Accusations of Chinese and Russian espionage, corruption and money laundering, a fine for using a Nazi slogan, surveillance of the German secret services as suspects of extremism… The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) does not stop adding open fronts. However, although the scandals have caused them to lose some support, the damage remains very limited and they still have a large number of followers in the polls, in which they remain the second political force at the national level, behind the Christian Democrats of the CDU/CSU and ahead of the three parties that govern the country: Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals.
The moment couldn’t be worse. Just a few weeks before the European elections on June 9 and four months before the regional elections in the eastern states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia – where the far-right party leads all the polls – the AfD was defeated last Monday in the second round. judicial instance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the secret service in the interior of the country – which may continue to monitor the party as a suspect of extremism.
That same day in the afternoon, the CEOs of Siemens, Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Bank presented an alliance of 30 large business consortia under the name “We defend values” to alert their more than 1.7 million employees against the rise of extremist formations and ask to vote for pro-European parties and against groups like the AfD, which “divide the country and endanger its economic prosperity.” For a long time, companies had preferred to go about their business and stay out of politics, but after seeing how some red lines have been crossed, they have decided to put aside their reservations and take sides.
The next day, without having barely had time to digest all this, the German justice system decided to fine the leader of the AfD in the State of Thuringia, Björn Höcke, for uttering a Nazi slogan. The politician will have to pay 13,000 euros for using the slogan “Everything for Germany” of the SA, the storm troops of Adolf Hitler’s party, in a speech. The 52-year-old former history teacher, who heads his party’s list for the September elections, said he was unaware that the phrase was a slogan from the time of National Socialism. This slogan is illegal in Germany, as is giving the Nazi salute or displaying other symbols of this ideology.
As if this front were not enough, on Thursday the German Parliament decided to lift the immunity of AfD MP Petr Bystron, who is second on the party’s list for the European elections, so that German authorities could register his office in the Parliament and properties in Berlin, Bavaria and Mallorca. The Munich Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the deputy for suspicions of bribery and money laundering in connection with the case surrounding the pro-Russian propaganda outlet Voice of Europe,considered a tool of Russia to influence Europe and endanger the territorial integrity, sovereignty and freedom of Ukraine.
This scandal also affects MEP Maximilian Krah, head of the AfD list, who in turn has been affected by a case of Chinese espionage. His parliamentary advisor in Brussels, Jian G., was arrested a few weeks ago by German authorities, accused of spying for China. Now, there are new details released on Friday thanks to investigations carried out by WDR, NDR television and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. They point out that security authorities are investigating whether Jian G. provided Krah personally, his law firm and his parliamentary office with five-figure sums of money over a long period of time; and if this money could come from the Chinese secret service. Krah calls everything “malicious slander” and denies that there is any truth to the accusations.
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Dealing with criticism for using far-right language or being called racist is something the party is used to, but the accusations against Bystron and Krah could become an issue. The fact that AfD politicians may have been bribed by foreign governments calls into question the image its members sell as the only truly patriotic party in Germany.
The AfD leadership follows a double strategy: on the one hand, it insists that anyone who is proven to be for sale must leave and, on the other, it points out that there is no evidence to date and describes all scandals as a ruse. politics of his rivals, while questioning the independence of German justice. However, party leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel sent an email to Bystron on Friday asking him to refrain from making any further appearances in the European election campaign until everything is clarified.
Inflection point?
The question now is to what extent all these scandals will take their toll on the AfD at the polls. Has a turning point been reached in the rise of the far-right in Germany? “This will not deter the grassroots electorate,” says political consultant Johannes Hillje in the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. “The core of AfD voters prefers to trust the party than in democratic institutions such as the courts,” the analyst points out, something that is in line with a study carried out by the Forsa institute at the beginning of the year, which showed that 70% of AfD voters are suspicious of the judicial system and rely heavily on social media.
This is also reflected in the latest poll published on Friday by the public broadcaster ZDF, where despite losing one percentage point compared to the previous survey, AfD would come in second place, with 16% of the votes, behind the Union Christian Democrat (CDU), which would obtain 31% (one point more). However, it is the party’s worst result in the ZDF Politbarometer in just over a year. At the beginning of this year, the AfD still stood at 22%. Meanwhile, in the European elections, AfD maintains its support unchanged with 15% of the votes, tied with the Greens and behind the Christian Democrats (31%).
Despite the slight loss of voting intention in the polls, AfD still has great support, especially among middle-aged men (30 to 40 years old) in small towns in the east of the country, according to a recent study by Forsa . Furthermore, according to this analysis, 38% of AfD supporters come from the working class and tend to have a low or medium educational level.
“There is still a part of the electorate that simply has a kind of extreme right or anti-establishment attitude, which is absorbed by the AfD,” explains political scientist Simon Franzmann, a researcher at the German University of Göttingen, about the electorate of a party that “has “has been able to rally behind him moderate and skeptical people regarding migration.” But above all, “he has known how to win over all those who do not feel listened to by the traditional parties,” he adds.
Political tension is felt in the streets, where intimidation, threats and violence against people related to the world of politics is the order of the day. The Government is working intensely to try to stop this “spiral of violence”, as warned last week by the Minister of the Interior, the social democrat Nancy Faeser, who pointed out that last year 3,691 crimes were registered against public officials, elected representatives and party representatives, 80 of which were violent crimes, compared to the 1,994 crimes – 67 of them violent – reported in 2022.
Although the Greens party is usually the favorite target in these types of attacks, social democrats and AfD politicians also report attacks. The latest attack against a politician took place on Thursday night in a bar in Schwerin, northeastern Germany, where a man insulted the AfD deputy in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Martin Schmidt, and then threw a glass ashtray at him that hit him on the head. The politician was taken to the hospital, from where he left on Friday morning.
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