Björn Höcke, who is the Afd leader who scares Europe with Nazi slogans and remigration theories

Höcke is on even more extreme positions than those of the party at federal level, so radical that even his colleagues are uncomfortable, but they bow their heads before the success of the man who increasingly looks like the movement's grey eminence.

The rhetoric of decline and redemption, calling Germans to choose between being sheep or wolves, is the (black) thread of his political communication. Some see in it an echo of the speeches of the ideologist of Nazism, Joseph Goebbels. For his critics, he is one of the most serious threats to German democracy and the one responsible for the radicalisation of Alternative für Deutschland, its mutation from a Eurosceptic and liberalist movement to an ethno-nationalist and Islamophobic party.

During a recent rally in Bad Salzungen, a classic rural town of 23,000 inhabitants, he promised incentives for young families and returned to conjuring up plots and conspiracies about theCovid-19, invented by the 'globalists' to enrich themselves, and about the fictitious ethnic replacement of Germans by immigration from Africa, desired by the systemic parties. All with the help of the 'lying press' that spreads false news. A theme dear to many sovereignist politicians in Europe and the US.

As early as 2020, the German secret service considered him to be a right-wing extremist. In 2024, the regional court in Halle sentenced him to a fine of 13,000 euros for using the slogan 'Everything for Germany', which was the motto of the Sturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. Höcke defended himself by talking about a political sentence and that he had been misunderstood.

Alternative für Deutschland was founded in February 2013 by macroeconomics professor Bernd Lucke in response to the Eurozone debt crisis. The name was chosen in reaction to Angela's Merkel speech to the Bundestag in 2010, according to which there was no alternative to bailouts. A couple of months later, Höcke set up the party section in Thuringia and headed a confederation known as The Wing (Der Flügel), a 'resistance movement against the erosion of German identity', which has moved further and further to the right. Twice, Afd's national leaders tried to expel Höcke (Frauke Petry called him a 'burden on the party') and were defeated.

In March 2020, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the domestic intelligence) classified Der Flügel as 'a right-wing extremist entity against the free democratic order', incompatible with the German Basic Law, and placed the group under intelligence surveillance.

Following the announcement, the national leaders of the Afd called for its dissolution. As of now, the organisation has officially ceased its activities.

The same Afd regional section in Thuringia was classified as a right-wing extremist organisation in March 2021 by the Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (the same happened for the Saxony section in 2023).