When it comes to courting controversy, there are few political rivals to Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). A former spokesman identified himself as a “fascist” in 2020, and later the same year talked nonchalantly about how refugees could be “shot or gassed” as he discussed how more migrants coming in would translate into polling gains for the AfD (“the worse it goes for Germany, the better for AfD”). The leader was sacked by the party for these comments. Meanwhile, Björn Höcke, the biggest leader of the party in the state of Thuringia — where the party registered a major win last year by emerging as the biggest player — has been fined for using the banned Nazi-era slogan “Alles für Deutschland (Everything for Germany)”. Höcke, a former history teacher, claims he used the slogan — which used to be inscribed on daggers carried by Nazi paramilitary personnel — in ignorance of its roots. Echoes of the same slogan have been found in the campaign of AfD leader Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for the chancellor’s post in Sunday’s Bundestag election, as supporters shout “Alice für Deutschland”. Her campaign has denied any resemblance, but the far-right populist AfD’s growing appeal among Germans — especially the younger ones, separated by decades from the country’s Nazi past — is undeniable as per media reports from the poll-bound country.
Germany’s public broadcaster DW reported on Tuesday that the AfD is polling second in an opinion poll compiled by the Berlin-based election research institute infratest dimap. The party is over 10 percentage points behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU, to which former chancellor Angela Merkel belonged) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The same poll, however, found Weidel was last among four choices of chancellor for the 1,o00 respondents, polling 19%, far behind Friedrich Merz of the CDU and former chancellor Olaf Scholz of the centre-left Social Democratic Party.
Both Weidel and the AfD have found support from tech billionaire Elon Musk, who backed Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. Musk has described the AfD as the “only party that can save Germany“.
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Birth Of AfD
Founded in 2013, the AfD initially “focused on opposition to bailouts for struggling countries in the eurozone debt crisis — measures that then Chancellor Angela Merkel described as ‘without alternative’”, the Associated Press reports.
Over the years, the report adds, the AfD “became more radical and repeatedly changed leaders”. “It was Merkel’s decision in 2015 to allow in large numbers of migrants that supercharged it as a political force, and in the 2017 national election, it won 12.6% of the vote to take seats in the German parliament for the first time,” it adds.
Key Issues
Migration and stiff border control are considered the lifeblood of the AfD’s push for power — and support for the AfD has grown against a backdrop of violence by people from a migrant background.
Alice Weidel, the AP reports, “has embraced the term ‘remigration’ as the party calls for large-scale deportations of people with no legal entitlement to be in Germany”. The word, according to the report, also emerged last year following news “that right-wing extremists met to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that AfD members were present”.
“But that didn’t do long-term poll damage to AfD. It finished second in the European Parliament election in June (2024), and in September, the best-known figure on its hardest-right wing, Björn Höcke, secured the first far-right win in a state election in post-World War II Germany,” the report adds.
Other issues on the agenda include closer friendship with Russia and ending German aid to Ukraine, reintroducing a German currency. A DW report said the AfD has also “portrayed itself as an aggressive opponent of the government’s energy and climate policy”.
One of its most controversial agendas is withdrawing the German policy of atonement for the crimes committed by the Nazi regime.
The AP reports that the AfD “has support across Germany and is represented in all but two of the 16 state legislatures, but the party is strongest in the formerly communist and less prosperous east”.
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‘Right-Wing Extremist’ Or Not?
The AfD is under observation in Germany for suspected right-wing extremism, AP reports. “The AfD’s branches in three eastern states are designated ‘proven right-wing extremist’ groups,” the report says, adding that the “AfD strongly objects to those assessments and rejects any association with the Nazi past”.
In an op-ed for a German paper, Musk questioned the party’s portrayal as right-wing extremist, “considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka!” “Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” a DW report quoted Musk as saying in the piece. Supporters of the party interviewed by different media portals say they are not against migrants from abroad per se, just those who “don’t integrate”.
Germany votes for its next parliament this Sunday. Read this piece to find all about its election system.
