2.0.

Open Society Foundations chairman Alex Soros has put a brave face on the losses faced by his father's neoliberal philanthropic empire now that Joe Biden is gone and MAGA has turned to Washington with a vengeance.

"My father was more about how you get closed societies to become open, and my task within the foundation is how do you renew open societies from within?" Soros Jr. told FT in an interview this week, hinting at the OSF's plans for work in the United States in the coming four years.

A second Trump term carries substantial risks to the Soros family and 'philanthropic' fortunes.

With the Democrats’ exit from the White House and loss of both houses of Congress, Soros will have fewer means to influence domestic policy on issues ranging from identity politics to courts, education and online censorship.

Trump’s reelection and the failure of the Soros-backed campaign to lock him up is a major reputational blow to the Open Society Foundations, which reoriented its global focus onto US politics in 2023 but still lost.

Setbacks in the US could reverberate in Europe, toppling, undermining or crippling Soros-allied politicians. Hungary’s Viktor Orban said last week that Soros “lost the battle for America,” and his supporters must now be “squeezed out of Brussels” as well.

Musk As Antithesis of Soros?

Alex Soros also dropped hints about the seriousness of the threat posed by tech billionaire Elon Musk to his family's fortunes. "I was open for a meeting [with Musk, ed.], I made an overture through somebody that knows him and he didn't respond. I think he's much more interested in trolling than meeting," the OSF chairman said in his FT interview, referring to Musk's references to Soros senior as a Magneto-style supervillain to Soros senior as a Magneto-style supervillain and as a "brilliant guy" who "fundamentally hates humanity."

Musk opposes key policies pushed by Soros, from lawfare-minded DAs to censorship, and has accused him of seeking to “destroy Western civilization.”

Since Trump’s comeback, Musk has also jumped into European politics to back populist figures abhorred by Soros, from AfD in Germany to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in Britain.

“I think there are some important contrasts to draw between Musk and Soros. Soros is a financier,” veteran political commentator and former hedge fund manager Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

“He has, in theory, a great track record managing his and other people's money. But on the charity front, it's difficult for me to find a lot of good works, and it's easy to find a lot of diabolical activities,” Ortel said, citing Soros’ links with the Clinton Foundation, for example.

That’s a contrast with ‘pauper to prince’ Musk, whose career has involved actually "developing novel products and services and bringing them to market efficiently," Ortel said. The tech billionaire's philanthropic activities have been "quiet, which is the way it's supposed to be done."

“No doubt the Deep State will resist [Musk and Trump]. But the people of America…are sick of this globalist, elitist, unregulated, Davos and Bilderberg operation where multibillionaires gather in secret and design ways to restrict liberty and impoverish private sector workers. This is a structure that must change, and I believe that Musk will be a powerful ally” to Trump, the observer believes.

Could Soros' Non-Profit Status Be Revoked?

"Soros is only one example of, I believe, a bad actor who is abusing non-profits that actually are not regulated carefully enough anywhere, and especially in the United States. So he and people like Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation and the Obama Foundation and many other dynastic political families set up these 'organizations' that are not independent or not tightly controlled. They're supposed to be nonpartisan under American law, the 501C3 entities, in fact, they're not," Ortel stressed.

"Folks like Soros use foundations...as false fronts to pay off people that are important inside the country. Nobody really knows how much money is actually sent from these charities to the to the recipients because they're never audited. Nobody knows how many kickbacks end up in politicians pockets, not just around the world, but inside the United States," he added.

Ultimately, Ortel hopes the Trump administration will "use the power they now have merely to enforce existing laws and regulations to stop charity fraud. People talking about price gouging in the private sector - charity fraud and abuse of government money I think is a much more serious problem inside my country and around the world."

[ireton]

Alice Weidel AfD´s Chancellor Candidate Nordstream, Energy policy Closed German Borders

AfD - Alternative für Deutschland - Alternative for Germany

[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.

[munaeem]

The Rise of AfD: Germany’s Political Shake-Up

A Plot Twist in the Bundestag Just when you thought you were caught up on German politics, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is making headlines again. Set to become the largest opposition force in the Bundestag, AfD’s newly polished status isn’t just a badge of honor; it comes with material benefits and a bully pulpit from which to launch its critiques of the emerging coalition…

[amorphousgreydragon]

the US made the nazi police gustapo into the current Verfassungschutz in germany after the second world war because they wanted the exact same thing Stalin did- a bulwark against the other side's system of economics, and their ties to nazism and control over the german government (to aid the genocide on palestinians for example) continues to this day.

Musk simply wears his ties on his sleeve when he does Nazi salutes on live television.

"china is a hostile foreign government" to who lol?

the US is a "hostile foreign government" to like every other country on the planet