German far right’s eastern stronghold has clear view on spy allegation: ‘It’s a witch hunt’

MAGDEBURG, Germany — Will the sensational allegations of espionage and dubious links to Russia and China implicating politicians of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) be the decisive blow that ends the party’s long ascent in German politics?

For many of the party’s faithful, at least, the answer is clear: The allegations, particularly those surrounding Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European election, hardly matter.

If anything, they may only deepen their loyalty.

That was glaringly evident at a recent party gathering in the city of Magdeburg, located in a part of the country — in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in the former East Germany — where some of the party’s most extreme politicians and most fervent supporters are based.

As people in the crowd sat at long tables, sipping on beer and slurping asparagus soup, Martin Reichardt, a former military officer in a tan suit who heads the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt and serves as one of its lawmakers in the federal parliament, opened his comments with a few words about Krah, who cancelled his participation at the event in the wake of the allegations.

“We would’ve loved to have him here,” Reichardt said to applause from the crowd. “I think it’s particularly important in these times that when someone is being targeted by the establishment media, it’s very important that the party shows solidarity and that we stick together and don’t let the establishment destroy us.”

A few days earlier, police arrested Krah’s assistant over allegations he was a spy for China. Soon after that, public prosecutors in Dresden said they had launched preliminary investigations into Krah on the suspicion he’d accepted payments from Russia and China “for his work as an MEP.”

For the AfD, the allegations could have hardly come at a worse time.

For years, even as the party became increasingly extreme, its popularity continued to rise. Near the end of last year, the AfD hit a new polling high of 23 percent. What was once unthinkable — that a far-right party could take power in Germany for the first time since the Nazis — suddenly appeared not entirely far fetched.

But beginning in January, the AfD began to slip. The turning point came after an investigative report by Correctiv revealed AfD politicians were present at a meeting of right-wing extremists in which a “master plan” to deport migrants and “unassimilated citizens” was discussed. That news sparked massive protests against the AfD across Germany.

Even before the latest allegations surrounding Krah, the party’s No. 2 candidate for the European election, Petr Bystron, was already facing allegations that he accepted payments from a source linked to the Kremlin. Both the candidates deny wrongdoing.

But as the event in Magdeburg showed, the AfD’s base of support — particularly in the party’s strongholds in eastern Germany — is so deeply entrenched that the latest allegations are unlikely to be a breaking point for the party.

The AfD’s base of support — particularly in the party’s strongholds in eastern Germany — is so deeply entrenched that the latest allegations are unlikely to be a breaking point for the party. | Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

Rather, the party’s core supporters live in something of a parallel world, viewing Krah as a victim of a grand conspiracy involving the mainstream media and a German state that seeks to undermine its own people and use every instrument possible to stop the AfD — the people’s saviors-in-waiting — from taking power. The only proper response, they therefore believe, is to hit back at the establishment.

‘Even the Stasi wouldn’t have allowed it’

After his opening comments, Reichardt briefly changed tack, turning his attention to boilerplate themes for the far right, lamenting the “deindustrialization and destruction of Germany” due to “leftist-green” climate policies, and then attacking the coalition government for passing a law to make it easier for people to legally change their gender while Germany’s “external borders are being stormed by hordes of asylum seekers.”

Next to Reichardt sat Oliver Kirchner, a bald man with thick-framed glasses who serves as the head of the AfD faction in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament. Kirchner opened by telling the crowd that they might want to invest in diapers, because the “old parties” were so busy soiling their pants out of fear of the AfD, there was likely be a national diaper shortage.

“When I see what’s happening here in this country, what’s happening to the lead candidates of a democratic party, the accusations that are being made against us, then I have to honestly say that their pants are so full,” said Kirchner. He then urged everyone to vote for AfD so the political establishment “gets the bill for what they’ve done to this country, what they’ve done to the citizens and what they’ve done to the Volk.”

Domestic intelligence authorities in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, who are tasked with monitoring anti-constitutional groups, have classified the state branch of the AfD as a right-wing extremist organization — in part because its politicians use terms like “invaders” and “intruders” to describe migrants. State party leaders have called the extremist designation “defamation” and depict it as part of the state conspiracy against them.

The extremist classification never seemed to dissuade the party’s supporters. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party is now polling second, just behind the conservative CDU. Throughout much of eastern Germany, where the party is strongest, it holds a lead in recent polls.

Kirchner went on to tell a story about how, during the pandemic lockdowns, he had compared the German government’s measures to East Germany’s repression — a comment, he said, that had gotten the attention of domestic intelligence authorities.

“That leads to you being classified as a right-wing extremist?” Kirchner asked rhetorically. He then doubled down on the comparison — suggesting the current German government is even worse than East Germany and the Stasi, that regime’s secret police.

“The Stasi was bad, no question,” Kirchner said. “But what these guys are doing? Even the Stasi wouldn’t have allowed it back then.”

‘They want to defame the AfD’

Over the course of the rest of the evening, during a question-and-answer session, it became clear that members of the crowd perceived Germany to be in an almost apocalyptic state of decline.

“What are our children learning?” asked one woman, who later gave her name only as Bettina and said she’s a mother of eight children. “They are no longer taught anything.”

The problem starts, she added, “with masturbation rooms in kindergartens and the unspeakable sexualization of children at an early age.” (Far-right media postings in Germany have long spread disinformation about the alleged prevalence of so-called “masturbation rooms” in daycare centers).

The extremist classification never seemed to dissuade the party’s supporters. | Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

An elderly man rose to say he was old enough to have lived in three German states — Nazi Germany, East Germany, and now the Federal Republic of Germany. He then asked why the AfD didn’t punch back harder when it’s attacked by the establishment, as in the case of Krah, adding as a closing remark: “The situation in Germany makes me want to puke!”

Another man in the crowd, who had been taking meticulous notes all night, spontaneously decried what he saw as the mainstream media campaign against the AfD, yelling out: “It’s a game of mockery directed at the small citizen!”

Though it was one of the biggest stories in the news at the time, the subject of Krah barely came up. People in the crowd asked questions about taxes, migrants, retirement payments.

Near the end of the event, Bettina rose again to ask what the party would do to stop German military support to Ukraine.

“A war in Ukraine is not in Germany’s interest and German involvement in this war is not in Germany’s interest at all,” said Reichardt. “It’s solely in America’s geo-strategic interests.”

What he found particularly hard to bear about the situation, he added, was how Germany’s Greens — a group, as he called them, of “militarily untrained, former conscientious objectors and whiners” — had become hawks when it came to military support for Ukraine. He then targeted one long-haired Greens politician in particular: Anton Hofreiter.

“He should cut his hair before talking about the military!” People in the crowd whooped in delight.

After the event, several attendees said they believed that accusations against Krah were concocted.

“We are mistrustful and believe this state leadership and its journalists and their media are doing this to bash the AfD in order to keep voters away,” said Gerald Wolf, a retired neurobiology professor wearing an ascot.

Outside the hall, Bettina, the mother of eight, took a drag from her cigarette and said that, due to her upbringing in East Germany, she was skeptical of what the state told her. (She, like others interviewed in Magdeburg, refused to give her full name for fear of repercussions for making her views public.)

“You should always ask the question: Who benefits from what is happening?” she said of the accusations surrounding Krah. “If I don’t use my head and question it and allow myself to be influenced, then I’m just as much a puppet as everyone else.”

A friend of hers, a man with a pointy beard tied with an elastic band, then pulled up in a white BMW decorated with political slogans, one of which said: “Financial capitalism threatens the values of civilization.” They said they would both be attending a rally the following day, on the square next to Magdeburg’s gothic cathedral, an event Bettina described as “all about sovereignty” where people can “talk about the coronavirus measures.”

“A war in Ukraine is not in Germany’s interest and German involvement in this war is not in Germany’s interest at all.” | Stringer/AFP via Getty Images

The next day, hundreds of people attended the protest, which brought together an assortment of marginal groups, many protesting NATO and military support for Ukraine. Some demonstrators waived Russian flags, others blue flags with dove designs on them.

Local AfD politicians handed out brochures under a canopy that read: “Take your country back.” Among them was Kirchner, who once again claimed the current German government is employing East German-style repression.

“To get the domestic intelligence agency on board for the election campaign so they can try to discredit us, to infiltrate us and destroy us, I already had that with the Stasi,” he said. This explains why the AfD is particularly strong among people living in the former East Germany, he said. “They’ve seen it all before.”

One supporter of the party, a large man who refused to give his name for “privacy reasons,” concurred with the assessment, saying the investigations — including the one against Krah — were all politically motived.

“I believe it’s a witch hunt,” he said. “They want to defame the AfD.”