Björn Höcke, leader of the Alternative for Germany in Thuringia (AfD), gestures during an election campaign rally for the Thuringia state elections in Nordhausen, Germany, on Aug. 29.Karina Hessland/Reuters
Hundreds stood packed in a town square. Before them was Björn Höcke, a man widely considered to be the most extreme right-wing politician in Germany. Mr. Höcke took a breath, his forehead glistening below neatly coiffed grey hair.
“Our freedoms are being increasingly restricted because people who don’t fit in with us are being allowed into the country,” he said to an expanse of nodding heads. “The solution is not to restrict our freedom. The solution is to send these people who do not accept our values home as quickly as possible.”
The crowd had gathered on Thursday in Nordhausen, a small rural city in the central German state of Thuringia, to see Mr. Höcke take the stage at one of his last campaign stops before Sunday, when Thuringia will vote on its next state government.
Mr. Höcke, a member of Thuringia’s legislature, is also the head of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in the state. AfD is a far-right party whose steady rise throughout the country has stoked fears of a resurgence in nationalist extremism.
Just 100 feet away, separated by a row of four police cars and barricades, a crowd of about 100 protesters blasted music and chanted in German, “All together against fascism.” Above them they held aloft signs, some hand-painted. “Not interested in Nazis,” one read.
Despite the opposition, AfD is leading polls in Thuringia, with an estimated 30 per cent of the vote. AfD is also projected by pollsters to make significant gains in the two other states holding state elections in September: Saxony, where the vote is happening on the same day, and Brandenburg, which is voting Sept. 22.
In a year when far-right parties performed well in the European Union’s election, and when many U.S. voters are once again backing Donald Trump’s populist rhetoric, Mr. Höcke is another example of a politician who has proved adept at harnessing the passion and outrage of voters. He has remained at the helm of his party in the state despite personally facing controversy, including legal convictions for using Nazi slogans.
Under him, the party has capitalized on the deep, lingering divisions between Germany’s east and west, and on faltering support for incumbent parties. AfD has campaigned on anxieties over issues such as immigration and the war in Ukraine. Although political observers say AfD is unlikely to form government, either in Thuringia or elsewhere in Germany, because mainstream parties have ruled out including it in coalitions, it remains a potent political force.
Addressing the television cameras in the front row and the crowds behind at Thursday’s event, Mr. Höcke railed against the federal government’s proposed annual ceiling on asylum seekers in the country. “We don’t need a limit of 200,000, but one of minus 200,000!” he yelled.
Björn Höcke talks to people on the day of his election campaign rally in Nordhausen.Karina Hessland/Reuters
This election, just one year before Germany’s next federal campaign, is taking place at a time when the ruling centrist party is facing dim prospects in the polls. Nationally, AfD’s support has grown to nearly 17 per cent, up from 10 per cent in the past federal election, in 2021.
For some, the party’s rise is a wake-up call for politicians and the country as a whole. For others, it is a catastrophe.
AfD’s policies on immigration have tapped into the region’s dissatisfaction with its historically dim economic prospects. Several surges of refugees into the country have fuelled anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment throughout Germany, and this has become AfD’s main campaign talking point.
Immigration was also the most talked about concern at the rally on Thursday.
Frank Powell-Schlenstedt, who was attending with his wife and son, said he felt that the federal government was not taking the economic and crime concerns of the people seriously. He waved off concerns about a return to fascism. “Do we look like Nazis to you?” he asked.
AfD has also strongly opposed Germany’s involvement in Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion, which has included military and refugee support worth more than €33-billion to date. The party has argued that the sanctions on Russia are harming the German economy. Half of eastern Germans – twice as many as in the country’s west – support strengthening ties with Russia, a recent poll by the Allensbach Institute found.
Even within AfD, the Thuringian branch is considered particularly extreme. Germany’s domestic security watchdog, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has classified the state party as “right-wing extremist.”
In an e-mail, AfD Thuringia spokesperson Torben Braga said the watchdog’s assessment played “no role at all for us,” given that “a large majority of voters in Thuringia see the AfD as an opportunity for a better future and for a positive change in the social and political conditions in the state.”
Björn Höcke has remained at the helm of his party in Thuringia despite personally facing controversy, including legal convictions for using Nazi slogans.Karina Hessland/Reuters
Mr. Höcke, a 52-year-old former history teacher from Lünen in the former West Germany, has been a member of AfD since its creation in 2013. He later helped found AfD Thuringia.
Mr. Höcke has frequently found himself in legal trouble for his campaign speeches. He has been fined twice for using Nazi-era slogans, a crime in Germany. The first time, in 2021, he told the court that he wasn’t aware of the origins of the phrase “Everything for Germany,” which had been used by the Nazi paramilitary group SA.
The second time, he said only the first two words of the expression at a rally. In court in July, he claimed that he didn’t know the audience would respond by completing the slogan.
But Reimut Zohlnhöfer, a political scientist at Heidelberg University, said he doesn’t believe that claim. “Even after being charged and fined, he still used it again. He’s definitely not ignorant. It’s a kind of provocation.”
Mr. Höcke has also questioned Germany’s continued relationship with the Second World War and the Holocaust. He has called for a “180-degree reversal” of the country’s politics of remembrance. The Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia has banned AfD from attending remembrance services there.
Despite his success in Thuringia, Mr. Höcke faces significant opposition across the country. An online petition to stop him from entering federal politics gathered 1.7 million signatures.
In Nordhausen, anti-AfD protesters continued chanting until after Mr. Höcke had ended his speech and moved on to greet the crowd. Among the demonstrators was Mark Tauber, who lives nearby and is attending university in the city.
“The AfD is against everything that I stand for,” he said. “It feels like they are trying to repeat history.”
Even if the party does as well as expected in the current round of regional elections, observers say it’s unlikely that it will become part of a governing coalition in Thuringia.
In a system implemented after the Second World War to make it more difficult for fringe parties to gain power, German parties must either win more than 50 per cent of the vote or form coalitions to reach a majority in order to form government. But the next two leading parties in Thuringia have ruled out working with AfD.
There are doubts that AfD could gain enough traction nationally, but some say the party is already having an effect on politics by forcing awkward coalition matches between opposing parties. And AfD could force mainstream parties to shift their views rightward on key issues in order to attract voters.
But the long-term risks posed by the party are potentially more wide-reaching. German voters could be desensitized to extreme political views, said Randall Hansen, a professor of European politics at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, who lives part-time in Germany.
He likened Mr. Höcke to Mr. Trump, in that both politicians have a core of supporters undeterred even by legal action taken against them.
“In the 1990s, we never thought we would see a far right with the support it has in Europe. Germany was a no-go zone for the far right,” said Prof. Hansen. “Well, those days are over.”