Last week, Trump administration officials blasted Germany after a 1,100-page report from that country’s intelligence agency found that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a racist and anti-Muslim organization, labelling it “a proven right-wing extremist organization.”
The report was compiled by experts and was years in the making. Among its key findings is that the AfD poses a threat to Germany’s constitution by propagating xenophobia, Islamophobia and an “ethnicity-and-ancestry-based conception of the people.” The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution submitted the report to the interior ministry in the final days of the outgoing center-left government, prompting the AfD to claim that the move was political in nature and to file a lawsuit against the agency. But the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, whose mission is to safeguard the German constitution, had long held suspicions that the AfD and its youth organization were engaged in right-wing extremist activities and now feels convinced that the confidential report has justified its suspicions; hence the agency’s designation of Alternative for Germany as “a proven right-wing extremist organization.”
The Trump administration, however, is actively defending the extremist party.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X: “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”
Vice President J.D. Vance also rushed to the defense of the AfD, sharing a post on X asserting that “the AfD is the most popular party in Germany” and accusing the German political establishment of rebuilding a “Berlin Wall.”
So what if the AfD’s activities seek to “undermine or abolish the free democratic order,” in violation of Article 21 of the German constitution? For Trump and his minions, this is an insignificant detail as AfD’s vision for the future of Germany resonates with the Trump administration’s vision for the future of the United States.
The Trump team has been trying to boost Europe’s far right since day one. Elon Musk has openly supported the AfD and even held a livestreamed conversation on X with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel in which he encouraged Germans to vote for the party ahead of the federal elections. As for Trump himself, he is obsessed with strongmen and has gone out of his way to embolden far right and white supremacist groups, including by issuing pardons to all those convicted in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Indeed, Trump 2.0 is carrying out an all-out anti-democracy project inside the United States the likes of which the country has not seen since the end of Reconstruction. His racist and xenophobic vision for “making America great again” echoes the history of Nazi Germany, building a platform based on the rejection of social justice and the embrace of a socioeconomic order in which the rich and powerful thrive by taking as much as they can from the poor and weak.
The infantile narcissist at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation is a menace to anything and everything decent. The alleged concerns for the future of democracy in Germany by some of Trump’s top officials would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. For the fact of the matter is that Trump and his ilk despise democracy precisely because of the ideals and values, such as equality and tolerance, that are granted in the democratic state.
The AfD blames immigrants for weakening the German culture and way of life and regards Muslims in the country, specifically, as “a danger to our state, our society, and our values.” In November 2023, senior members of the AfD even attended a meeting with neo-Nazis and other extremists to discuss a “master plan” for the deportation of millions of immigrants and native citizens. Trump and his flunkies would obviously find nothing objectionable about such moves, and would see any legal attempts by the current German government to ban such activities not as protecting democracy but rather as “tyranny in disguise.”
Trump presides over the culture of white supremacy in the United States and both he and the far right Alternative for Germany embrace mass deportations as a means of keeping out what they frame as “bad genes.” Hence even the acknowledgement of racial injustice toward people of color has been banned by the Trump administration. Moreover, the Trump administration’s embrace of the far right German party is the epitome of antisemitism. Indeed, as Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the progressive organization Jewish Council for Public Affairs said, pointedly, “This administration’s normalization of AfD — a far right, anti-immigrant extremist party that has called Holocaust remembrance a ‘guilt cult’ — fundamentally threatens the safety of Jews, countless other communities, and democracy around the globe.”
But German courts have consistently taken the approach that the activities of the AfD can be considered extremist. In February 2024, an administrative court in Cologne ruled that AfD’s youth movement, known as “Junge Alternative” (JA) or Young Alternative, engaged in continuous agitation against foreigners and that it can be classified as an extremist organization.
Nearly half of Germans favor banning the AfD party. Many German lawmakers and constitutional law experts believe that there are strong grounds for banning the AfD. Whether this is likely to happen is another story. The incoming German interior minister has reservations about the ban and others fear that banning Alternative for Germany will only boost the party’s popularity. France’s leader of the far right National Rally party Marine Le Pen has been banned from running for office for five years but only because she was found guilty for embezzling European Union (EU) funds. The ban has polarized France, while Trump, unsurprisingly enough, has thrown his support behind Le Pen.
Trump thinks the EU was “created to screw” the United States, so he wants to destroy it. He is using the “divide and conquer” strategy to do so — hence, his support for far right leaders and parties across Europe has both ideological and strategic components. And there is no doubt that his political friends are advancing across Europe. Several EU member states (seven in total) have far right parties within the government. The far right group Patriots for Europe, which includes Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the Hungarian Fidesz party, the French National Rally party and the Freedom Party of Austria, among others, is now the Parliament’s third-largest group. The aim of the so-called Patriots for Europe is not to fight for a unified Europe but to destroy European democracy.
All of Europe’s far right leaders have applauded Trump’s domestic agenda and Spain’s far right Vox party recently held an event in Madrid under the banner “Make Europe Great Again.” It was attended by nearly all of Europe’s major neo-fascist leaders, including, among others, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, France’s Marine Le Pen, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
Make no mistake about it. A far right international has been formed, inspired by Trump’s Christian nationalism and burning desire to destroy liberal democracy. We live indeed in extremely dangerous times. The surge of the far right on both sides of the Atlantic has echoes of the 1930s, when fascism not only destroyed Europe but was also on the march in the United States. This time around, however, it seems that it is the United States that is descending first into fascism. Europe’s multiparty system seems so far to be doing a much better job at attempting to keep fascism at bay than the U.S. government’s system of checks and balances. Now, it is up to courageous U.S. citizens and civic organizations to stand up to Trump and resist fascism before everything goes to hell.
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