“The AfD is completely divided between the social-patriotic wing in eastern Germany and the economically liberal arm in West Germany and Berlin.”

Matthias Quent

Rat race predicting the German election outcome

Ukrainian nationalists ask Uncle Sam for money for espionage and sabotage, Soviet ukrainian cartoon, 1950s
https://redd.it/1iw5euh
@r_propagandaposters

"We differ from the NPD predominantly due to our middle-class support environment, less so with respect to political content."

Dubravko Mandic

Its my Quote, i wrote that 10 years ago in a internal group of AfD Youth. Liberal AfD members gave it to media to fight me
„Von der NPD unterscheiden wir uns vornehmlich durch unser bürgerliches Unterstützer-Umfeld, nicht so sehr durch Inhalte.”

Björn Höcke > Alice Weidel

Karl Radl, who notoriously spews blatant lies and conspiratard shitfest, literally tells his dumb followers to watch “Europa the Last Battle” & “The Greatest Story Never Told” to understand National Socialism even BEFORE reading Mein Kampf

These are the imbeciles online who call you “Jewish” for correctly pointing out their nonsense slop

ICE, ICE, baby!

White Boy Winter ☃️❄️⛷️

The driving forces behind a more “socialist” AfD can be found in Germany’s east, where firebrand party leaders like Björn Höcke of Thuringia have long called for “a party of patriotism and solidarity.” For many, that is a thinly veiled bow to National Socialism. Höcke and Jürgen Pohl, an AfD Bundestag member, put forward some of the program’s key ingredients, which include higher pensions and inclusion of the self-employed in the state-run pension funds – policies that would focus on ethnic Germans.

🇩🇪🇩🇪 Is AfD based or cucked? As an expert in German politics, I've written an explainer...

What most people outside of Germany get wrong in their analysis because they don't understand the Federal Republic's domestic politics very well is that AfD isn't simply Alice Weidel. She is just the figurehead at the top of the ticket.

AfD can only be understood by the decentralised nature of its party structure which looks like this:

First level: 2 Co-leaders (Weidel & Chrupalla)
Second level: 3 Deputy co-leaders
Third level: Federal executive board (which is made up of a number of individuals)
Fourth level: State associations for Germany's 16 Bundesländer/states (these are largely autonomous)

Apart from the first tier, the leadership level, the hard-right völkisch and ethnonationalist faction known as 'Der Flügel' – which is led by a man named Björn Höcke (you've likely heard of him before) – has members in every single level of the party's governance.

For instance, one of the three deputy leaders is a man named Stephan Brander. He is a staunch adherent of Der Flügel and one of Höcke's biggest allies. His Wikipedia page is linked, go look at the 'controversies' section 🤣

As for the AfD's state associations, they are mostly radical in the former East Germany which, funnily enough, corresponds with the party's strongest bases of support.

In a number of these states, Der Flügel not only controls the AfD's state leadership but dominates much of the administrative board. Perfect examples of this (but not limited to) are Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony:

AfD Saxony-Anhalt Senior Management
Leader: Martin Reichardt (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Hans-Thomas Tillschneider (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Oliver Kirchner (Flügel)
Secretary general: Jan Wenzel Schmidt (Flügel)

AfD Thuringia Senior Management
Co-leader: Björn Höcke (Flügel)
Co-leader: Stefan Möller (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: René Aust (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Torben Braga (Flügel)

AfD Saxony Senior Management
Leader: Jörg Urban (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Siegbert Droese (Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Joachim Keiler (non-Flügel)
Co-deputy leader: Martina Jost (non-Flügel)
Secretary general: Jan-Oliver Zwerg (Flügel)

These three state associations of the AfD are classified by the German government as 'proven right-wing extremist organisations'. This is obviously a smear tactic to justify state persecution, but it's also true that these branches take hardline positions that are closer to our style of politics.

AfD state associations in Brandenburg and Bavaria (the latter played an important role in mainstreaming the term 'remigation' in Germany btw) are also predominantly Flügel-aligned, including their leaders. Other states like Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Lower Saxony and Hesse are balanced between non-Flügel and Flügel, but as time increases the nationalist camp is winning out. AfD's youth wing is almost entirely made up of ethnic nationalists who openly associate and identify with the Identitarian movement and activists like Martin Sellner.

On the other hand, the AfD state branches that are considered more 'cucked' and part of Weidel's libertarian camp are:

— Schleswig-Holstein
— Rhineland Palatinate
— North Rhine-Westphalia
— Hamburg
— Saarland
— Berlin
— Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Even in these states there's some prominent Flügel members, but they don't hold significant positions in the leadership.

Overall Assessment
AfD began as a eurosceptic libertarian party in 2013 and first gained notoriety for its free market policies and criticism of the euro. With the advent of the 2015-16 migrant crisis, their focus shifted from economics to anti-refugee sentiment.

During the period 2016 through to 2022, the party underwent open infighting between the libertarian wing in the tradition of Bernd Lucke and the emerging nationalist faction in the east. AfD co-leader Jörg Meuthen's resignation and subsequent departure from the party in January 2022 – citing concerns with rising party 'extremism' – ended the open warfare. The politics of distancing had ended.

Continuing... (1/3)

Most people associate criticism of capitalism primarily with left-wing sentiment. But there is also increasing anti-capitalism from the right.

As is well known, the AfD has electoral successes above all in East Germany, where anti-capitalism – as confirmed by numerous surveys – is much more widespread than in West Germany. There it deliberately focuses on the topic of “social patriotism” and thus wins over many voters who used to vote for the LEFT party. Right-wing anti-capitalism finds a theoretical foundation in authors such as Benedikt Kaiser or Götz Kubitschek.

One can build on a long historical tradition of right-wing anti-capitalism in Germany – from the so-called “Conservative Revolution” to National Socialism.

The critique of capitalism of the anti-capitalist right and their economic policy ideas differ only gradually from those of the left. In the programmatic publication “Solidarity Patriotism. The social question from the right” Kaiser, the best-known mastermind of this direction, repeatedly approvingly quotes left-wing authors – from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Sahra Wagenknecht.

Enemy images, on the other hand, are “market radicals”, “neoliberals”, “libertarians” – for example Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedmann or Friedrich August von Hayek.

https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2207