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The AfD is under domestic scrutiny for the threat it poses to Germany's democracy and, despite a recent slump, is currently performing higher than each of the three parties in the coalition that now governs the country.
A right-wing German lawmaker made comments seen as so explosively outside the mainstream of acceptable political discourse that his party was disowned by other far-right leaders, breaking a grand coalition in the European Parliament.
Maximilian Krah, of the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, told an Italian newspaper that he did not view all members of a notorious Nazi paramilitary group as automatically criminals. He claimed that some in the SS, whose main role was guarding concentration camps during World War II, were actually just farmers.
" Before I declare someone a criminal, I want to know what he has done. Among the 900,000 SS men there were also many farmers: certainly there was a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were. I will never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal ," Krah told La Repubblica last weekend.
Since then, the AfD has banned the 47-year-old Krah, their front-runner in next month's European elections, from making public appearances. Experts say his comments have also reverberated across Europe's far right, shedding light on how the continent's far-right parties see themselves and their associations.
After Krah's interview was published on Saturday, his party suspended him on Wednesday and said he had taken "full responsibility" for his actions and agreed to step down from the federal executive board with immediate effect. In a scathing statement, the AfD accused Krah of causing "massive damage to the party in the current election campaign, for which the candidate had given the pretext".
It is not immediately clear whether Krah remains the AfD's official main candidate for the upcoming European elections.
Lorenz Blumenthaler, a political analyst at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation in Berlin, told CNN that the AfD only takes such actions under certain circumstances.
“The only time this red line exists is when they think it's hurting their voting record. And this is the only time they will act or if they fear it will fundamentally change how the German security forces perceive them as the AfD. Blumenthaler added that reprimanding Krah near a major election is a politically drastic step. It delegitimizes you as a political party and hurts you a lot more than just running with a weighted candidate ," he told CNN.
Expelled by a far-right coalition
On Thursday, a coalition of far-right parties in the European Parliament expelled the AfD from the group. The Identity and Democracy (ID) bloc said in a statement that they had decided to expel the AfD, "with immediate effect", adding that "The ID group no longer wishes to be associated with incidents involving Maximilian Krah, the head of the AfD in the list for the European elections".
In Paris, leaders of France's right-wing Rally National (RN) party also broke away from the AfD. RN president Jordan Bardella told a French TV debate on Tuesday that the AfD had "crossed red lines".
" We will have new allies after the European elections and we will no longer be in the same group as the AfD ", added Bardella.
Joe Düker, a researcher at the extremism monitoring institute Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), told CNN that European far-right parties, and the RN in particular, have tried to present themselves as more moderate.
" Far-right populists are always trying to appeal to a broad base of voters, and they're always trying to give themselves an image that looks cleaner than they really are. We know that Le Pen's party has been trying to clean up their image in the last two years. She broke up with her father, the founder of that party, because of that ," he said.
Blumenthaler described this image cleansing as the most absurd dynamic we have, a new far-right consciousness across Europe.
However, this sense of self-awareness seems to extend to the AfD. There have been a number of incidents where AfD members have openly expressed far-right ideologies in Germany. Recently scandals have also seen members accused of spying for China and accepting bribes from Russia.
Höcke, a former history teacher, aims to run as the main candidate for the AfD in the upcoming state elections in September and is currently the clear favorite to win. According to Blumenthaler, these incidents do not seem to be hurting the party, especially in Germany.
" After basically collapsing the European (far-right) coalition, this really hurts the AfD at the European level, but I don't think it will affect their electoral base that much here in Germany ," he added.
Expect more of the same!
Düker told CNN that the AfD's trend of increasing extremism is likely to continue.
" We can expect that things that are more radical, more extreme will become more acceptable ," he said.
The overt radicalism of the AfD is an interesting phenomenon for Blumenthaler as well, especially when compared to its European allies.
"It's still the Austrians and the branches of the German extreme right who are the craziest... you would think that the taboo because of the German and Austrian past would be much higher here. And that the far right would act much more strategically trying to whitewash what they say about how they act, but instead they're becoming more and more radicalized ," he told CNN.
The AfD is under domestic scrutiny for the threat it poses to Germany's democracy and, despite a recent slump, is currently performing higher than each of the three parties in the coalition that now governs the country.
Düker pointed out a similarity between the AfD and Donald Trump, adding that: " The more scandals and the more wild things the former President said, the more his followers seemed to devote themselves to him. And something similar seems to be happening with the AfD .”/ CNN
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