Alternative for Germany (AfD): Nazi affiliations
- Ashley Gerasch
- Feb 10, 2021
- 6 min read
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is an increasingly popular right-wing party that has sparked international criticism and on occasion been tied to Hitler’s Nazi regime because of their offensive remarks and policies. The party was founded in 2013, depicting themselves as an anti-European Union, nationalist and conservative party. Currently, the party holds 89 seats in the federal parliament making them the biggest opposition party in Germany. Since its foundation, its focus has largely shifted towards being anti-immigrant and largely focused on the Muslim community in Germany. Areas of the party have been said to be xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic therefore drawing a comparison to Nazi ideologies.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD)
© 2021 Deutsche Welle
Section 1: Their Policies
Some of their policies seem as though they would be very beneficial for society and in-line with egalitarian views, such as their plans to end discrimination against full time working mothers. Unfortunately, a large section of their proposed plans goes against a few of the articles within the German constitution. Additionally, their plans concerning culture, language and identity are said to be closely tied to the ultra-nationalistic policies of Nazi Germany. The party is largely against multiculturalism and seeks to keep German as the predominant culture. Plans of banning full-body coverings, removing public body status for Islamic organisations and the statement that “Islam doesn’t belong to Germany”, all found within their manifesto, largely contribute to the belief that the AfD is an Islamophobic and xenophobic party. Their Islamophobic beliefs are unconstitutional going against the basic German laws prohibiting “discrimination on the grounds of faith or religious beliefs” and “freedom of religion”.
An AfD anti-Islamisation poster.
©Getty Images
In 2015, Bernd Lucke, one of the founding members, resigned from the party, saying his reasons were the rise in xenophobic and pro-Russian attitudes in the party. Lucke’s resignation demonstrates that even some of the original members saw their own organization as far-right occurring. Alexander Gauland, one of the creators of the party, has often been in the news due to statements about fighting off an “invasion of foreigners”. In 2016 during the large refugee crisis, he and his followers believed that German borders should be closed and that the German people should simply shut out the brutal images of refugees on boats to Europe and those of little children dying. He compared the refugee crisis to a “burst water pipe” saying that once you seal the hole, in this case, the hole being the German borders, the problem would sort itself out. His daughter revoked his statements saying that she found it “horrible”.
Björn Höcke, AfD party leader in Thuringen, has had plenty of controversies himself. He is the leader of an extremely right-wing faction of the party known as the “Flügel”. As of April 2020, the faction was dissolved due to their radical, racists and neo-Nazi associations they were labelled as a far-right radical group by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In 2019, a ZDF journalist asked Höcke and his fellow party members a series of difficult questions including asking if a series of quotes were found in either Hitler's Mein Kampf or his book. Höcke is considered as an extremist by the German intelligence services. Andreas Kalbitz was also a part of the now disassembled “Flügel” faction. He was exposed for being a member of a now-banned Neo-Nazi youth organisation called German Youths Loyal to the Fatherland when he joined the party, leading to his removal from the party.
AfD members have also been linked to Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (Pegida) a German organisation that is strongly opposed to Islamic immigration. Since before the coronavirus, they have been holding demonstrations every Friday against immigration. On the 9th of November of 2020, there was a demonstration In Dresden, the same day as the night of broken glass back in 1938. The Night of the Broken Glass, that same day, eighty-two years ago, was the night that Hitler’s SA paramilitary group held a riot destroying all Jews business and killing hundreds of people. Pegida gatherings are often causes for controversy, such as when the police found their posters with Swastikas, and with the day in history that it was, the German police were further on the watch for any sort of neo-Nazi gatherings, especially at a Pegida demonstration, seeing as they are already considered a far-right extremist organisation.
A sign reading "Merkel, your days as chancellor are numbered, the day of reckoning is coming and God have mercy on you" at a Pegida march
©picture-alliance/AP Photo/J. Meyer
In 2014, after a protest against Höcke and Pegida, Gauland said: “I do not see right-wing extremists. I see citizens who demonstrate out of concern about developments in Germany, who are afraid.”. The presence of neo-Nazis at Pegida protests has been proven time and time again by witnesses and police officers at these protests therefore making Gauland’ statement uncredible. The AfD has also used the popularised Pegida term “Lügenpresse” (essentially fake news) which was used by the Nazis as a way of discrediting any publications made against their agenda. The majority of Pegida supporters are found in eastern cities like Dresden which also happens to be the areas with the most AfD supporters probably due to ex-east Germany survivors remaining that would ultimately support AfD’s anti-communism rhetoric.
Further AfD controversies would include their Islamophobic and disrespectful posters with captions like “Burkas? We prefer Bikinis” and their extreme nationalism going as far as saying Germany should make a 180° turn back to their past of German pride. In a 2017 speech, Höcke rebuked the building of a Holocaust memorial sight, labelling the Germans as the only nation to “plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital”, which many people have seen as him wanting to keep Germany’s shameful past in the shadows instead of trying to honour the millions that were killed at the hands of Hitler’s anti-Semitic, xenophobic and racist ideologies that indoctrinated the nation during WW2.
An AfD election poster reading "Burkas? We prefer bikinis."
CC
Höcke was regarded as a “burden” to the party by Frauke Petry, another AfD member, but he was allowed to remain in the party. He also advocated for the removal of a certain section of the German constitution that would essentially allow Holocaust denial, such as the blatant use of Nazi terms and gestures which is prohibited in the constitution to respect the victims of Hitler’s regime. Frauke Petry is also not without fault. She tried to reclaim the word völkisch, a term used by the Nazi regime to spread the message of German superiority and more specifically the superiority of the Aryan race (white, blue-eyed, blonde Germans). Similarly, Gauland was criticised for saying that Germans should be proud of their soldiers in both world wars completely disregarding the fact that it was the SS units that were to blame for a large number of the civilians that were murdered during World War II. This is something that no one should be proud of.
AfD isn’t the only controversial right-wing political party in Europe. It’s in the same political family as France’s National Front party, Austria’s Freedom Party and the Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. Many researchers believe that the growing far-right movement may have been accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic as we have seen internationally with the Anti-mask demonstrations which many far-right groups have attended. Being right-wing doesn’t directly constitute a person as being racist or xenophobic, but many of the policies followed by these parties are fundamentally xenophobic, desiring to stop immigration and furthering a racist, Islamophobic agenda across the world.
How to Help:
Spread Awareness of the AfD on Social Media and make sure people know that this party is an issue.
It is important to respect all people no matter their race, religion, gender etc. Your political views shouldn’t rid anyone of their basic human rights of freedom to be who they are and who they want to be.
Work on being actively anti-racist and not xenophobic or Islamophobic
Recognize that people share beliefs different from your own that should still be respected and valued nonetheless.
Listen to other peoples experiences of discrimination to further educate yourself through stories from real modern-day people.
Zeit Online, “Wir können uns nicht von Kinderaugen erpressen lassen” translation: we can’t let the eyes of children blackmail us, 24 February 2016
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BBC News, “Germany's AfD: How right-wing is nationalist Alternative for Germany?
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Philip Oltermann, “Germany's AfD thrown into turmoil by former neo-Nazi's expulsion”, The Guardian, 18 May 2020
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Eliza Relman, “Germany’s far-right party has drawn controversial comparisons to Nazis and they’re forcing the country to reconsider how it deals with the Holocaust”, Business Insider, 8 September 2019
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Zeit Online, “Polizei prüft Plakat mit Hakenkreuz” translation:Police inspect placard with swastika, 10 November 2020
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