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An investigation into how far-right leaders in Germany have risen to the brink of power. Filmmaker Evan Williams (Germany’s Enemy Within, Germany’s Neo-Nazis & the Far Right, Escaping Eritrea, Myanmar’s Killing Fields) examines the reasons behind the surge in support for the German far right’s brand of hardline nationalist politics, and the roles of Russia and the U.S.
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00:00:00Support for the alternative for Germany is higher than ever before.
00:00:24Correspondent Evan Williams investigates the surging popularity of Germany's new right.
00:00:28Now, we are the party of the future.
00:00:30The effort to attract a new generation.
00:00:32The AfD is dominating the political discussion on TikTok.
00:00:37And the international connections.
00:00:38Russia supports far-right actors all over Europe and the United States government.
00:00:44That's much the same out in the open.
00:00:46Now on Frontline, the rise of Germany's new right.
00:00:58It's now.
00:01:16Can you hear me?
00:01:17Yes, we can hear you.
00:01:27Unfortunately, I can't hear you very well.
00:01:32It was less than a month before the German federal election.
00:01:40Well, first of all, I wanted to really say that I'm very excited for the AfD.
00:01:47And I think you are really the best hope for Germany.
00:01:53Elon Musk was addressing a rally for the hardline nationalist party, AfD, Alternative for Deutschland.
00:01:59It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.
00:02:13The German people are sort of really, really an ancient nation.
00:02:17It goes back thousands of years.
00:02:18This is absolutely unprecedented.
00:02:22A foreign billionaire using this platform that he owns to support a radical, if not extremist, party during the election campaign was the first for Germany and probably the first for many European countries.
00:02:36It was like an act of recognition.
00:02:38We have the richest and most innovative entrepreneur of the world on our side.
00:02:45We have Elon Musk, of course, that makes us extremely sexy.
00:02:51And perception is reality.
00:02:54Now, we are the party of the future.
00:02:55We are now the party of international connections.
00:02:57We are the party of modern technology, of innovative thinking.
00:03:02It shows that we are a serious political force.
00:03:04The fate of the world, I think, rests upon this election in Germany.
00:03:12It's extremely fundamental.
00:03:16And, you know, go, go, go.
00:03:19Fight, fight, fight.
00:03:21Fight, fight, fight.
00:03:23All right.
00:03:30According to some observers, the shift towards the right in Europe is unlikely to slow down.
00:03:35We've seen parties touting far-right ideologies, game seats in Italy, France, the Netherlands and Finland.
00:03:41That's just to name a few.
00:03:50For the past 18 months, a support for nationalist anti-immigrant parties has surged across Europe.
00:03:59I've been reporting on the rise of the AFD in Germany.
00:04:03AFD, nein, zur Moschee!
00:04:09Sitting down with senior officials.
00:04:12Do you believe that people who have not assimilated enough should be deported?
00:04:16Investigating links to Putin's Russia.
00:04:18It's like a detailed accounting, how the Russians have conducted disinformation and warfare.
00:04:26And the Trump administration's expressions of support for Europe's far-right.
00:04:31No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.
00:04:40They share this perceived existential threat caused by migration.
00:04:45Far-right views have become more mainstream.
00:04:48There's increasing collaboration and just discussion of working with the far-right.
00:04:52They're no longer excluded, but actually they're part of the political process now.
00:04:57To Germany now, where the success of the far-right in two state elections
00:05:25is tonight sending shockwaves across the country.
00:05:28A far-right party winning a state election in Germany for the first time since the Nazis.
00:05:34In the fall of 2024, I was in Germany as the AFD swept to an election victory in the eastern state of Turingia.
00:05:43The head of the AFD in Turingia, a party branded extremist by German intelligence,
00:05:48was celebrating as his group won 33% of the vote in the state.
00:05:53The party's leader here, Björn Hooker, is regarded as one of its most radical figures.
00:06:08The AFD had come first in the polls, but failed to win an overall majority.
00:06:15Germany's mainstream parties were vowing to work together to block the AFD from forming a government.
00:06:22A long-standing tactic against far-right parties known as the firewall.
00:06:27There is this firewall of Brandmauer, as they say in Germany, around the AFD.
00:06:32That is that democratic parties have said they will not touch it with a barge pole,
00:06:36not work with it, try really to kind of avoid it in Parliament.
00:06:39The AFD accuses the mainstream parties of operating like a cartel and wants to tear the firewall down.
00:06:46What can you do from opposition? Look, you won the most votes, but you will not be able to form government.
00:06:52Is that fair? Do you feel that's fair?
00:06:54Is that fair? Do you feel that's fair?
00:06:56Ich denke, nach dieser historischen Wahl ist ein Weiter-soff für die Kartellparteien nicht möglich.
00:07:01Wir sind bereit, Regierungsverantwortung zu übernehmen.
00:07:04Und ich kann den Altparteien, den Kartellparteien, nur dringend davon abraten,
00:07:09jetzt zu versuchen, nur auf mathematische Mehrheiten zu schielen, um die AFD nochmal zu verhindern.
00:07:14Das legt die Axt an das Fundament des Parlamentarismus, an das Wertefundament des Parlamentarismus.
00:07:19Und wird der parlamentarischen Demokratie in Thüringen und darüber hinaus schweren, schweren Schaden.
00:07:24Ich sage nochmal, wir sind stärkste Kraft, wir haben einen historischen Sieg hier eingefahren.
00:07:28Und wir wollen in Regierungsverantwortung und werden in den nächsten Wochen versuchen, diesen Weg zu beschreiten.
00:07:38Herr Höcke, was sagen Sie zum Wahlergebnis?
00:07:41Ein historischer Sieg!
00:07:43The big question now is what all of this means for Germany's national elections set to take place next year,
00:07:49and whether the rest of the country will follow this sharp shift to the right.
00:08:06Opponents of the AFD have long been warning that the party represents a threat to German democracy.
00:08:13Stefan Kramer is the domestic intelligence chief in Thuringia.
00:08:19He's Jewish and one of the AFD's most vocal adversaries.
00:08:23We're in Germany.
00:08:25This is Germany and this Germany has the Holocaust experience and history.
00:08:31We have a principle in Germany which is called defensive democracy.
00:08:35It comes out of the ideas and experiences that we had with Nazi dictatorship.
00:08:39Remember, Hitler and his Nazi NSDAP were elected into power.
00:08:45They didn't do a revolution.
00:08:47People voted for the Nazis to take over the power.
00:08:57Hitler gets a tremendous ervation when leaving for his first cabinet meeting.
00:09:01Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany without ever winning a majority in an election.
00:09:09The Nazi leader poses with his cabinet which includes...
00:09:12In 1933 he formed a coalition government and then legally obtained emergency powers enabling him to ban all other parties.
00:09:22Hitler basically had his playbook and worked his way up the ladder to establish his dictatorship.
00:09:30The Nazis used exactly those tools of democracy to take over and wipe out democracy.
00:09:40Kramer's agency was set up after World War II to prevent a repeat of history and monitor extremist threats to democracy.
00:09:49When we first met him in early 2024, he was in northern Germany to deliver a message to city mayors.
00:10:00Our rights extremists are on the way.
00:10:04Extremism is basically all that, what is directed against the freedom and democratic rule.
00:10:10What we currently experience is not only theory that our rights have been achieved in the last ten years
00:10:16to inherit the different social spaces in our society.
00:10:21Everybody is very concerned that our defense of democracy is on the edge.
00:10:26The new right, the AFD, is explicitly acting against our principles of the federal constitution.
00:10:34This is exactly a situation that we would have never thought would occur after what we've learned in 1933 to 1945.
00:10:41And here we are.
00:10:44I also say very clearly, they threaten human rights, they threaten the unabhängigkeit of justice,
00:10:48they threaten the opinion freedom, the association freedom.
00:10:51Look, the Germans did not invent anti-Semitism, but they invented Auschwitz.
00:10:57And this is something that we should always keep in mind.
00:11:09Germany's cities lie in ruins and the hopes of the Nazis lie in the dust.
00:11:13After the Second World War, Germany set out to reckon with its grim history.
00:11:19All citizens were ordered to visit the concentration camp.
00:11:34The Nazi party was banned, as were its symbols and slogans.
00:11:39Strict legal limits were imposed on free speech.
00:11:46Holocaust denial was eventually criminalized and the political firewall was born.
00:11:51This was a consensus amongst all parties that we mustn't forget the crimes
00:11:59and that we need to educate future generations so that this memory lives on.
00:12:06Not as a memory of shame, but as a reminder that we have a responsible role to play in the world,
00:12:13that we need to protect liberal democracy and fundamental human rights.
00:12:17After 2015, Germany became a global leader in welcoming refugees,
00:12:24taking in more than a million people, fleeing conflicts across the world.
00:12:30The world sees Germany as a land of hope and chances, and that was not always so.
00:12:42But the influx had unintended consequences.
00:12:45A rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.
00:12:58The AFD stoked these fears and won millions of new supporters.
00:13:04Widerstand! Widerstand! Widerstand!
00:13:09Germany is in shock after an anti-Semitic attack on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.
00:13:18At least ten people were killed when a government went on a shooting rampage in Hanau.
00:13:25The victims all had a migrant background.
00:13:28And comes just days after a plot to blow up mosques around the country were spoiled.
00:13:33After Germany was hit by a wave of far-right terror attacks in 2019 and 2020,
00:13:39the AFD came under increasing scrutiny for its anti-immigrant rhetoric.
00:13:46In Thüringen, there is no welcome culture for illegal immigrants,
00:13:50but only a禁止 culture.
00:13:56The AFD officially condemned the attacks
00:13:58and rejected that the killers were motivated by its rhetoric.
00:14:02But the party was already on the radar of Germany's domestic intelligence.
00:14:07The AFD is a party in which there are many members and employees who spread hate and hate against minorities of all kinds.
00:14:24Thomas Heldenwang was Director General of Germany's national domestic intelligence until late 2024.
00:14:30The political arm of the right extremism is always stronger.
00:14:35The new rights, as we call them,
00:14:37which distance themselves in front of violence,
00:14:40but are prepared for the ideology of the right extremists of all color.
00:14:46We will be prepared.
00:14:47We will be prepared.
00:14:52At the time, Jornhoeker led a radical faction of the AFD known as the Wing.
00:14:58In 2020, domestic intelligence classified the Wing as a right-wing extremist threat to democracy.
00:15:05The AFD soon dissolved the Wing, but eventually the entire party in Thuringia was classified as extremist and placed under surveillance.
00:15:20Bjornhoeker rarely gives interviews to non-German media.
00:15:25Okay.
00:15:26But he agreed to sit down with me at an AFD campaign event in the spring of 2024.
00:15:33Domestic intelligence is monitoring you and your party because they say you're an extremist threat to democracy.
00:15:40Schauen Sie, der Verfassungsschutz ist ein Inlandsgeheimdienst, der in seiner Konzeption so einzigartig ist in der westlichen Welt.
00:15:49Dieser Inlandsgeheimdienst ist ein Regierungsschutz.
00:15:52Er ist kein Verfassungsschutz, sondern er schützt die Regierung.
00:15:55Wir haben in Deutschland kein Problem mit Rechtsextremismus,
00:15:58beziehungsweise wir haben nur ein ganz kleines Problem mit Rechtsextremismus.
00:16:01Wir haben in Deutschland vor allen Dingen ein Problem mit Regierungsextremismus.
00:16:04Mit einer Regierung, die die Opposition vernichten will.
00:16:07Mit einer Regierung, die eine Politik gegen das eigene Volk macht,
00:16:10indem sie dieses Volk mit millionenfacher illegaler Einwanderung multikulturalisieren möchte.
00:16:16Extrem ist man in Deutschland ja schon, wenn man sagt, ich liebe dieses Land.
00:16:19Ich bin Patriot.
00:16:21Deutschland zuerst.
00:16:22Dann ist man schon rechtsextrem.
00:16:24Ja, dann ist man in diesem Land schon rechtsextrem.
00:16:30Bjornhoeker is extraordinary within the AFD,
00:16:34because he is really a quite old-fashioned right-wing extremist.
00:16:40He is not just a radical.
00:16:42He is not just opposed to immigration.
00:16:45He is really one who favours rewriting German history.
00:16:49Wir Deutschen, also unser Volk,
00:16:52sind das einzige Volk der Welt,
00:16:54das sich ein Denkmal der Schande in das Herz seiner Hauptstadt bepflanzt.
00:16:59Pucke is a former history teacher, who for years has been pushing against the country's restrictive speech laws.
00:17:12In 2017, he criticised Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, arguing that Germany should reverse the way it remembered its past.
00:17:22Wir brauchen nichts anderes als eine Erinnerungspolitische Wende um 180 Gramm.
00:17:36When he talked about the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin,
00:17:39it's the Holocaust Memorial of shame.
00:17:42Everybody knew what he was talking about.
00:17:45And when he was then confronted,
00:17:47what do you mean?
00:17:48Is this, Nazis weren't so bad after all?
00:17:51Is this what you mean?
00:17:52Oh, no, no, no, no.
00:17:53This is not what I mean.
00:17:57Amid calls for him to be expelled from the AFD,
00:18:00Hooker stated that he had made a mistake and that he had learned many lessons.
00:18:06But he continued to court controversy.
00:18:09In 2021, he gave a speech which included a slogan used by the Nazis,
00:18:17everything for Germany.
00:18:19There is no law on Nazi propaganda.
00:18:29There is no law on Nazi propaganda.
00:18:30There is no law on Nazi propaganda.
00:18:32There is no law on Nazi propaganda.
00:18:33Under German law, the phrase is illegal,
00:18:34and Hooker was charged with knowingly using a Nazi slogan.
00:18:38He later called the Nazi era horrific,
00:18:40but claimed he wasn't aware of the slogans' history.
00:18:44Then he did it again.
00:18:53In front of a public audience,
00:19:06he made everybody scream all for Germany.
00:19:10After he already knew that he was on criminal charges for this.
00:19:17Look, any misunderstandings?
00:19:20Oh, he didn't know what that means?
00:19:23Let me remind you, he is a history teacher,
00:19:26a certified history teacher,
00:19:29and he knows damned well what this phrase means.
00:19:35You've been charged with issuing a Nazi comment,
00:19:38everything for Germany.
00:19:40You've been charged with a criminal offense,
00:19:42because that's a crime.
00:19:45It's a Nazi saying.
00:19:48You have totally right that the opinion freedom in Germany
00:19:50is very, very strongly restricted.
00:19:52If I say in a speech, in a campaign,
00:19:54I say love to my country,
00:19:57and in the threatened situation,
00:19:59in which Germany is,
00:20:00patriots challenge,
00:20:01everything for this country to give,
00:20:03then it's not a Nazi word.
00:20:05Trump had once said American first,
00:20:08and I think it's completely legal and completely legitimate
00:20:12to force the same for Germany,
00:20:14and I have done the same thing.
00:20:16It has nothing to do with a crime or a criminal.
00:20:20Hooker was eventually found guilty
00:20:22and fined more than $30,000.
00:20:24But his controversial statements did nothing
00:20:32to dent the AFD's popularity,
00:20:35especially in the less prosperous states
00:20:37of formerly communist Eastern Germany.
00:20:43In 2023,
00:20:44the AFD won a series of local election victories there,
00:20:48polling over 30% in Thuringia.
00:20:51Support for the Alternative for Germany
00:20:54is higher than ever before in their 10-year history.
00:20:58After the election of the AFD
00:21:00in the thuringian country Sonneberg,
00:21:02experts expect further success
00:21:04of the right-populistic party in East Germany.
00:21:08They'd been capitalizing on widespread concern
00:21:11about a new influx of refugees,
00:21:13this time from Ukraine.
00:21:15as well as inflation,
00:21:17the cost of living
00:21:18and the government's expensive green energy policies.
00:21:22The party was also aiming to gain ground
00:21:33in the west of the country.
00:21:35It had broadened its appeal
00:21:39by appointing national co-leaders
00:21:41who were seen as more moderate than Bjorn Hooker.
00:21:44Danke.
00:21:45Tschüss. Alles Gute.
00:21:47Tino Kripala, a former businessman,
00:21:50and Alice Weidel, a former investment banker.
00:21:53Alice Weidel started out as a conservative,
00:21:58economically liberal politician.
00:22:02She has an international lifestyle.
00:22:04She is married to a foreign woman of colour.
00:22:08And she was seen as a moderate,
00:22:10as a market liberal within the party.
00:22:12That was her shtick.
00:22:14The party was the second most popular in the country.
00:22:30And their support among younger Germans was growing,
00:22:34boosted by a wave of pro-AfD social media videos.
00:22:39And yup, it is the strongest party among young voters in those states.
00:23:00By a lot.
00:23:01The far right AFD is the winner among young men.
00:23:04The AFD's social media campaign
00:23:08is putting them way ahead
00:23:10in the battle for new young voters.
00:23:13The voting share of the AFD
00:23:15in the group of first voters
00:23:17dribbled in eastern Germany
00:23:19during the last round of state elections,
00:23:22quite shockingly for many observers.
00:23:25The AFD has almost 30% of the popular vote
00:23:29within the group under 25.
00:23:32So that's a tremendous, a shocking change
00:23:35for German politics.
00:23:36Considering that those younger voters
00:23:38are the future of the country.
00:23:39Roland Verwiber is a social scientist at Potsdam University.
00:23:49So we see lots of likes, lots of comments and shares.
00:23:55He and his team spent more than a year researching the AFD's use of TikTok.
00:24:01The AFD is dominating the political discussion,
00:24:07the political debate on TikTok, especially if you look at younger voters.
00:24:11My confidence in my identity based on my German ethnicity,
00:24:16in my opinion, does not make me a right extremist.
00:24:20It makes me a realist.
00:24:22The AFD is the only political group in Germany
00:24:26which has such a large group of independent actors,
00:24:32right-wing influencers who produce content by themselves
00:24:36and also promote content which comes from the party.
00:24:39They use music.
00:24:45Videos are usually quite short.
00:24:48They very often not talk about politics itself,
00:24:53about complex issues.
00:24:55They transport emotions, joy, positive messages.
00:25:01And what you see is basically the result of 15 years of investing
00:25:09into social media, of being able to play out content
00:25:13to specific demographics.
00:25:15They were able to develop a real mastership in that regard.
00:25:21As part of their research,
00:25:23the team created simulated 18-year-old TikTok users
00:25:27to see what political content the algorithm would put
00:25:30on the feeds of first-time voters.
00:25:33When we were looking at the content exposure to political content
00:25:38in the feeds of the TikTok users that we simulated,
00:25:42we found that 71% of this political content
00:25:46was related to the AFD,
00:25:48which is over two-thirds of the political content
00:25:52that we collected in total.
00:25:54So this was quite shocking.
00:25:56The typical first-time voter that we simulated
00:25:59would encounter about over nine videos per week
00:26:02that are related to the AFD,
00:26:04about one video related to the also-populist BSW,
00:26:08about the same of CDU content,
00:26:11and then the other parties follow with less than one video
00:26:15in a week.
00:26:16So that's almost ten times the number of videos,
00:26:19or the AFD-Videos, compared to any other party.
00:26:23Sei nicht Sojasörn, sei Siegfried.
00:26:28Der Testosteronspiegel junger Männer sinkt und singt.
00:26:31Das macht Männer weniger durchsetzungsfähig,
00:26:33sondern jammernd.
00:26:35Opfer, soft und schwach.
00:26:38Und seinem lieben Maximilian Krah.
00:26:52One of the AFD's most popular social media stars
00:26:55is Maximilian Krah, a politician and lawyer
00:26:59from the eastern state of Saxony.
00:27:07Krah is considered to be from the same extreme wing of the party
00:27:10as Bjorn Hooker.
00:27:12I met him at an AFD campaign event in early 2025.
00:27:16Why are you so popular with young people?
00:27:22Because those people are told that they are not worth a lot,
00:27:27people don't listen to them.
00:27:29Your nation is a construction.
00:27:31Your predecessors, criminals.
00:27:33Better to change everything.
00:27:35And what we say is, no,
00:27:36you're somebody who is worth to get love, respect,
00:27:40for what you are and for what you represent
00:27:43and for what your parents and your grandparents are for.
00:27:46And this is a very positive message
00:27:48and I guess this resonates with the desires of young people.
00:28:03Tell me the thinking behind your social media profile
00:28:05and what you're doing with it.
00:28:06I mean, the first issue is, you know,
00:28:08that the legacy media as it's called now
00:28:11is hostile against us.
00:28:13So that is why...
00:28:14But are they hostile or do they just ask questions?
00:28:17No, this is why the party moved into social media very early.
00:28:20Right?
00:28:21So it's because of a need.
00:28:26Trump was and is the game changer.
00:28:28Got a good stance, Loki.
00:28:29You got a jab, I think.
00:28:30That's pretty good.
00:28:32He brought political communication from the 1970s
00:28:35into the 21st century.
00:28:36With social media?
00:28:37Digital, short and ironical.
00:28:41And then someone told me, look, among the German youth,
00:28:4620% are left-wingers and 80% are non-political.
00:28:50So I knew I have to touch the non-political.
00:28:52You're his son.
00:28:53You're a young man.
00:28:54You're nothing else.
00:28:55You're not a non-binary man.
00:28:56You're a German man.
00:28:57Yeah.
00:28:58You're a German man.
00:28:59Yeah.
00:29:00Make something out.
00:29:01Okay.
00:29:02Every third young man has never had friends.
00:29:04You belong to him?
00:29:05Don't watch porn.
00:29:06Don't choose the Greens.
00:29:07Don't choose the Greens.
00:29:08Then I said,
00:29:0930% of young men don't have a girlfriend.
00:29:12Never have.
00:29:13Don't be left-wing.
00:29:15Don't be woke.
00:29:16Don't be soft.
00:29:17Don't be a soy boy.
00:29:19Be a real man.
00:29:21Be right-wing.
00:29:22Then you get a girlfriend.
00:29:23Echte Männer sind rechts.
00:29:24Echte Männer haben Ideale.
00:29:25Echte Männer sind Patrioten.
00:29:27Dann klappt's auch mit der Freundin.
00:29:29Of course, that's ironical.
00:29:31But young people have never seen a politician
00:29:34talking to them like that
00:29:36on issues that are very important to them.
00:29:38And so I became this social media star.
00:29:40Aren't these just phrases?
00:29:42They're just rhetoric.
00:29:43But they don't really know what your politics are.
00:29:45For a youngster, young man, nothing is as important as sex.
00:29:48They want it, they don't have it.
00:29:51If you trust me on the basic questions,
00:29:53on the fundamental questions,
00:29:54or if I have a platform between you and me, a bridge,
00:29:58then I can, my political, technical issues,
00:30:01I can send over that bridge directly to you.
00:30:03And you're saying,
00:30:04well, if you vote for the far right, you'll get sex.
00:30:08I mean, that's just not...
00:30:09That's a little bit simplified.
00:30:10That's a simplified...
00:30:11But I say...
00:30:12Then you start getting into politics.
00:30:13The first is, you want sex, and I know that.
00:30:15And I'm the only one who talks about it.
00:30:18In the language you understand, the language you use,
00:30:20the media you use are the same way.
00:30:22I understand you.
00:30:23And now, look, I have three or four ideas.
00:30:28How to make your life better,
00:30:30and maybe to come a little bit closer to your goal.
00:30:33And then they say, hey, this is the first adult person,
00:30:37and then a politician who even understands what I want.
00:30:40That's a big deal.
00:30:42And that builds that bridge of trust.
00:30:44And because they trust me, they follow me.
00:30:48Krah's following on social media
00:30:50elevated his status in the party.
00:30:52In 2023, he was selected as the AFD's lead candidate
00:30:57for the upcoming European Parliament election.
00:31:00Krah's quite a flamboyant kind of person.
00:31:04He is very happy to show that he loves champagne
00:31:08and he's got lots of kids with lots of women.
00:31:11He actually, I think, described himself as the German Trump ones.
00:31:15And Catherine Muller covers the AFD
00:31:18for the investigative magazine Der Spiegel.
00:31:22Maximilian Kraft tried to push the party
00:31:24towards being more right-wing.
00:31:26He has this as-no-nationalist view
00:31:29and he pushed it and pushed it and pushed it
00:31:31during his campaign.
00:31:33All the people who are going to be driven by
00:31:35the people who are going to be a new world.
00:31:38All the people who are going to be created
00:31:40and all the people who are going to be created.
00:31:42All the people who are going to be created.
00:31:44In March 2024, TikTok deleted some of Krah's videos
00:31:49and stopped promoting his content for 90 days
00:31:52for repeated violations of its community guidelines,
00:31:56including sharing conspiracy theories.
00:32:07As his election campaign continued,
00:32:08Krah would also come under scrutiny
00:32:10for his controversial pro-Russian views.
00:32:15He repeatedly urged an end to German support for Ukraine.
00:32:19The war in Ukraine is not your war.
00:32:21And Zelenskyy is not your president.
00:32:23But it costs your money and you risk
00:32:25that Germany will be thrown into this war.
00:32:27The alternative for Germany is today the largest far-right party
00:32:32in Western Europe that is pro-Russian.
00:32:34And the group, the pro-Russian group within the party
00:32:37is probably about 60 people.
00:32:40Anton Tchekhovstov is an expert on Russian links
00:32:43to Europe's far-right parties.
00:32:46The far-right in the West, many of them consider Russia
00:32:51as an ally in their own fight against the establishment,
00:32:56against the liberal democratic ruling elites.
00:33:00So they would consider Russia as an ally
00:33:02and they would be interested in cooperating with the Russians
00:33:06against the common enemy, which is liberal democracy.
00:33:10Krah rejects the critique that he and the AFD
00:33:14are cooperating with Russia or undermining democracy.
00:33:19I always follow German interests concerning Russia.
00:33:24Economically, the big loser of the Ukrainian conflict is Germany.
00:33:29We lost our market, we lost our energy supply.
00:33:33And we take a lot of refugees
00:33:35who different to other countries don't work in Germany
00:33:37because the welfare level is so high.
00:33:40So that said, this conflict is a disaster for Germany, foremost.
00:33:45And of course, that's one of the reasons why I want to end it.
00:33:50EU leaders are sounding the alarm
00:33:52over potential Russian interference
00:33:54in the upcoming European parliamentary elections
00:33:57as several MEPs have been accused of acting as Russian agents.
00:34:02As the European Parliament elections approached,
00:34:04a series of scandals threatened to derail Krah's campaign.
00:34:09Investigators suspect him of allegedly receiving payments
00:34:12from Russia and China.
00:34:13His office was also searched in early May.
00:34:18In April 2024, German prosecutors began investigating Krah
00:34:23after he was accused of accepting payments from Russia and China.
00:34:28He has denied any wrongdoing.
00:34:30Then, just before the elections,
00:34:34Krah appeared to downplay Germany's Nazi past.
00:34:39Maximilian Krah was recently quoted as saying
00:34:42that not all members of Nazi Germany's SS were criminals.
00:34:45Krah made this comment that not everyone in the Waffen-SS was a criminal.
00:34:53By definition, under German law,
00:34:55the Waffen-SS is a criminal organization.
00:34:57It's unconstitutional.
00:34:59It was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.
00:35:02They ran the concentration camps.
00:35:04I mean, what more do you want?
00:35:09Tell me what happened with this SS comment
00:35:11and what you were trying to get across.
00:35:13Look, the situation was I had an interview with the Financial Times
00:35:15and then there was an other colleague from La Repubblica
00:35:17and after the interview was over, she said,
00:35:19and by the way, by the way, you said,
00:35:22our ancestors were not criminals.
00:35:25One of my ancestors was in the SS.
00:35:28What shall I say?
00:35:29And I knew now this is the trap.
00:35:32And I said, oh, have you ever checked what this ancestor has done?
00:35:37Because I will not say to you that everyone who had this uniform was a criminal.
00:35:42I mean, people took it.
00:35:43It could be taken.
00:35:44There's messaging the extremists in Germany
00:35:46that you're somehow endorsing those that were in the SS.
00:35:49That was the problem.
00:35:50That's why I told you how the situation was in the interview
00:35:52when she said, what is with my relative?
00:35:54And I tried to escape the situation.
00:35:56Have you checked it?
00:35:57I said, no, do I have to check it?
00:35:58Do I have to check it?
00:35:59Yes, you have to check it.
00:36:13Under pressure, Krah agreed to step down from the AFD's leadership team
00:36:17but stayed on as one of the party's candidates.
00:36:28In an historic game, 15 AFD candidates would be elected to the European Parliament, including Maximilian Kraft.
00:36:43I think one part of that story is normalisation.
00:36:57They are violating taboos all the time.
00:37:00So you get used to it.
00:37:02You get used to them saying outrageous things.
00:37:05But I think part of the story is also because AFD voters are so outraged.
00:37:12They really dislike the system.
00:37:14They really dislike the elites.
00:37:16And because anything to do with National Socialism is so criminalised in Germany,
00:37:21because it is or used to be the ultimate taboo,
00:37:25it's one way to stick it to the man.
00:37:28To still vote for a party that so obviously violates conventions and taboos around this part of German history.
00:37:37The AFD's success was part of a wider pattern across the continent.
00:38:03Far-right parties were expected to do well in these European elections,
00:38:07but their performance delivered a number of bombshells.
00:38:10Hard-right nationalists gained ground in France, Austria, Italy, Spain and Belgium.
00:38:20European voters have pulled the parliament to the farthest right it's ever been,
00:38:25and that is what's causing anxiety.
00:38:28This is a trend that we've seen over the past decade, really.
00:38:31Some of the biggest gains made by the far-right in the European Parliament were actually made in 2019,
00:38:36for example, not in 2024 in the most recent election.
00:38:40What has, I think, accelerated this trend in more recent years, though,
00:38:43is that mainstream politicians have adopted far-right rhetoric, particularly on migration.
00:38:49Amida VanRidge is an expert in European politics.
00:38:55Far-right views have become more mainstream, and that has enabled that cordon sanitaire, the firewall,
00:39:01around the far-right parties to erode gradually and over time.
00:39:05And so what we're seeing now is, in certain countries, both at the national level and on the European level,
00:39:11there's increasing collaboration and just discussion of working with the far-right.
00:39:16So they're no longer excluded, but actually they're part of the political process now.
00:39:20And what that also means is that now for voters and for populations,
00:39:25they know that a vote for the far-right is no longer a lost vote.
00:39:29Shortly after the EU elections, allegations emerged that support for Europe's far-right parties,
00:39:45especially the AFD, had been boosted by a flood of online disinformation.
00:39:51Investigative journalist Martin Lane got access to a trove of leaked documents.
00:40:02We received an email with a really obscure link attached to it.
00:40:08And we were afraid to even click it because it looked very suspicious.
00:40:12And then we downloaded it.
00:40:17It turned out to be about 400 documents from an organization called Social Design Agency from Russia.
00:40:29There are thousands of lines of data there.
00:40:33It's like a detailed accounting how the Russians have conducted disinformation warfare.
00:40:46What immediately catched the eye was a document mentioning European Parliament elections.
00:40:51And the documents mentioning European Parliament elections confirmed that the Russians were trying to disrupt European elections,
00:41:00trying to achieve results beneficial for them.
00:41:04They were targeting the biggest member states, especially France and Germany.
00:41:10certain political parties, especially AFD.
00:41:15So that told me that European elections were being meddled with by the Russians.
00:41:20The Social Design Agency is a Russian PR company with close links to the Kremlin.
00:41:31Even before the European elections, the company had been sanctioned by the EU and the US Treasury Department,
00:41:38and accused of running a foreign malign influence campaign, including attempting to impersonate legitimate media outlets.
00:41:48The trove contained a video boasting about its work.
00:41:55And now we will tell you what has been done for a year of our work.
00:42:02The video starts with the main guy, the head of Social Design Agency, wearing this military-looking outfit.
00:42:14He even had like a badge saying ideological troops of Russia.
00:42:19They work like a usual PR firm trying to achieve results.
00:42:24And the results they're trying to achieve, as it seems, is the popularity of AFD party in Germany.
00:42:34We had the documents translated from Russian into English.
00:42:38And they talk here quite openly about creating fakes and disinformation.
00:42:43Yeah.
00:42:44Like they say that?
00:42:46Yeah, they say that directly.
00:42:48They use fakes a lot in their documents.
00:42:51Like there's documents called fakes.
00:42:53And it's just a list of fake stories they've done.
00:42:56Especially with Ukraine.
00:42:58You can see fake picture, fake document, meme, video.
00:43:01So they use these words like fake, fake, fake.
00:43:05And they know that they're producing fakes.
00:43:09So they had a cartoon team on board.
00:43:13Like open borders, migrants are coming in.
00:43:18Credit, yeah.
00:43:19Yeah.
00:43:20Meta, the owner of Facebook, has publicly said it's been trying to block disinformation from the Social Design Agency since 2022.
00:43:29But in the documents, the SDA boasts about its ability to elude Meta's efforts.
00:43:37Here are screenshots from their ad campaigns on Facebook.
00:43:42Very detailed overview of how they push these stories on Facebook.
00:43:47So this is the fake user leaving comments.
00:43:51So you can see them.
00:43:56That's one of the most interesting documents.
00:43:59Basically reviewing how the European elections went.
00:44:03And they analyse the like balance in the European Parliament and how it corresponds with their aims.
00:44:11So here, even more impressive is the success of the alternative for Deutschland.
00:44:18Receiving 17% of the vote over Haul.
00:44:21They also mention how during elections the media sphere was flooded with disinformation.
00:44:28And they quote like people saying that and saying that, okay, that's what we were doing.
00:44:35They noticed.
00:44:36And here they say that, on the whole, the overall success of the right wing in the European elections is now perceived worldwide as a success of Russian foreign policy and moreover a success of Russian propaganda.
00:44:47Wow.
00:44:51Russia has consistently denied it has interfered in foreign elections.
00:44:55And the SDA did not respond to our attempts to reach them.
00:44:59In September 2024, the US Justice Department accused the company of covertly spreading propaganda in Europe as well as the United States.
00:45:09And said that senior Kremlin officials were involved in the efforts.
00:45:13The FBI agent explains in that affidavit that employees of Russian presidential administration had like 20 meetings, at least, together with social design agency employees, planning out all those campaigns and stuff.
00:45:30Specifically, they mentioned Sergei Kirienko, who is a very important man in the Kremlin.
00:45:37He is a right hand man to Putin, basically.
00:45:39Historically, it's known that he is the head of like the propaganda system in Russia, at least in the presidential administration.
00:45:51And that shows how important this organization is and how close it is to the Kremlin.
00:45:56It's like, it is the Kremlin, basically.
00:45:58So what Russia is really trying to do is pull a kind of loose threads in the fabric of Europe.
00:46:09And it wouldn't be so effective if it wasn't based on something that people are genuinely concerned about.
00:46:14If we think in terms of where we are in the world, there was a migration crisis in 2015, 2016, which heavily affected Europe.
00:46:25We have come out of several years of a COVID crisis.
00:46:29There's a war on the European continent.
00:46:31So it's been kind of crisis after crisis after crisis in the kind of most recent decade.
00:46:35All of that is leading to some people having genuine grievances about, we feel left behind.
00:46:44Globalization hasn't delivered for us.
00:46:46Russia is really good at kind of identifying something where there's something there.
00:46:52And it pulls at that.
00:46:53And so people feel that they are no longer in control, their governments are no longer in control.
00:47:03All of that leads to further divisiveness.
00:47:06And that's what Russia is trying to achieve.
00:47:09Right now it is done to undermine unity for Ukraine.
00:47:14But the longer term goal is to just cause chaos and disorder in Europe more broadly.
00:47:24I went to the Netherlands to meet a team of digital investigators who'd been commissioned by European Parliament members to gather evidence of how Russian disinformation had spread online.
00:47:36I see, this is what we see in the German accounts.
00:47:47They all have the same traits.
00:47:48You can see that those accounts are using the same kind of icons, the same kind of emoji in their bio.
00:47:55There are almost no accounts using what seem to be real German names.
00:48:02They're all basically anonymous.
00:48:03Absolutely.
00:48:05I mean, and when you Google these people or look on LinkedIn, they're not real people. You can't find them anywhere.
00:48:14The team developed its own software to uncover an army of fake accounts on X.
00:48:2024,000 messages per day.
00:48:23Some of which were originally created to support Russia's war in Ukraine.
00:48:29This graph shows when these accounts were created.
00:48:31But had been repurposed to boost support for Europe's far right.
00:48:37So beginning of 2022, when the full-scale war in Ukraine started, they were mainly spreading Russian propaganda related to Ukraine.
00:48:46Massive amounts of it.
00:48:48But in the summer, when the elections, European elections were, it's more related to far right and immigration.
00:48:53Who were they mainly promoting? Which parties?
00:48:58It was specifically AFD.
00:49:00According to their research, more than 10% of all posts about the AFD in the run-up to the European elections came from this army of accounts.
00:49:11What you can see is that this account is really pushing all kinds of narratives that are also supported by AFD.
00:49:18So you can see remigration.
00:49:20Remigration.
00:49:21It's all the right-wing narratives.
00:49:23But one thing that very strikes in this account is that it also sometimes seemingly accidental posts in Russian.
00:49:30While most of the time this account seems to be a German citizen, it sometimes starts retweeting or posting in Russian.
00:49:39Do you believe that the far right has gained partly because of this disinformation?
00:49:45I'm 100% sure that it really works, yes.
00:49:50People don't understand the scale of this info.
00:49:54I think that's because people can't see, it's still very abstract and governments are afraid to take action because maybe they will be blamed that it's against free speech or whatever.
00:50:03But the moment that you have armies often owned by some country or some political group or whatever, which is spreading hatred and propaganda and lies, and it's very influential.
00:50:18This is undermining Europe. This is slowly eating at your democracy.
00:50:23I don't think we should call it free speech.
00:50:25Breaking news from here in Germany where Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost a vote of confidence in Parliament.
00:50:35In late 2024, Germany's governing coalition collapsed, triggering a snap election for early in the new year.
00:50:43Here in Parliament today, this comes at a very bad point in time.
00:50:49It was an opportunity for the AFD to make a bid for national power.
00:50:53And it would turn out to be dominated by the party's signature issue, immigration.
00:51:00Police in Germany say several people have been injured after a stabbing in the city of Mannheim.
00:51:06In the months leading up to the election, the country was hit by a series of terror attacks.
00:51:13With some breaking news from Germany where police say a number of people have been killed and others injured in a suspected knife attack in the western city of Mannheim.
00:51:22Culminating in an attack on a Christmas market in the town of Magdeburg, which killed six.
00:51:29Tonight, German police have arrested a doctor from Saudi Arabia who's been in Germany since 2006.
00:51:36The attacker's motives were confusing. He was a Saudi who had been granted asylum, had been critical of Islam online and even expressed support for the AFD.
00:51:48Nevertheless, the AFD seized on it.
00:51:53Heißt mit mir, recht herzlich willkommen, Dr. Alice Weidel!
00:52:01Alice Weidel would soon be announced as the AFD's candidate for Chancellor.
00:52:05Alice Weidel! Alice! Alice! Alice! Alice! Alice!
00:52:08Alice! Alice! Alice!
00:52:12We all want to be together that something is changing, that we can live safely again!
00:52:22At a rally in Magdeburg three days after the attack, the crowd began chanting Alice for Deutschland.
00:52:29Alice for Deutschland! Alice for Deutschland!
00:52:33A play on words echoing the illegal Nazi rallying cry Alice for Deutschland. Everything for Germany.
00:52:40We want to be together forever to be a mother who's in a."
00:52:56Throughout the campaign the AFD would argue that immigration had led to exploding crime rates.
00:53:02Despite the fact that official crime statistics didn't support the claim.
00:53:07If you look on the statistic, it's simply not true that the majority of criminal acts have been done by migrants.
00:53:15That's not true.
00:53:16If you look on the federal criminal statistics, it doesn't give that evidence.
00:53:20But still the AFD is claiming it.
00:53:23And again, when emotionals are cooking high and when they prove, yes, they have some cases, very brutal,
00:53:29where, yes, immigrants have done something, committed something,
00:53:32nobody is interested in the true story and nobody is interested in statistics,
00:53:36everybody is interested in the blood and who is responsible for it, whom can we hang.
00:53:44Emboldened, the AFD announced its most radical platform to date.
00:53:49Wir haben einen Zukunftsplan für Deutschland, den wir in den ersten 100 Tagen einer Regierungsbeteiligung angehen.
00:53:58Die Grenzen lückenlos schließen und jeden illegal und ohne Papiere Einreisenden zurückweisen.
00:54:08Und eine ganz klare Ansage an alle Welt, die deutschen Grenzen sind dicht.
00:54:17Liebe Freunde, sie sind dicht.
00:54:20Until now, Alice Weidel had avoided the controversial term remigration to refer to mass deportations of asylum seekers and immigrants.
00:54:29Und ich muss Ihnen ganz ehrlich sagen, wenn es dann re-migration heißen soll, dann heißt es eben re-migra-tion.
00:54:40At the party's convention, she embraced it.
00:54:43So, suddenly, a word that she's not used.
00:54:48I mean, the main party count used it, everybody used it, kind of.
00:54:51But she hadn't said it herself in that way.
00:54:54She suddenly used it right at the start of her campaign.
00:54:57It was quite a clear sign, you know, I'm going with the part of the party that is the furthest to the right.
00:55:05So, she's kind of sent all the signals.
00:55:09She was very nice to Björn Hacker during that campaign.
00:55:12She mentioned him over and over again.
00:55:14She said if they ruled in the federal government, he could be like a minister.
00:55:19She was really keen, apparently, to show how far to the right she wanted to lead the party.
00:55:26Soon, the AFD began an ad campaign,
00:55:29distributing tens of thousands of flyers in southwestern Germany
00:55:33designed to resemble plane-tickets for deportation.
00:55:38I found this in my letter today.
00:55:40This is a transfer ticket from the AFD.
00:55:42And, honestly, how cool is that?
00:55:43It says that I get a free flight back to my homeland.
00:55:47In the place for the passenger's name, the tickets said illegal immigrant.
00:55:52Oh, I don't understand one thing.
00:55:53Why is it called Pajasir?
00:55:55Illegaler Einwanderer.
00:55:57The flyers caused an outcry and accusations that they promoted racial hatred.
00:56:01Denn, wie wir alle wissen, wiederholt sich Geschichte leider.
00:56:04Denn die AFD ist nicht ganz alleine auf diese Idee gekommen.
00:56:06Bereits 1933 hat die NSDAP Freifahrtkarten an Juden verteilt,
00:56:10um zurück nach Palästina zu gehen.
00:56:11Das Ganze war damals natürlich auch nur als Witz gedacht,
00:56:13aber wir wissen ganz genau, was die nächsten zehn Jahre passiert ist.
00:56:17The AFD-Official behind the campaign was Mark Bernhard.
00:56:21Can I ask you about this Remigration-Post out that you created here?
00:56:25There's one there.
00:56:25Yeah.
00:56:26So, just tell me, what is that?
00:56:28And what was the purpose and message of that?
00:56:30The purpose is, first of all, it's like four voters,
00:56:34because it's like part of the voting campaign, so it's four voters.
00:56:38And it's supposed to bring one important problem back on the agenda.
00:56:44And it's very, very strange.
00:56:45I mean, everybody talked about the ticket, but nobody talked about the problem.
00:56:49Well, the history of that is...
00:56:51But nobody talked about the real issue.
00:56:53And the issue is the murders of Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg, Mannheim, and many other cities.
00:57:02A lot of...
00:57:02No, no, no, this is very important.
00:57:04This is the main issue, and that's why I'm really upset about this discussion.
00:57:08So, let's say, right, you don't know who received that.
00:57:12Let's say a migrant family who may be paying their taxes and working and been here for
00:57:17many, many years, receives that in the mail.
00:57:19It's a one-way remigration ticket for illegal migrants.
00:57:22That's a very scary thing to get.
00:57:24Yeah, it clearly says illegal migrant.
00:57:28So everybody who's here legally has nothing to fear.
00:57:31It's been reported that this particular type of ticket was very reminiscent of what the
00:57:36Nazis did with the Jews, and this hasn't come from nowhere in the German context.
00:57:41How do you respond to that?
00:57:42Yeah.
00:57:43Also, diese Aktion sind mir nicht bekannt.
00:57:45Ganz ehrlich gesagt, ich kenne die nicht.
00:57:47Auch war mir nicht bekannt.
00:57:49Bernhard told me the party wants to remigrate over a million people.
00:57:54Some immigrants that German courts have already ordered to be deported, but mostly Syrian refugees.
00:58:01We're talking about 1 to 1.2 million Syrians, which are in Germany.
00:58:07And, of course, the war, the civil war is over, so they have to go back.
00:58:11But those people have now formed established lives.
00:58:14They've got children in school.
00:58:16They've got jobs.
00:58:17Most of them don't have jobs.
00:58:19Most of them are not well integrated.
00:58:21That's exactly the issue.
00:58:22German labor statistics show that over time, most Syrians able to work do get jobs.
00:58:29But Bernhard and others continue to use the issue as a key talking point.
00:58:33People who are not integrated are normally those who are not working, who are not, they are also not integrated in the working market and so on.
00:58:43So, and then if you switch off social benefits, they will go themselves because it's too expensive for them to finance their life here.
00:58:52Well, let's bring you some news on another story we're watching.
00:58:57This is out of Germany.
00:58:59Around a month before Germans went to the Poles, there was another high-profile attack, this time by an Afghan immigrant who had been slated for deportation.
00:59:08Two people, including a two-year-old boy, were killed in a public park in the central city of Aschaffenburg.
00:59:15Griff ein 28-jähriger afghanischer Tatverdächtiger, unvermittelt und gezielt ein Kind in einer Kindergartengruppe, die dort unterwegs war.
00:59:27Things are very fraught here and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this somehow is leapt upon by those who can see a profit in using this for their campaign in the elections.
00:59:38Under growing pressure, the leader of the mainstream conservative party and frontrunner for Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the asylum system needed fixing and called for tighter border controls.
00:59:57Wir haben in Deutschland ein massives Problem der Ausländerkriminalität, vor allem unter den Asylbewerbern.
01:00:06To get a motion through Parliament, he did something unprecedented, breaking the post-war convention of no political deals with the far right.
01:00:16Merz agreed to work with the AFD.
01:00:20The firewall had been breached.
01:00:22Ja, es kann sein, es kann sein, dass die AfD hier im Deutschen Bundestag am Freitag erstmalig die Mehrheit für ein notwendiges Gesetz ermöglicht.
01:00:32This was a really, really important point in German history because it changed what the conservatives have said all along, that they would never work with the AFD and their votes.
01:00:46And to do it so shortly before an election, it sent out like all kinds of signals that people were very confused and very scared about.
01:00:54Like, did that mean that after the election suddenly Merz would work with them, would he go into a coalition with them, what was going to happen?
01:01:02And also it showed AFD voters, you know, there might be an option to power.
01:01:07So we might be right by voting for them.
01:01:10Wir werden mit der Partei, die sich der Alternative für Deutschland nennt, nicht zusammenarbeiten, vorher nicht, nachher nicht, niemals.
01:01:20Diese Partei steht gegen alles, was unsere Partei...
01:01:25Merz went on to promise voters that he would never go into a full coalition with the AFD.
01:01:31Ich frage einmal, wo ist denn der Aufstand der Anständigen?
01:01:36But Germany's political landscape had been transformed.
01:01:41What impact has that had on you, on the party's popularity, going to the election?
01:01:45It showed the absurdity of this firewall.
01:01:48I mean, the CDU is apologising itself for using a majority in parliament.
01:01:56That's absurd.
01:01:57On every theory on democracy.
01:01:59Yes, but they broke what has been the firewall against working with the far-right party since World War II.
01:02:04That's the whole history of German politics, right?
01:02:06So this is a very, it's a very important moment.
01:02:08Obviously, it is one next step to normalise our party.
01:02:15Hello?
01:02:19Yes, we can hear you.
01:02:21Unfortunately, I can't hear you very well.
01:02:25So hopefully, wow.
01:02:27Hello, everyone.
01:02:28It was then that Elon Musk weighed in.
01:02:31I was in the hall when Elon Musk came onto the screen live, and Alisweiler was really nervous and happy about him showing up.
01:02:39And then he started his speech.
01:02:41It was also a bit rambling, but then he came to the point which was like, we shouldn't be too afraid of our history as Germans.
01:02:48So, like, you know, I think there's like, frankly, too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.
01:02:56People, you know, children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, or even let alone their parents, their great-grandparents, maybe even.
01:03:05People were kind of astonished.
01:03:07They would say it so openly, but then they clapped.
01:03:10And we should be optimistic and excited about a future for Germany.
01:03:17And that's really my message, is to be optimistic, excited, and preserve German culture and protect the German people.
01:03:28For opponents of the AFD, it was a disturbing development.
01:03:32If somebody, with his range, with his tools, uses such a language, he diminishes all efforts in learning from the Holocaust, learning from the Nazi past.
01:03:45I do not say it lightly when I think the future of civilization could hang on this election.
01:03:52So, when something is so important, you really need to say, okay, you're going to go all out to convince people to vote for AFD.
01:04:02Basically, a lot of the voters for the AFD, and a lot of right-wing extremist people in Germany, they got a boost.
01:04:08They got a boost for their own opinion, and the fact that if a great guy like Elon Musk, a world man, a citizen, an entrepreneur, and whatsoever, is basically saying the same thing, I mean, they feel like ordained.
01:04:23Fight for a great future for Germany.
01:04:25Fight for a great future for Germany.
01:04:27Go, go, go.
01:04:28Convince your friends, convince everyone.
01:04:30Let's go.
01:04:32Elon Musk, his intervention is very public and very strong and enthusiastic support for the AFD.
01:04:39What influence did that have on AFD's support?
01:04:42I would say the two.
01:04:43You know, we have this firewall concept, that we are on the bad side of the firewall.
01:04:49Well, no parties will work with what they call the firewall.
01:04:51Elon Musk's on our side, and now compared to all the losers, I mean, they are losers of the established parties, and we have the richest and most innovative entrepreneur of the world on our side.
01:05:03So he is balancing that out.
01:05:05Now the question is, which side of the firewall is sexier?
01:05:08I mean, you have an invitation to a party.
01:05:10The AFD and Elon Musk party or all this German established politics puppets.
01:05:18So I think on the long term, it will have an extreme impact, because it shows that we are a serious political force.
01:05:26The AFD had been ramping up an increasingly provocative campaign aimed at younger voters.
01:05:44Using AI to produce videos, playing on fears about immigrants and crime.
01:05:53Dein Opa musste sich nicht mit Tallahons rumärgern.
01:05:56Du riskierst auf dem Heimweg von der Party von einem Messermann abgestochen zu werden.
01:06:01Ja! Schnell hilf mir neue Mitstreiter zu gewinnen, Deutschland zu retten.
01:06:06Komm in ihre drei oder mehr Symbole und rette dein Land. Wir haben nicht viel Zeit!
01:06:10The party's youth wing had even created a game in which players win points for arresting and deporting illegal immigrants.
01:06:18Wow! Du bist mein Held! Schnell, teile dein Ergebnis mit deinen Freunden. Damit auch sie, Deutschland retten!
01:06:28Papa?
01:06:30Ja?
01:06:31Erzähl nochmal von damals, als ihr Deutschland gerade noch retten konntet.
01:06:35Hmm. Alles begann mit der großen Remigration.
01:06:40Jetzt geht's auf!
01:06:43Wir schieben, sie haben wir auf!
01:06:45Sie haben wir auf!
01:06:47One AI-generated video, also produced by the AFD's youth wing, plagiarised a popular song and rewrote the lyrics to call for mass deportations.
01:06:59I mean, it's clear that it's fundamentally racist.
01:07:03It's white, blonde, blue-eyed people.
01:07:06The idea of Aryan people, as the Nazis would have put it, sending off brown-skinned men.
01:07:13They are trying to send a very clear message about who belongs in Germany and who does not.
01:07:19And what should be done with those who do not.
01:07:22In early February, the AFD's youth wing, the Jung Alternative, J.A., was holding its conference in Turingia.
01:07:42I was there to try to speak to the team behind the AI-video campaign.
01:08:00The atmosphere was tense.
01:08:01We weren't allowed into the conference itself, but obtained footage of what was going on inside.
01:08:20One of the J.A. leaders who commissioned the AI-video agreed to come out and talk to us.
01:08:35Eric Engelhardt was head of the group's Turingia branch.
01:08:38Eric Engelhardt
01:09:08You ordered that video to be made.
01:09:10Just the content of the video.
01:09:12You see brown people being taken onto planes.
01:09:16You see very Aryan-looking women and men having a party.
01:09:20How can that be appropriate?
01:09:22It looks very offensive.
01:09:23Also, I had the subjective impression of the video.
01:09:28I can't see you in the picture.
01:09:29I don't know exactly what you can see.
01:09:31I can't tell you in the picture.
01:09:32I can't tell you in the future.
01:09:33Our street, our country.
01:09:37The J.A. has long been accused of neo-Nazi links and was itself declared an extremist organization
01:09:51by Germany's domestic intelligence in 2023.
01:09:54Do you understand why people see you as extremists?
01:10:01They worry about a future with AFD.
01:10:03They worry about you targeting minorities, Muslims, refugees, people needing help.
01:10:09You're very aggressively against all those people.
01:10:13Yes.
01:10:13We certainly don't agree with minorities.
01:10:17We are not extremist, even if the government, the government, the government says that we
01:10:24do not agree with violence in the political relationship.
01:10:26We try to bring our positions to the people, but in my opinion, it is not extremist.
01:10:37The J.A. has since disbanded, and the AFD is in the process of forming a new youth wing,
01:10:43with many of the same members expected to join.
01:10:45As the election neared, the AFD launched a new ad campaign.
01:11:14With a Star Wars theme.
01:11:16But the globalists had made their money without the people.
01:11:21And so was allmählich the democratic rebellion.
01:11:27At a rally in the city of Heidenheim, they celebrated the rise of right-wing parties across
01:11:32Europe and the election of a new president in the United States.
01:11:37The people want freedom.
01:11:38And the rebellion wins.
01:11:39So like he.
01:11:40Of course.
01:11:41Donald Trump.
01:11:42Old and new president of the United States of America.
01:11:44Certainly the populist and the far-right and the eurosceptics in Europe feel that they've
01:11:56now got their man in the White House back.
01:11:59They share this perceived existential threat caused by migration.
01:12:03They share attitudes towards anti-wokeism.
01:12:05They share, you know, the need for traditional so-called family values.
01:12:09But those are ideas and ideologies.
01:12:11What does this actually mean on the ground?
01:12:13Sometimes the answers can be perfectly simple in life.
01:12:23Alice for Germany.
01:12:25Alice for Germany, dear friends.
01:12:29By now, Alice for Deutschland, the play on words recalling the banned Nazi rallying cry,
01:12:35had become the party's official slogan.
01:12:38Alice for Germany.
01:12:52Marcus Frondmeier is one of Alice Weidel's closest advisers.
01:12:56Mr Frondmeier.
01:12:57A former leader of the JA, he rose up through the party to become the AFD's foreign policy spokesman.
01:13:04Frondmeier told us he sees both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as ideological allies.
01:13:11When it's about political issues, it's certainly so that there are people with Mr Putin, but also with Mr Trump in the USA,
01:13:20who treat conservative families' pictures, who want to bring back their values back to their countries,
01:13:29who want to bring back their values back to their countries, but also very clear in the Lage are, national interests to formulate.
01:13:34But in the first years of our party, there were no partners in the USA who could say,
01:13:43that this is really exciting, the exchange is worth it.
01:13:47That has changed now.
01:13:48And we're looking forward to the government's time of Donald Trump and his team
01:13:53and hope that we can build good relationships in the next few years.
01:13:58Vice President Vance is expected to address the Munich Security Conference tomorrow.
01:14:03The AFD would soon get another boost.
01:14:06Please welcome Vice President J.D. Vance.
01:14:14In mid-February, Vice President J.D. Vance was in Munich to address an international security conference.
01:14:21No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.
01:14:29To the surprise of many, he went on the offensive,
01:14:33accusing Europe's leaders of suppressing free speech
01:14:37and weighing in directly on the German elections by criticizing the firewall.
01:14:43What no democracy, American, German or European will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns,
01:14:52their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
01:15:00Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters.
01:15:05There's no room for firewalls.
01:15:08You either uphold the principle or you don't.
01:15:12Thank you all.
01:15:13Good luck to all of you.
01:15:14God bless you.
01:15:15German political leaders pushed back.
01:15:20Again, unprecedented.
01:15:21I can't think of any instance where a member, a high-ranking member of the United States government,
01:15:27told any European country how to vote or what to do about a specific opposition party.
01:15:42We have a strange constellation where Russia supports far-right actors all over Europe for their own interests, of course.
01:16:01They support right-wing authoritarian movements and parties and the United States government.
01:16:11That's much the same out in the open.
01:16:14They're coming out in support of the AFD.
01:16:16So you see an ideological alignment between the United States government and Russia,
01:16:21something I never expected to see in my lifetime.
01:16:27It's election day here in Germany.
01:16:29Voting is underway, with the people now having their say on who should come to grips with Germany's economic recession,
01:16:36divide over migration and foreign policy challenges.
01:16:39In an election that's expected to shape the political direction of the country and Europe as well.
01:16:51In the end, the AFD doubled its national vote share to almost 21%,
01:16:56winning a record number of seats in Parliament.
01:16:59The firewall would continue to keep them from power, but they still saw the result as a victory.
01:17:09It's right.
01:17:10We've got double.
01:17:11We're going to half.
01:17:12We're going to half.
01:17:13We're going to half.
01:17:14We're going to half.
01:17:15The opposite is turned right.
01:17:16And I have to tell you, our hand will always be triggered for a government's assistance.
01:17:30Björn Hooker was at the AfD's election night party.
01:17:35Once part of the AfD's radical fringe,
01:17:39Hooker was now seen as a core member of the national leadership.
01:17:44If the firewall still stands, you're still in opposition,
01:17:48what can you really do?
01:17:50Brandmauern have nothing to seek in democracy.
01:17:55I thank Vance for his speech at the conference at the conference.
01:18:02He ordained it right.
01:18:04I'm a bewundering of the Trump administration.
01:18:10Trump is on the side of the freedom of freedom.
01:18:13Trump is on the side of the fight against the so-called Vokism.
01:18:18That's the main position we have as the AfD.
01:18:21Especially the freedom of freedom we don't have.
01:18:23And if the United States of America
01:18:24a new era of freedom of freedom,
01:18:27and this wind of change from the United States
01:18:31comes to Europe,
01:18:33then we will lead this wind of change
01:18:35and try to make this wind of change for us.
01:18:40Two months after the election,
01:18:43Germany's domestic intelligence
01:18:45upgraded its classification of the AfD,
01:18:47labelling the entire party a proven right-wing extremist organisation.
01:18:53A diplomatic row has erupted between Germany
01:18:56and key members of the Trump administration.
01:18:59The Trump administration condemned the move.
01:19:02So Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
01:19:05slamming Germany's government for allowing its spy agency
01:19:08to monitor and label AfD as extremists.
01:19:10A move Rubio called tyranny in disguise.
01:19:14Secretary of State Rubio's comments in particular angered German officials.
01:19:19It's not true what he's simply saying.
01:19:21It's not fact-based.
01:19:23What the Federal Agency of Domestic Intelligence stated
01:19:27was clearly based on evidence and on facts that were put together.
01:19:30And this is not about putting someone irresponsibly out of a democratic process.
01:19:37This is about protecting our constitutional rights
01:19:42in a legal state with legal evidence
01:19:46which can be challenged in front of courts,
01:19:49which neither Mr Rubio nor Mr Vance mentioned in their statements.
01:19:54The AfD has appealed
01:19:56and the classification has reverted to suspected extremist threat
01:20:01while the German courts review the case.
01:20:05In the Czech Republic's parliamentary elections,
01:20:08billionaire Andrzej Babiš is predicted to be the latest populist leader in Central Europe.
01:20:15A nationalist candidate backed by Donald Trump, Karol Nowrowski,
01:20:19has won Poland's presidential election in a neck-and-neck race.
01:20:22In France, the far-right national rally is predicted, according to most polls,
01:20:28to get even more seats in Parliament.
01:20:30The Italians have decided to raise their heads.
01:20:32The Polonians, the Hungarians, the Netherlands recently
01:20:36have renewed with a national ambition.
01:20:38Across Europe this year,
01:20:40hard-line nationalist parties have been gaining ground
01:20:43or are on the brink of power in multiple countries.
01:20:46More than 100,000 people took to the streets
01:20:51in what's believed to be the largest anti-immigration protest in British history.
01:20:56Sooner or later, we're gonna be the minority in our own country.
01:21:00Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, even Sweden.
01:21:05Basically, this is a turning point.
01:21:07You either fight back or you die.
01:21:10Today, Elon, I think the British public are telling the world that they're ready to fight back.
01:21:18Honestly, I wish I could tell you where this is going to lead.
01:21:24I mean, I'm not too optimistic at the moment if I look at the numbers.
01:21:28Support for the far-right AFD is increasing.
01:21:32A new poll shows the party just behind the Chancellor's CDU party.
01:21:37There's a very nice phrase which is considered to be Goethe's quote,
01:21:42but Goethe never said it.
01:21:44It's if you sleep in a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship.
01:21:47We see that people wake up everywhere.
01:21:51We also see that in the United States there's a huge revolution in itself.
01:21:56What they can, that we can in Germany too.
01:22:00No politician and no politician should be sure.
01:22:04The democracy is so strong that they can create change.
01:22:07Do you see a federal victory in the years to come?
01:22:11Yes, because there are trouble in front of us.
01:22:14Germany is struggling. The country is in decline.
01:22:18People feel that the established parties will never get a turnaround.
01:22:23We win because the others fail.
01:22:38Go to pbs.org slash frontline.
01:22:40Now we are the party of the future.
01:22:44To see our past films and reporting on the rise of the far right in Germany.
01:22:48The image Germany portrays to the outside is that Germany has learned its lesson from the Second World War.
01:22:55Connect with Frontline on Facebook and Instagram and stream anytime on the PBS app, YouTube or pbs.org slash frontline.
01:23:03The Frontline.
01:23:04The Frontline.
01:23:09Of theight.
01:23:12The Frontline.
01:23:16The Frontline on whatever cultural f � enthusiasts may have guessed,
01:23:22who art harcľ wooed or Kim Rippersnautley 건� Innocence in toronto.
01:23:23For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash Frontline.
01:23:53Frontline's The Rise of Germany's New Right is available on Amazon Prime Video.
01:24:23Frontline's The Rise of Germany.
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