“So where are my German friends?” Donald Trump asked a bewildered Mar-a-Lago crowd on Election Day, flashing a flashing smile and giving a thumbs up for a photo with a group of young people.
German Friends in Trouble: Former politician Fabrice Ambrosini was forced to resign after a video of him giving the Hitler salute was released. Leonard Jäger, a far-right influencer who promoted the Reichsbürger movement, the extremist group behind the failed coup attempt in 2022; and Phillip-Anders Rau, the candidate of Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
Excited, shoulder to shoulder with Trump, they cheered “Fight, fight, fight,” echoing the rallying cry following Trump’s assassination attempt, before repeating in German, “kämpft, kämpft, kämpft.” Shake your fist.
“I hope Donald Trump creates a renewal for his country just like the AfD is planning for our country,” Lau wrote on Instagram.
Inspired by his tough swagger and promise to expel immigrants from the United States, Germany’s far right has projected onto Trump a “fantasy of national power” they seek to replicate, said Mabel Berezin, director of the European Institute at Cornell University.
To them, he may be not just a comrade, but also a pioneer. Just 10 hours after he confirmed his return to the White House, Germany’s government collapsed dramatically over a budget dispute, opening the best opportunity for the country’s far right to seize power since World War II. The AfD has the support of one in five Germans, making it the second most popular party in Germany ahead of new elections in February.
And on Friday, he received support from one of Trump’s top allies. Elon Musk called AfD Germany’s savior in a tweet seen by more than 33 million people, sparking another far-right digital fist-fight. The AfD immediately put Musk’s face on its advertisement and its co-chair recorded a video message thanking him.
“History has shown that developments that begin in the United States eventually spread across the Atlantic and impact our lives,” says a translated post from the influential far-right blog Journalistenwatch. “And we also know that thanks to the triumphant success of Donald Trump in America, the pendulum has finally swung in the other direction and freedom for all has finally risen from the ashes.”
More than the reverence for Russia, the demonization of the LGBTQ+ community, or the romantic nostalgia for the past, there is only one racist idea at the core of this transnational romance. The political concept of immigration being sent back to one’s homeland has become a cause for far-right movements around the world over the past decade.
AfD’s central commitments It is intended to counter the so-called Great Replacement, a conspiracy theory that claims white Europeans or Americans are the victims of a plot by non-white immigrants to “replace” them and pollute their societies. It was an inspiration for gunmen to shoot Muslim victims in Christchurch, Jews in Pittsburgh, blacks in Buffalo and gays in Bratislava.
“This is bringing together the far right in many countries,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. mother jones.
If the Great Replacement is a myth, then immigration is its manual, taking the conspiracy theory’s white supremacy at face value and proposing the mass deportations advocated by Trump. In fact, Trump used the term in a September post on Truth Social promoting his candidacy, saying, “(We will) send Kamala’s illegal immigrants back to their country (also known as immigration). “I will save cities and towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and across America.”
The dance, which was popular among the party’s young supporters and performed at AfD election parties, features lyrics such as “Immigration is happening, raise the turbines really high” and the refrain “We’re deporting them all!” .
The term was popularized by the European Identity movement (whose American offshoot, Identity Evropa, helped plan the 2017 Charlottesville riots) and the movement’s Austrian leader Martin Sellner (who was investigated for communicating with the Christchurch shooter).
The AfD was launched by German journalists in January. correction I discovered a secret conference where Sellner was the keynote speaker. There he presented an immigration plan to senior party members that would expel millions of Germans, including citizens of non-German backgrounds and “unassimilated” citizens, sparking nationwide protests and debate over a ban on the party. Yes. Sellner was subsequently banned from entering Germany.
Since then, the party has been cautious about what exactly it means by immigration, with some AfD officials describing it as simply deporting asylum seekers who break the law. Others have made more explicit their intention to carry out widespread expulsions, taboos and unconstitutional ideas, reminiscent of the not-so-distant history of the Holocaust for many Germans.
In November of this year, the Bavarian state AfD passed an “immigration resolution” calling for the creation of new ways to “make it easier to revoke German citizenship already granted” and “allow comprehensive immigration for millions of people over the next decade.” I ordered it. .” The party began using flat images on its official posters and advertisements. For example, throughout the city of Erfurt there is a painting showing a bright blue sky and a jetliner above the words “Summer, Sun, Migration.”
The dance, which was popular among the party’s young supporters and performed at AfD election parties, features lyrics such as “Immigration is happening, raise the turbines really high” and the refrain “We’re deporting them all!” . Look at the AI-generated images of dancing flight attendants and images of oppressed black and brown men pushing luggage at airports.
“There are people within the AfD who say the quiet part loudly,” said Jakob Guhl, a far-right researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism think tank. “Some people might think there are no quiet parts.”
One of those people is certainly Björn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia. The AfD scored a landmark victory this fall, shattering nearly 80 years of post-war norms. A German court ruled that Höcke can legally be described as a “fascist,” and he was twice convicted of using banned Nazi slogans.
“If Björn Höcke becomes the Bundeskanzler,” Guhl says, using the German word for chancellor of Germany, “then the goal really is to make Germany more racially homogenous and somehow revoke people’s citizenship and then force them to leave. Last August, Höcke wrote on Telegram about government proposals to regulate knives, saying the real problem was “the threat of people with foreign backgrounds, contempt for our way of life and prepared to use lethal force.” “Attitude,” he wrote.
“We face mass immigration that could lead to the collapse of civilization,” he added. “People from foreign cultures, whose lives are shaped by values different from our own, and who we are not ready to assimilate, are permanently changing our social life simply through their numbers.”
“The AfD’s message is that these are not real Germans,” Beirich said. “They don’t belong here. They are the ones who cause crime and take away jobs. This all sounds a lot like Trump.”
This ideology spreads easily Across the digital ecosystem of alternative media and social media apps, at the center of the ecosystem is Telegram, known for its virtually non-existent content moderation and ability to create broadcast-style channels of unlimited size, which can be used by neo-Nazis, extremists, and conspiracy theorists. It has become the app of choice.
In the two months surrounding the US presidential election, 449 German far-right Telegram channels mentioned Trump in more than 10,000 messages. This represents approximately 5% of all messages sent on that channel.
There, users breathlessly followed Trump’s cabinet picks and shared clips of influential people in the United States, including Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. They borrowed from America’s complaints about the ‘censorship industrial complex’ to amplify their baseless claims of election fraud.
Watching it reverberate in the United States, Germans have built a network of far-right podcasters, journalists, influencers and politicians to echo similar claims and conspiracy theories.
“AfD’s message implies that these are not real Germans. They don’t belong here. They are the ones who cause crime and take away jobs. This all sounds a lot like Trump.”
For example, Stefan Magnet, founder of Austrian far-right news broadcaster AUF1, told his roughly 75,000 Telegram followers last October, without any evidence, that German government ministers were “preparing to censor Elon Musk’s news.” I wrote about “The World of Globalist Lies.” In Europe, we offer ‘X’ service. Above all, if Trump wins, we will shut down or brutally censor the platforms.”
“Some of these debates are being repackaged and re-discussed in the German context, with very different narratives and angles,” says Guhl. “So you can clearly see that certain products that first appeared in the U.S. seem to be working quite well there and are being adopted in Germany as well.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz A vote of confidence was lost in mid-December, leading to formal snap elections on 23 February. This was only the fourth election in the country’s modern history. The Christian Democratic Party, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s old party and the current opposition party, is expected to take power and invite other parties to form a coalition government.
Until now, the Christian Democrats have promised to build a ‘firewall’ against far-right parties such as the AfD, barring them from joining a coalition. That firewall is likely to remain in place until 2025, but there has already been cooperation between the Christian Democrats and the AfD in local government. And the more votes the AfD receives, the greater its ability to steer Germany to the right.
Let’s take a look at a statement the centre-left Scholz made in August after the AfD pressed him on immigration throughout the summer. .”
It marks the departure of a long-time supporter of Germany’s immigration policy and a recognition that the AfD’s message (and to some extent Trump’s) is resonating with voters.
“Trump said he would deport millions of people. He will launch a massive raid.
This is something that brings joy to the hearts of people like the AfD and other far-right parties,” says Beirich.
