Guest Post: The Afd – anti-semitism and the holocaust
A guest post from a reader in Germany:
Things are more complex than most bloggers (particularly those on the other side of the globe) can see.
The AfD was incorporated in early 2013. Most of the founding members were frustrated former members of the CDU (Christian Democratic Party, the one with chancellors Adenauer, Erhard, Kohl and Merkel) and by some university professors, mostly conservative economists.
Their primary focus was on the fact that Germany was giving up national sovereignty rights in favour of the EU. Their strongest point of critics was the tact that Germany had given up the Deutsche Mark in favour of the EURO.
At that time there were no serious doubts that the AfD was still on the bottom of our constitution although on the right wing of the democratic spectrum. Although some of us did see a risk that they would collect the remains of some success-less small ultra right parties that had recently gone out of the race.
But before the end of the last decade most of the former CDU renegades had already quit the AfD and also the professors were gone because of the AfD moving into a very nationalistic direction.
Since then a new group of politicians are running the AfD show: persons like Alice Weidel, Tino Chrupalla, Bjoern Hoecke, Maximilian Krah, Stefan Brantner and others are in the driving seat. These guys advocate extremely right positions but of course not by changing the party’s program but by talking in townhalls, on beerfests and by posts in social media.
So we have three levels of political content:
1. The AfD official program which stays on the ground of our constitution (although it calls for some changes of the constitution).
This program is far right, but not outspokenly fascist and not antisemitic. It is nationalistic and focuses on “traditional values“.
Example: „The AfD commits itself to the traditional family as a guiding principle.”
The fact that Alice Weidel is violating these traditional values by being married to a woman who comes from a faraway culture, raising children with that woman and living in Switzerland thus avoiding income tax payments in Germany looks like George Orwells „doublethinking“ to me. She sees herself as Germany’s next chancellor, but I bet that – in case the AfD will win the next federal election – the old and nasty boys in the party will keep her down.
2. Speeches by AfD leaders during election campaigning go beyond the words of their official program but are usually staying close to the constitutional grounds. They request „immediate remigration of all foreigners“ and not only of illegal migrants but also naturalised children of previous immigrants. You could possibly interpret hidden antisemitism between the lines of some speeches, but they are not justiciable.
There certainly is a tendency towards a revisionist view on Germany’s past such that the focus is directed towards Germany’s historical successes and that the „Third Reich“ is described as a minor slip-up which unfortunately lead to damages and sufferings in the world but they never forget to talk about those millions of Germans who were expulsed out of Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia as a consequence of the war. (One of the founding members of the party named the twelve years of the Third Reich „a bird’s dropping in Germany’s one thousand years of successful history“.)
The most dangerous guy in my view is Bjoern Hoecke.
He keeps low profile and is waiting for his chance.
Hoecke seems to believe that he will be Germany’s next strong man.
3. The AfD base: People voting for AfD are typically low educated frustrated male persons living in small towns and rural villages. Their understanding and outspoken expectation of what the AfD will do, once they will come in power, goes far beyond the speeches and the official program of the party and it clearly leaves the constitutional and legal bottom line of our country: they request death penalty, mass deportation even of German citizens with migrational history, alliance with Russia, Exit from EU and from Nato, no support for Ukraine, stop of environmental protection programs, no E-vehicles and back to fossil fuels and many other yesterday’s things.
It is in these circles that you also find antisemitc comments.
I live in a village with 40+% AfD voters, their motivation ist caused by frustration, stupidity and a strong backward orientation.
I do see a parallel to the late 1920s in this situation. We know where it lead to starting in 1933 and where it ended in 1945.
It does happen that AfD adherents display swastika flags during village festivals and sing songs from second world war (both activities being punishable by law but midnight at a village festival can be far away from civilised behaviour).
And it ist during such events that antisemitic phrases come up regularly.
In fact I am much more afraid of these people being the AfD’s voters, than of Alice Weidel.
But they are the base of the AfD and they will drive the right extremists within the party.
In my analysis this is the place for a potential fascist movement to start and guys like Hoecke are pulling the ropes from behind the scene.
No AfD official (and no other official in Germany) will openly state antisemitic phrases or deny the holocaust (which would be punishable by §130 of our penal code with up to 5 years emprisonment).
However all Jewish organisations in Germany are strongly warning that the supporters of the AfD have a strong but hidden antisemitic mindset.
Allow me a comment on your remark on the „Muslim immigration“ describing two examples:
1. I recently met a young woman from Afghanistan. She had gone to school in Kabul during the 2010s and graduated (B.A. in economy) at the American University there (before it was closed by the Taliban in the early 2020s). She had some work experience with a UN organisation in Kabul but had to leave the country when the Taliban came in power again.
She fled to Germany in 2023 or 24 and is now trying to continue her studies with the goal of a M.A.
If she would have stayed in Kabul she probably would be wife number four of some Taliban idiot who would possibly lock her up and torture her and get her pregnant every year.
This young lady is still a Muslim although she wears western clothes and tries to integrate into European society.
2. We have a famous (or rather notorious) islamist preacher in Germany named Pierre Vogel.
As he is a native German speaker he can tell us about the miracles of his religion in a comprehensible way. He is calling to break German laws and rules and violating common sense with each and every word under the cover of being a religious preacher.
I do not hesitate to name him one of the worst enemies of our free society.
He did not come by immigration but was born in Germany by a German mother.
There is no way to „remigrate“ him: German constitution expressly prohibits the withdrawal of citizenship of a German born citizen (for good reason, because that was what the Nazi did to the German Jews).
In my view the base of the problem is not (at least not only) Muslim immigration: The underlying problem is religion in any of their proselytic variations:
Catholics have killed thousands or millions of people when they were running their missionaries over the world (i.e. in South America and Africa).
Muslims are terrorising Europe, North America and Africa since centuries.
US American Evangelical Christians are terrorising US population and expanding all over the so called Christian world in order to turn back time by at least two thousand years.
Hindus (together with Sikhs and Jaina) are suppressing all other religions in India.
Any kind of hierarchically organised religion has the tendency to incapacitate the individual.
It is a setup for disaster wherever religious organisations are close to or become identical with the power structures of a state – not only in Teheran and Jeddah but also in Rome, London, Washington, Delhi and Beijing (because hardcore communism is also a religion).
I hear you talking about „human liberty combined with human responsibility“ and I agree with your view as a general rule.
But how can a free and responsible human believe in gods or other supranatural beings and push responsibility up to them?
We are still lagging behind the ideals of the philosophers of the enlightenment who were ready to abolish religion in favour of human reason (they spoke about „ratio“).
So I agree with your scepticism against Muslim immigration but I tend to see it as one appearance only of the big danger of religion in general.
In real life praxis: How can we set up a community and state organisation that will help the young lady from Afghanistan to escape the terror of the Taliban and prevent guys like the German born islamist preacher to poison the brains of our kids and call for terror in our country and do the right thing for all cases between these two extremes?
I think, humanity will need a very pragmatical and consensual approach to this situation and we need political and social processes looking for solutions rather than principles.
And we definitely do not have the visionary leaders in the world who could join forces and drive such a process.
Morons like Trump, Putin, the Ayatollahs and pidgin politicians like the actual German chancellor do not have the capabilities nor the balls to drive change and progress.