“A feeling of creeping horror”: Several political scientists from the USA fear a shift to the right following the election victory of Björn Höcke and the AfD in Thuringia.
In the state elections in the East on 1 September, the AfD in Thuringia with 32.8 percent the strongest force: Party leader Björn Höcke celebrated the victory and sees a clear mandate to govern. On X (formerly Twitter) he posted a picture of his faction and wrote that the AfD is the “only people’s party in Thuringia” – a new escalation level for the AfD on social media.
How is Björn Höcke and his success with the AfD in the US? “As a threat to Germany and Europe. Some even say it’s like in the film ‘He’s Back’,” says Eric Langenbacher BuzzFeed News Germany from IPPEN.MEDIA. He oversees the project “Understanding the AfD” at the American German Institute (AGI) in Washington and teaches politics at Georgetown University.
If he were to describe Höcke in a few words, he would say he is “a potential demagogue who exploits people’s fears,” says Langenbacher. Since the elections in Thuringia and Saxony, his perception of the AfD has changed. “It is a feeling of creeping horror. As if a bad dream were coming to life,” he says.
“I think there was a certain belief (or wishful thinking) that voters would not support Höcke and the AfD to the same extent on election day,” he says. “Now it seems that the far-right are inevitably on their way to power, with all that that entails.”
US experts fear “rising tide of right-wing extremism” in Germany
“I fear that Germany, which has marginalised (and criminalised) neo-Nazi movements and anti-Semitic expressions and has become one of the world’s largest democracies, will be rocked by a rising tide of right-wing extremism,” says Matthew Dallek of George Washington University BuzzFeed News Germany.
Dallek researches right-wing extremism in the United States and beyond and warns that the “rise of the far right poses a serious threat to global stability because they are jeopardizing support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, scapegoating immigrants, Jews and Muslims for economic problems and crime, and pushing nationalist policies that are weakening the ties of the European Union.”
But this is not only a problem in Germany, but throughout Europe. Höcke is a “Nazi sympathizer,” says Dallek, but he is not sure how many Americans even know who he is. If the public in the USA is concerned with the success of the AfD, then only in the “larger context of the rise of right-wing extremist movements throughout Europe,” including France, Italy and Hungary. “As dangerous as Höcke could be, I do not believe that he poses as great a threat as Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orban“, says Langenbacher.
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