When Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) won a regional election last year, global headlines proclaimed the first far-right victory in Germany “since the Nazis.” Now, businessman Elon Musk has endorsed the AfD, saying its depiction “as far right is absolutely wrong.”
With the anti-immigration party set to make huge gains at the upcoming federal election, the question has never been more pertinent: How right-wing is the AfD?
The AfD’s draft manifesto, due to be confirmed at the party conference this weekend, is certainly a drastic rejection of the status quo. It advocates a U-turn on asylum policy, Germany’s exit from the EU, a return to nuclear energy and an immediate lifting of sanctions against Russia.
Illustration: Tania Chou
It describes Russia as “a reliable provider and guarantor of cheap energy,” while saying that “the geopolitical and economic interests of the US increasingly diverge from those of Germany.”
On economics, it is largely libertarian, promising lower taxes, welfare and bureaucracy.
That might not sound particularly “far right,” but the manifesto grants only limited insight into what the AfD would actually do in power. No party is willing to form a coalition with it, freeing it up to write a program that it would probably never have to implement. The result is a strategy document designed to win support and shape the image of the AfD rather than give voice to the party’s full ideological range.
There is no mention of the term “remigration,” for instance, despite the fact that AfD politicians use it regularly to advocate forced deportations of immigrants to their country of origin. The Bavarian chapter of the AfD officially adopted a “Remigration Agenda” recently, in which it demanded the “comprehensive remigration of millions within the next ten years.”
A key figure in shaping the concept in Germany is Martin Sellner, an Austrian far-right activist who has been banned from entering several countries, including the UK, the US and Germany. Sellner outlined the idea of remigration as forced mass deportations from Germany at a conference in 2023, which sparked large street protests when it was revealed that members of the AfD and the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were in attendance. The omission of “remigration” from the federal AfD manifesto doesn’t mean the idea has gone from the party’s thinking too.
The AfD has also been notoriously divided, making it difficult to pin down a specific profile for the whole party. Right at the top, it has a comparatively moderate face in AfD cochairwoman Alice Weidel. A 45-year-old economist who has worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc and speaks fluent Mandarin, she lives in Switzerland with her two sons and partner, Sarah Bossard, a filmmaker born in Sri Lanka.
“Does that sound like Hitler to you?” Musk asked in a widely discussed op-ed for the German newspaper Die Welt.
Musk is right, Weidel is not Hitler, but neither are her politics and lifestyle synonymous with the AfD, even though she is keen to project it that way in public appearances, rejecting the label “far right” for herself and the AfD.
In a recent Bloomberg interview, she did not even accept the designation “right-wing.”
“We are a libertarian-conservative party,” Weidel said. “We perceive ourselves as standing in the middle.”
Weidel indeed represents the liberal-conservative wing of the party. That is also how the AfD started out in 2013, when it was founded by a group of disgruntled euro-skeptics who were opposed to the costly bailouts of EU member states such as Greece. However, over the years — particularly in opposition to the mass immigration Germany has seen since 2015 — it became predominantly an anti-immigration party.
Now the AfD is split between Weidel’s more moderate camp and a radical faction around Bjorn Hocke, a former history teacher who is chair of the AfD chapter in Thuringia, where the party came first in elections in September last year.
Hocke has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of legality with his rhetoric. Last year, he was fined 13,000 euros (US$13,400) for deliberately using the slogan “Everything for Germany,” which is associated with Adolf Hitler’s “Storm Troopers.” Undeterred, he entitled the manifesto that won win him the state election “Everything for Thuringia.”
It is no secret that the groups around Weidel and Hocke have been vying for control over the party. In 2017, Weidel was part of unsuccessful efforts to expel Hocke. However, she realized quickly he had become too successful and made peace with him.
Hocke returned the favor by supporting Weidel’s bid to lead the AfD into the elections on Feb. 23, 2017, as the party’s first-ever candidate for the chancellorship. His entire camp fell into lockstep. There was not a single vote against her nomination.
So on the face of it, the moderate wing has carried the day. Yet Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz, classifies the AfD as a “suspected extremist group.” That is the agency’s second tier of three and allows for a range of surveillance methods, such as intercepting communication or recruiting informants.
The youth wing Young Alternative for Germany was even upgraded to the highest level in 2023, as were three state chapters of the party, including Hocke’s Thuringia branch.
Media reports said the Verfassungsschutz also planned to classify the entire party as a “confirmed extremist group” — regarded as a potential step toward a party ban. However, in the run-up to elections, state institutions cannot do things that could influence the vote. So the AfD’s status remains unchanged for now.
The objectivity of the Verfassungsschutz has been questioned in light of its intense hostility toward the AfD. Thomas Haldenwang, its president until November last year, for instance, is standing for election as a candidate of the conservative CDU, arguably the AfD’s main competitor. Haldenwang has denied any political reasons for intensifying surveillance of the AfD, but admitted that his neutrality did not stretch to “those who act and agitate against our liberal democracy,” even if their words and actions are within legal boundaries.
There is no doubt that Germany’s Nazi past continues to make its state institutions and commentators hypersensitive toward potential threats from the right, but that does not mean none exist. The AfD undoubtedly contains radical factions.
So how right-wing is the AfD then as a party? Piece together the mosaic of information about it and you end up with a fractured picture. Members and supporters range all the way from disgruntled conservatives to extremists. Even written resolutions and manifestos vary widely in tone and content.
In recent months, the AfD appears to have formed a united front behind one of their more moderate politicians. However, its far-right elements are not playing for Team Weidel. They are playing for time.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. Her latest book is Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany.
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