Germany’s AfD brings ‘friendly face of National Socialism’ into fold
Far-right parliamentary group embraces radicals after record gains in Sunday’s election
The far-right Alternative for Germany has embraced some of the movement’s most radical figures after a record second-place finish in elections, including a man who once described himself the “friendly face of National Socialism”.
The AfD group in the Bundestag on Tuesday voted to accept Matthias Helferich, who is so divisive officials from his own regional association attempted to expel him from their local association, alleging he referred to Germans descended from migrants as “beasts”.
The AfD parliamentary faction, which is jubilant after securing a record 21 per cent in Sunday’s federal elections, also voted to admit Maximilian Krah, who last year sought to downplay the crimes of Adolf Hitler’s SS and faced an investigation over alleged payments from Russia and China.
Other members of the new AfD contingent, which is older and more male than the Bundestag average, include Dario Seifert, 31, a former member of the youth wing of the notorious extremist party the NPD, who on Sunday won the seat of former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel.
The new AfD group, which has grown so much that it had to move to a larger room for Tuesday’s meeting, also includes a slew of allies of Björn Höcke, the figurehead of the party’s most radical flank. They include eight MPs from the eastern state of Thuringia, where he is party co-leader, his former office manager and strategist.
Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist at Chemnitz Technical University, said that the inclusion of Krah and Helferich was the latest sign that — rather than moderating and seeking to broaden its appeal like France’s Marine Le Pen — the AfD was growing more radical.
“The party as a whole is much more on the far-right of the party spectrum than it was in the beginning — and than it was two or three years ago,” he said. Höhne said that party co-leader Alice Weidel, who has sought to present the AfD as conservative rather than far-right, appeared to be “too weak” to insist on the exclusion of figures who undermined that approach.
The AfD was founded in 2013 in protest at the Eurozone bailout of Greece. But it has increasingly morphed into a far-right anti-immigration party, recently embracing the contentious term “remigration” as well as in effect calling for the dismantling of the EU and opposing sanctions on Moscow.
In a party with no shortage of offbeat characters, Krah, who won his seat in the east German state of Saxony with 44 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s federal elections, has become one of its most notorious figures.
He had previously been the AfD’s top candidate for last year’s European elections. But he was ejected from the party’s delegation in the European parliament after telling the Financial Times that not all those who served in Adolf Hitler’s SS were criminals.
Krah had already made headlines after German police arrested one of his staffers on suspicion of spying for China and faced investigation over alleged payments from Russian and Chinese sources — allegations that he denied.
Helferich, meanwhile, has been a member of parliament since 2021 but was in effect banned from joining its parliamentary faction after a leaked Facebook chat in which he talked about being “the friendly face” of the Nazis became public. He insisted that he was simply “parodying” online leftwingers in the online exchange.
But he has been engaged in a bitter struggle with officials of his own party in the west German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who sought to have him expelled after claiming that he supported the deportation of German citizens descended from migrant parents or grandparents, whom he allegedly referred to as “beasts”. Helferich has denied that claim and accused party rivals of trying to sideline him.
The AfD’s historic result is set to provide new levels of political exposure for the far-right group and boost its financial resources — as well as exacerbating the already increasingly unruly tone of the national political debate.
It has no chance of entering government because election winner Friedrich Merz, of the centre-right Christian Democrats, has ruled out working with a party he and other mainstream politicians view as politically toxic.
Even so, its success in doubling vote share since the previous election will deliver millions of euros in extra funding each year for a party that has already said it is gunning for a first place finish at the next election in 2029.
“We will overtake the CDU in the next few years,” said the party’s co-leader Weidel in a triumphant press conference on Monday. “And that will happen very, very quickly.”
The AfD received €11.6mn from a public fund for supporting political parties in 2023 — a figure that represented about 30 per cent of its income. That amount will rise significantly. So too will separate funds provided by the Bundestag to members of parliament to pay for their offices, staff and other expenses.
Aurel Eschmann, a campaigner for the Berlin-based NGO LobbyControl, which calls for greater transparency in politics, said that the extra funds would be “massive” for the AfD, whose income has lagged behind many of its rivals.
He said that the party — parts of which are officially classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency — would be able to use the funds to bolster far-right networks by employing their members or renting buildings owned by their members.
He warned that there was very little accountability over how parties used public money: “They can do whatever they want with it.”
In the aftermath of Sunday’s vote, the AfD has also begun clamouring for its success to reflected in top jobs in the Bundestag, including the parliament’s vice-president — a role similar to the post of deputy speaker in the UK.
The AfD tried unsuccessfully to nominate a candidate for that position in 2017, when it was also the largest opposition party, albeit with a smaller contingent. The move was opposed by other parties.
AfD MP Kay Gottschalk said it would be harder for its rivals to do the same again this time round. “It’s very hard under this pressure [from voters] to argue: ‘we have to exclude them’,” he told the FT. “It’s a game-changer.”
The AfD will probably chair the Bundestag’s budget committee. Peter Boehringer, a senior AfD MP who served in that role from 2017 to 2021, said that in reality the power was “limited”.
More important, he argued, was the fact that the AfD would be granted the first response on every topic in plenary sessions in the Bundestag, as well as more time to speak. “It’s more than just symbolism,” he said. “We are the official opposition leader now.”
Weidel, the party co-leader, also described it as a “disgrace” that the party had not been elected to the committee that oversees the intelligence services since 2018. She said that a party with almost a quarter of the seats in the Bundestag “should no longer be ignored”.
The sharp increase in the number of AfD members of parliament is likely to lead to a much more unruly Bundestag, according to analysts.
“It will change the style and the tone of our debates,” said Andrea Römmele, a political scientist at the Hertie School in Berlin.
The number of “calls to order” issued by the Bundestag president against MPs for using terms such as “child murderer”, “liar” and “hypocrite” reached its highest postwar level in the three years since the previous election — with the vast majority issued against the AfD.
Anna-Sophie Heinze, a political scientist at the University of Trier, said: “The AfD really tries to use targeted provocations and insults to provoke the MPs from the other parties.” She added that, with its newfound influence, the AfD would have an unprecedented ability to “set the tone”.
