The party with the red arrow has two blue eyes: They and their top staff are constantly in trouble with the authorities and then there is also Sahra Wagenknecht. It feels like the beginning of the end.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution has rightly classified the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case, Höcke has to go to court several times because of SA slogans or incitement to hatred, the party’s top candidates are visited by the police on suspicion of bribery and the Bundestag is lifting the immunity of another member of parliament because of disciplinary proceedings Bundeswehr. The AfD is in a legal shitstorm and it can’t get its umbrella open.
Initially, the party hid its top candidate, Maximilian Krah, like a drunken uncle visiting his in-laws. But Krah has now come up with a bizarre diversionary maneuver: He drove up to the start of the election campaign in Holzkirchen, Bavaria, in a sports car, was celebrated by his fans and applauded by the right-wing press: “Dr. ‘Mad Max’ Krah against the mainstream,” is the headline of the AfD fan magazine. Leaflet “Germany Kurier”. The Dieter Bohlen version of a bon vivant image has accompanied “Schampus-Max” for a long time, now it is supposed to underline the steadfastness of the politician, who is not at a loss for sexual advice.
Meanwhile, Björn Höcke plays the right-wing extremist Pumuckl from Thuringia: like a hectic goblin, he explores the limits of the law and gets tearful when he gets stuck somewhere. The AfD chairman is to pay 13,000 euros because he used the SA slogan “Everything for Germany”. He asked rhetorically in Halle whether he had no human dignity.
Successful in self-pity
It’s a dull Punch and Judy show. The fact that Höcke values the intelligence of his voters at preschool age can be seen from the fact that he claims not to have known this slogan. Here and there this assertion may be misleading. A spontaneous survey among my circle of acquaintances, many of whom had legal training, showed that “Everything for Germany” wasn’t really on anyone’s radar. Apparently neither does Cathy Hummels. This probably also applies to the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, whose brochure containing anti-constitutional symbols and slogans “Everything for Germany” did not initially appear. That doesn’t change anything legally, but it helps with the belief: “You can’t say anything anymore in Germany!”
So when Höcke constantly flirts with the slogan, on stages, when he divides work with the audience “Everything for” and “Germany!” staged, or does “Everything for mh-mh” in the TV duel with Mario Voigt, then he signals: Look, my loyal German people, we’ve come to this! You can no longer even wish your beloved fatherland all the best! Or, as Höcke said in court: “The Nazis also said ‘Hello’.” Which the history teacher was wrong again, because the Nazis actually said “Heil Hitler.”
How well Höcke’s self-pitying tour is received is illustrated by the casual comment from A comment from a taxi driver noted by a journalist. “Oh, man, leave the boy alone!” This probably means: These are trifles, Höcke is actually a fine person.
Hinge for revisionists
The historical taboos of our criminal code are actually not a given. They can even seem annoying to some people, just as Hubert Aiwanger’s sensitivity to leaflets got on the nerves of some commentators. The culture of remembrance, the biography of a state, is the hinge on which nationalists and revisionists pull on one side and everyone else on the other – that is almost a historical constant.
But Höcke’s tearfulness now seems worn out. Other top figures in the alternative seem similarly emaciated: Before MP and EU leading candidate Petr Bystron was actually supposed to speak in the plenary session of the Bundestag, the police knocked on the door and searched his premises in the Bundestag, in Munich and on Mallorca. The accusation: corruption.
EU leading candidate Maximilian Krah, in turn, has to take part in the European elections despite preliminary investigations by the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office. Initially the suspicion was directed at his employee, but now he himself is said to have accepted money from China.
Rustling with bribes
In each of these allegations, the AfD sees the left-wing pig system at work: the public prosecutor’s offices are bound by instructions (which is formally true, but rarely plays a role in reality), the timing is malicious, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is remotely controlled and the judiciary is activist. It’s always the fault of others.
But when the police gradually show up at the neighbor’s door every day, even the most naive observer becomes suspicious at some point, especially the middle-class proportion of AfD voters. Not everyone who wants nuclear power and fewer foreigners also rejects public prosecutors and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And the bourgeois camp probably has a hard time dealing with traitors to the fatherland who let secret services overhear them rustling up bribes like the villain in the script of a cheap early evening series. The fact that the AfD leadership only cautiously defends Maximilian Krah speaks for itself.
In addition to the party’s legal problems, there are also strategic ones: With the BSW, the AfD has to contend with a strong competitor who is equally friendly to Russia – but without the Nazi sleaze. The right-wing CDU offers itself to other right-wing, but not right-wing extremist AfD voters: limit migration for the safety of citizens, the party just decided, plus a bit of dominant culture. This content is not AfD-related, but it is likely to strike a chord with some of its voters: Germany, but normal.
Since the SPD interior minister is currently examining whether asylum seekers could be processed in Rwanda in the future based on the British model, some of the SPD fans who switched to the AfD may even return. What’s left for the AfD?
The brown-blue spook is far from over
The hammer blows of the rule of law are hardening a hard, hot core of the AfD, even if some things are splintering even there. According to current surveys, the party has lost two percentage points – but it is still at 15 percent.
But anyone who is now preparing for the AfD remnants to rot is wrong. The success of the right-wing extremists is a side effect of a larger, global crisis: the West is beginning to crack. Whether it’s Russian aggression, China’s intrigues or Hamas’s popularity with post-colonial leftists, the rise of right-wing populists such as the newly formed Wilders government in the Netherlands, all of these developments have one thing in common: they are directed against modernity, pluralism and freedom , democratic self-determination, open borders.
The brown-blue spook is far from over. The year 2024 remains an explosive one, especially in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.