There is still often talk of a moderate and a nationalistic wing of the AfD. But this view is outdated. Michael Schirm explains in a commentary which power structures lead the AfD today and who is pulling the strings.

The AfD is flying high, it reaches more workers than any other party and was able to prove its strength in the east through the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. But how does the fascist party manage to lead the fight for the minds of German workers?

There is a broad network of right-wing, fascist and neo-Nazi structures around the parliamentary party. With the help of employee relations, secret meetings and personal relationships, there is a huge network of the fascist scene that goes far beyond the AfD.

The wings of the AfD

The different influences are concentrated in wings within the party. The two most influential wings are the East German, ethnic wing around Björn Höcke and the West German wing around Alice Weidel and Sebastian Münzenmaier.

While the West German wing has shown itself to be more economically liberal in the past, the lines between the two are now blurring. So one has long been talking about a fascist party and not just a fascist wing.

A central, if rather unknown, onerolesays Sebastian Münzenmaier, the state chairman of the AfD in Rhineland-Palatinate. Thanks to his nationwide contacts in all important committees, departments and non-party structures, he is considered the most important mastermind within the party. At the next federal party conference of the AfD he is to start as general secretary of the AfD, under the then sole party leader Alice Weidel.

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Fascism in the East and the West

Opposite him is Björn Höcke, who “uncrowned kingof the AfD". Together with Stephan Möller, his long-time co-chairman of the Thuringian AfD, he founded the so-called Thuringian Line. Its motto is no moderation, no coalitions and no compromises. The AfD's fascist worldview should be mercilessly conveyed to the outside world.

At the last federal party conferenceachievedAchieve great success. Stephan Möller was elected deputy party leader, as was Sven Tritschler. Both are close confidants of Höcke. Also a change in theIncompatibility list, which excludes a broad range of members from left-wing to right-wing organizations from party membership, he was able to initiate with an application.

Alice Weidel also played an important role, who stopped the debate about Höcke's proposal at the party conference, but left the door open for discussion in the back room. She also suggested Sven Tritschler himself and thus, to a certain extent, took sides in the current onePower strugglethe AfD in North Rhine-Westphalia.

There, Sven Tritschler and his openly fascist wing are fighting a battle over the direction of the regional association with the more moderate wing under Martin Vincentz, which is counting on a rapprochement with the CDU. On the one hand, she approached Höcke's positions and, on the other hand, strengthened the backs of the ethnic nationalists.

The AfD's power struggle in North Rhine-Westphalia

The role of Ulrich Siegmund

However, there are far more people behind the power games on the big stage than just the party officials. While string pullers like Münzenmaier or Höcke can rely on a nationwide network, there is also networking at every other level. The AfD's top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, was able to achieve an electoral success of 43.8 percent with the help of former members of the banned neo-Nazi youth organization Heimattreu Deutsche Jugend (HDJ).

In his directEnvironmentThere are high-ranking cadres of the militant youth group, which as a right wing split off from the Bund Heimattreuer Jugend (BHJ) and succeeded the Wiking Youth, which in turn saw itself as the successor to the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. She organized children's and youth camps to educate young fascists.

A former member of the organization is Patrick Harr. As campaign manager for Siegmund, he is one of the most important strategists and accompanied him, among other things, to the secret meeting in Potsdam. Laurens Nothdurft, the legal advisor for the AfD parliamentary group in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, also plays an important role. Among other things, he represented Siegmund himself in court, but also the right-wing Compact magazine. From 1999 he acted as the “Second Federal Leader” of the HDJ and was responsible for the members' magazine.

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The fascist network of the AfD

But the AfD's involvement goes much further than the ideological successor to the Hitler Youth. The in-house party youth alone, Generation Germany under Jean-Pascal Hohm, has direct contacts and personnel overlaps with both the Identitarian Movement and various groups of young fascists.

The Identitarian Movement (IB) includes various groups that are roughly based on the idea of ​​an “Islamization” of “European culture” and want to fight against it. Ultimately, all migrants are targeted by these militant fascists. The IB also came up with the concept of remigration, which Martin Sellner - one of its leading ideologues - developed on thePotsdam meetingintroduced.

This meeting of AfD politicians, neo-Nazis, entrepreneurs and two CDU members dealt with the topic of remigration and the “secret plan against Germany”, which includes the expulsion of millions of people from Germany. The organizer, Gernot Mörig, was the federal leader of the BHJ.

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Kubitschek, Elsässer, Springer - ideological foundation of the AfD

Beyond secret meetings and direct personal connections, propaganda factories and think tanks are another pillar of the fascist movement. The publisher Götz Kubitschek is a key figure. With the fascist think tank Institute for State Policy (IfS), the publishing house Antaios, and the magazine Sezession, he broadens the ideological foundation of the fascist movement. He also played an important conceptual role in the IB and is in contact with Höcke.

In addition, the fascist magazine Compact under Jürgen Elsässer spreads right-wing agitation in Germany. The fascist association One Percent, founded by Philip Stein, also spreads racist narratives that support the AfD's narrative. And last but not least, the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit under Dirk Stein and of course the Axel Springer publishing house pave the way for the AfD.

The postThe AfD and its networkappeared firstperspective.