(Bloomberg) -- When, on Dec. 20, Elon Musk posted on X that the only thing that could “save Germany” was the AfD, he was embracing a political party that has moved progressively toward the extreme right since it was founded in 2013. Ahead of a snap election on Feb. 23, the Alternative fuer Deutschland has little chance of becoming part of the next ruling coalition because other parties have ruled out working with it. Still, in polling results, the party — which is anti-immigration and pro-Russia — is in second place behind the center-right opposition conservatives, having appealed to voters disillusioned with mainstream parties, particularly in the former communist eastern regions.
What is the AfD? What does it stand for?
A group of disgruntled economists and ex-politicians who wanted Germany to abandon the euro and block a bailout for struggling European Union partner Greece founded the AfD just over a decade ago.
Support for its anti-immigration agenda grew in 2015 and 2016, when former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government opened the door to more than 1 million refugees, many of them fleeing civil war in Syria. The AfD wants to deport all migrants who entered Germany illegally or have since broken other laws, and to end the country’s asylum policy, which is embedded in the nation’s constitution.
In a Dec. 19 interview with Bloomberg Television, Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader and candidate for chancellor, accused the EU of destroying Germany’s auto industry with a ban on the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2035. In its election manifesto, the party calls for a German exit from both the EU and the euro zone, moves that would unwind decades of political and economic integration.
The party also advocates restoring business and political ties with Russia, which were cut off after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has called for an end to military aid for Ukraine, and has warned against what AfD officials describe as further military escalation by the West. It questions whether climate change is caused by humans and wants to stop Germany’s transition to renewable energy and revive nuclear power after Germany shut down its last plants in 2023.
Is the AfD an extremist group?
German authorities have labeled regional chapters, its youth organization and leading members of the AfD as openly extremist. Concerns that the party is sympathetic to Nazism grew following controversial remarks by AfD officials and related investigations by German authorities. A report by investigative media outlet Correctiv in January 2024 linked the AfD to a meeting of right-wing activists near Berlin. According to Correctiv, the participants had discussed ideas that contained echoes of Nazi policies of the 1930s. The report triggered mass protests across Germany against the far-right, and many protests specifically targeted the AfD. Weidel sought to downplay the report, but she dismissed one of her advisers who attended the meeting.
Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD’s leader in the eastern region of Thuringia, was fined €13,000 ($13,519) in May by a court in Halle for using the Nazi catchphrase “Alles für Deutschland” (“everything for Germany”) at a party rally three years earlier. The term is covered by criminal laws banning Nazi symbols, the court said. It was used by the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary group in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in the 1920s and early 1930s. The judges rejected Hoecke’s claim that he hadn’t known about the phrase’s Nazi connection. Hoecke, a former history teacher, has a track record of controversial remarks. He called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame.” A German court ruled in 2019 that he could legally be called a fascist.
Critics say the AfD is controlled from behind the scenes by Hoecke and the party’s chapter in Thuringia, which has been categorized as “right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence services. Weidel rejects claims that the party pursues radical policies and has described allegations that the party embraces Nazism as unjustified smears. In her Bloomberg interview, she pushed back against labeling the party as “far right,” calling it “libertarian” and “conservative.”
Some of AfD’s detractors say the group should be outlawed. Strict conditions would have to be met first, and many of the party’s critics fear that if the country’s constitutional court were to reject the case for a ban, it could be seen as a victory for the party. Another option would be to deprive the AfD of the public funds that are handed out to political parties, as Germany’s top court did with the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD.
How strong is the AfD now?
The party lost some support in the most recent national election in 2021, dropping to about 10% of the vote from almost 13% in 2017. The AfD currently has 76 of 733 seats in Germany’s lower house of parliament, making it the fifth-strongest party there. Since the 2021 election, it’s been one of the main beneficiaries of crumbling support for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition, made up of his Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats, which collapsed in November when Scholz sacked Finance Minister Christian Lindner, of the Free Democrats, due to a dispute over government borrowing, triggering the snap election.
In national polls, the AfD draws the support of around 19% of voters, according to the Bloomberg polling average. The conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union bloc leads with about 31%, Scholz’s party has about 16%, and the Greens have 13%.
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