Germany’s Far Right, Edging Close to Power, Remains Close to Extremists

 

Germany’s Far Right, Edging Close to Power, Remains Close to Extremists

The Alternative for Germany party has tried to soften its hard-line image but is still privately working with extremists. It could win a state election on Sunday.

Ulrich Siegmund, a leader of the Alternative for Germany party in Saxony-Anhalt, speaking in Magdeburg, Germany, on Saturday.Credit...Jens Schluter/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley

Reporting from Magdeburg, Germany, and Berlin

Sept. 4, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/world/europe/germany-afd-extremists.html

 

In a recent social-media video, the top far-right leader in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt rode a powder-blue moped down a sunny country lane. It was the sort of optimistic, genial clip that has helped that leader, Ulrich Siegmund, appeal to centrist voters and has made his party the strong favorite to win state elections on Sunday.

The head of the media company behind the post has a very different image.

The company, Filmkunstkollektiv, is led by a far-right activist with the Identitarians, a movement that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has accused of extremism for promoting an ethnically homogenous state that excludes Germany’s minorities.

The production fits a pattern. Despite trying to project a softer image with such sunny social-media campaigns, Mr. Siegmund and the Saxony-Anhalt chapter of the Alternative for Germany party — a far-right party, widely known as the AfD, that has long been accused of extremism — are still privately working with people with links to the furthest extremes of German politics. Those include a campaign spokesman and party lawyer who were part of a youth group inspired by the Hitler Youth.

Mr. Siegmund did not respond to requests for comment. Speaking to other outlets, he has brushed off criticism of his close colleagues, saying in one interview that he didn’t care if someone visited a “summer camp” years ago, in a reference to the youth camps run by the Hitler-inspired group.

The nature of Mr. Siegmund’s relationships are increasingly important because they show who may have influence over him if AfD takes power in Saxony-Anhalt, a sparsely populated and relatively poor state in what was once East Germany. If the AfD wins a majority of seats in the election on Sunday, it would be the first time since the end of the Third Reich that a far-right party held such authority in a German state.

To win that election, Mr. Siegmund has carefully projected an image of friendliness and optimism, even when discussing the most contentious issues in his party platform, which includes banning gay pride flags in schools and deporting refugees.

His approach has helped popularize the AfD, even though German intelligence has labeled its local chapter in Saxony-Anhalt as “confirmed” extremist and the national party as “suspected” extremist. (The agency has accused the party of promulgating a “racist” idea of nationhood that contradicts the German Constitution, as well as hostility to foreigners and Muslims. The group denies it is extremist, saying such accusations are politically motivated.)

Mr. Siegmund posing with supporters at a rally in Haldensleben, Germany, on Tuesday.Credit...Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Siegmund’s tone has also helped to distinguish him from AfD leaders elsewhere in Germany, who have variously questioned the significance of the Holocaust, used Nazi slogans and maligned foreigners.

Yet Mr. Siegmund’s relationships with extremists reflect how his party retains many of its hard-line roots. And his high poll numbers suggest, researchers say, that extremist ties no longer weigh on some German voters as they used to. In Saxony-Anhalt, many residents say that the AfD could help alleviate unemployment, rising prices and the perception that their region has been ignored by the political establishment since the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.

“In some parts of East Germany, right-wing extremism is the mainstream culture, and that is why there are no fears of being seen together in public,” said Johannes Hillje, who researches the far right and is a fellow at the Progressive Center, a left-leaning think tank in Berlin.

Until recently, the AfD rejected membership applications from people with previous ties to more extreme parties. While it still bars some neo-Nazis from membership, it began loosening those restrictions last year and removed more limits this summer.

In Saxony-Anhalt, Mr. Siegmund’s campaign team includes a spokesman and longtime confidant, Patrick Harr. He is one of the men who, roughly two decades ago, was part of the extremist youth group that was banned in 2009 because of its “inherent kinship with National Socialism, specifically with the former Hitler Youth,” according to the interior minister who oversaw the ban.

Mr. Harr oversaw procurement for the group, according to old party documents unearthed independently by German media outlets and extremism monitoring groups. Mr. Harr did not respond to a request for comment.

Image

Patrick Harr, a spokesman and confidant of Mr. Siegmund, in Magdeburg in June.Credit...Ronny Hartmann/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images

Laurens Nothdurft, a lawyer for the AfD’s local chapter, used to be one of that group’s leaders, according to domestic intelligence, as well as an activist in a second neo-Nazi party. In a written statement, Mr. Nothdurft did not defend his actions, but pointed out they occurred years ago. “Preserving and strengthening democracy is a cause close to my heart,” he wrote.

In 2017 Simon Kaupert, who runs the video production company, joined other Identitarians on a ship off the coast of Libya to stop migrants. Paul Klemm, another senior member of the production company, is also a senior reporter for Compact, an extreme-right news outlet that German intelligence said promoted a “racist and nationalist concept of society.” Neither man responded to requests for comment.

The AfD’s opponents, struggling to slow Mr. Siegmund’s rise, have sought to criticize him for these associations.

“The danger comes from who he surrounds himself with,” said Sven Schulze, the center-right incumbent state governor, during a recent debate. “I see who he surrounds himself with — these people are dangerous for Saxony-Anhalt and Germany,” he added.

The overt acceptance of such figures — including the Identitarians who made Mr. Siegmund’s campaign video — is a recent shift for the AfD.

Three years ago, an adviser to the AfD’s national leader was forced to resign after it emerged that he had met with the leader of the Identitarians. Mr. Siegmund was forced out of a key committee position at the statehouse, where he is a lawmaker, because he was also at that meeting.

Win or lose the election on Sunday, Mr. Hillje said, the AfD has to some extent already succeeded in normalizing such associations.

“One of their goals is that their narratives gets into the mainstream,” he said.

Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Nadhim Zahawi: ‘Deep State’ Will Do Anything To Destroy Nigel And Reform

Inside the Reform UK Conference: the big questions facing Nigel Farage | BBC News

 

Reform UK exposé comes just as Farage was hoping to change the narrative

 

Analysis

Reform UK exposé comes just as Farage was hoping to change the narrative

Peter Walker

Senior political correspndent

With senior party figures appearing split and leader’s favourability rating dropping, questions about donations are causing yet more headaches

 

Fri 4 Sep 2026 16.12 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/04/reform-uk-donations-expose-nigel-farage

 

Midway through an event at Reform’s annual conference on Friday there was question for the audience: who was worried about a Channel 4 News exposé of potential wrongdoing by party officials over donations? Almost no hands went up. The faithful might be sanguine. But make no mistake, Nigel Farage faces yet another problem.

 

Careful plans have been again upset. After months of answering – or primarily dodging – questions about his own finances, Farage had planned to use Reform UK’s biggest conference yet to make a blitz of policy announcements.

 

These are still happening, not least among them the revelation that a Farage-led government would declare a “national emergency” on the first day it won power, so as to get to grips with the grave problems he says the UK must tackle.

 

But he and other senior party figures are being forced to field endless questions about whether the senior aides Dan Jukes and James Orr really were open to illegal donations from overseas, and if they were not, why Farage’s right-hand man and his policy head have been suspended.

 

Dealing with unexpected crises is a core task for party leaders. But after so much focus on Farage’s undeclared £5m gift, and free of the chore of a self-imposed byelection to return to parliament, he was hoping to make news in other ways.

 

 

 

 

Day one of the aftermath has exposed another problem: party figures do not appear unified about how to deal with it. In early media interviews on Friday, Lee Anderson, the Reform chair, said there was no way back for Jukes and Orr: “They’re gone.” But since then, a series of other figures have said they are merely suspended pending an investigation, indicating a route back.

 

As the day progressed, the rhetoric toughened. Reform had been the victim of a “sting” and “entrapment”, Sarah Pochin, one of the party’s MPs, told a fringe event.

 

Much of this is just reaction in real time. But if there is a split between Anderson and others in the party, that means another headache for the Reform leader, who also has to deal with the combustible Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, whom Farage is known to have described in private with a derogatory expletive.

 

Most of all, however, the looming problems lie outside the necessarily insular world of Birmingham’s NEC and its thousands of Reform delegates.

 

In a variation of the famous Ernest Hemingway description of becoming bankrupt – “gradually, then suddenly” – one of the more important rules of politics is that voters pay limited attention to claims of sleaze or ineptitude, until they do.

 

 

As Boris Johnson and his Conservative successors found to their cost, party reputations are built up very slowly but can erode at some speed.

 

 

Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters

 

Reform is not yet at this point. But the metrics are far from reassuring, not least Farage’s net favourability rating with YouGov, which has fallen to minus 44.

 

According to another pollster, Ipsos, even before the new revelations, just 20% of Britons thought Farage was “an honest person”. In another study, by More in Common, concerns around sleaze were named as the biggest barrier for people voting for Reform.

 

All this must be put in context. Farage achieved something unprecedented in taking a new party and topping more than 150 successive polls. No leader could keep that going for ever, especially with a charismatic new prime minister in No 10.

 

But time is not necessarily on his side. Even though a general election is not needed before mid-2029, Reform is working on the assumption Andy Burnham will seek his own mandate next year. It is in this landscape that the loss of two very core party figures is so damaging, all the more so if they end up under formal police investigation, let alone in court.

 

Farage sought on Friday to distance himself from Jukes and Orr, calling them “contractors”. This is very obvious nonsense, given Jukes has been at his side for a decade and Orr was trusted with devising the party’s policy.

 

A shadow has been cast over the two of them, with the potential to darken much further if police or the elections watchdog take action. And that shadow could yet fall on Farage himself.

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