Germany’s Scholz rebukes JD Vance over hate speech, far right
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered a strong rebuke to JD Vance on Saturday, after the U.S. Vice President attacked Europe’s stance toward hate speech and the far right. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Scholz defended German political parties’ decision to not work with the far right.
An extreme right-wing German party endorsed by Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance surged in the country’s Sunday election, winning the broadest support of any far-right party in Germany since World War II.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second with 20% of the vote, its best election results since its founding just over a decade ago. While AfD didn’t take home a majority, it squeezed votes away from Germany’s moderate liberal and conservative parties – another sign of the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Europe.
Although the country’s opposition conservative bloc won with 28.5%, it was the second-lowest percentage of the vote it had ever received. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose representatives have been among the leading political voices in the country for decades, suffered its worst returns since World War II, taking home just 16.5% of the vote.
AfD’s rise in popularity has been bolstered by far-right online communities. Party leaders have prompted widespread outrage over their inflammatory and Islamophobic statements. Critics have branded the movement “racist” and “anti-democracy.” The rise in AfD’s popularity has been especially painful for Jews in Germany, who see it echoing the messaging of the Holocaust.
Why are Elon Musk and JD Vance praising AfD?
Musk, the billionaire orchestrator of President Donald Trump’s sweeping layoffs of federal employees and dismantling of government agencies, is an enthusiastic supporter of AfD. In December, he officially endorsed the party, posting on his social media platform X, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
He also hosted a conversation on X with Alice Weidel, AfD’s candidate for chancellor.
“People really need to get behind AfD, otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany,” he said.
Musk has also picked up the AfD’s openly anti-Islamic talking points in his posts, including the baseless claim that Islamic immigrants to Germany commit rape at a higher rate than the rest of the population.
The conversation, and Musk’s leveraging of X to blast his support for AfD across the internet, led German regulators to investigate Musk for election interference.
On a trip to Germany earlier this month, Vance met with Weidel but did not meet with Scholz, the sitting chancellor of Germany, a clear snub.
Speaking to the Munich Security Conference that day, Vance deepened the Trump administration’s rift with longstanding European allies, Germany included. He accused European leaders of censorship and criticized them for letting in migrants and further aligned himself with Weidel.
Asked about AfD in a Wall Street Journal interview this month, Vance implied that the German government was “censoring” the party. “If the people keep on saying we’re pissed off about something, we’re frustrated about something, you can’t say we’re going to ban, censor, silence this group of people,” he said. “You have to listen to them, even if they’re a minority.”
So is AfD pro-Nazi?
After World War II, Germany put together restrictions on far-right parties to prevent the rise of another Nazi party.
AfD was the first party to run afoul of those guardrails. Germany’s domestic surveillance agency, tasked with enforcing those restrictions, said in 2021 that it would conduct continued surveillance on the party – an unprecedented step. It made that decision after a two-year investigation of AfD’s messaging, reviewing its politicians’ comments comparing Muslim migrants to animals and downplaying Germany’s Nazi past.
AfD functions under government restrictions crafted after World War II to prevent the rise of another Nazi party. The government can surveil messaging it finds violate the rules and prosecute people for saying Nazi slogans or using Nazi symbols in public places.
Last January, protests calling for the AfD to be banned exploded in cities across Germany after an investigative report revealed that the party’s leaders met secretly with wealthy businesspeople to discuss a plan for forced mass deportations in Germany.
Maximilian Krah, AfD’s representative to the European Union parliament, told the Italian daily La Repubblica in May that not all of the SS – the Nazi’s violent paramilitary officers – were criminals. He was forced shortly thereafter to step down from AfD’s leadership board. The comments also caused a rift with France’s far-right party, which kicked AfD out of its EU coalition.
Bjoern Hoecke, AfD’s leader in eastern Germany, was twice convicted of shouting a Nazi phrase at a rally. Hoecke has also said Germany should stop feeling shame for its Nazi past, calling the country’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.”
AfD is open about its opposition to Islam in Germany. A 2016 document adopted by the party calls for a ban on the Muslim call to prayer and the minarets seen on mosques, calling them “Islamic symbols of power.” The party has also tried to ban headscarves for women.
The party’s leaders seized on three knife attacks carried out in the past year by Afghan and Syrian immigrants to ignite Islamophobic sentiment, bolstered by false claims that Muslim migrants are more violent – the same claims about Muslim migrants that Musk has frequently touted.
False claims about immigrants committing crimes at higher rates than the overall population are also a frequent Trump talking point. The president has used this messaging to justify his ongoing mass deportation push.
AfD’s leaders seized on the attacks to call for an end to Muslim migration and multiculturalism. “Free yourselves, finally put an end to the wrong path of forced multiculturalization!” Hoecke wrote on X after the second attack in August.
After an Afghan man was implicated in the most recent knife attack, which killed two in the town of Aschaffenburg last month, AfD called for a total shutdown of Germany’s borders.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative bloc that won this month’s election, also hardened his position on immigration, tilting toward the AfD platform and stirring fear among Germany’s left of a coming coalition between the far- and moderate-right.
Who will be the next chancellor?
Merz, of the opposition conservative party, is now on the path to becoming chancellor. His party, which combines two moderate Christian conservative parties, won a 208-seat majority in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament.
Scholz’ Social Democrats, a moderate liberal party, came in third, with 16.5% of the vote. The Green Party won 12%.
The leftist Die Linke won 9%, a surge bolstered by young voters.
