How the AfD is campaigning in Thuringia

There’s something going on in Schleiz today, says the landlady in the café on Neumarkt. “Höcke is coming today.” The AfD has set up a stage in front of her door, a beer and bratwurst stand, a few tables and benches and a pavilion of the “Young Alternative”. The whole thing is called a “family festival” but it is just a classic election campaign event. Around 300 people have come to the town of 8,000 inhabitants in southern Thuringia to hear Höcke. There are one or two families among them, a few middle-aged couples and many men, some of them heavily tattooed and wearing clothes that right-wing radicals like to wear. One man is holding a banner that says “Free Thuringia”. The group is something like the hinge between the AfD parliamentary party and the front line of right-wing extremists and “Reich citizens” on the street.

Very close to Schleiz, at the “Jagdschloss Waidmannsheil” in Bad Lobenstein, the “Reich Citizens” putsch troops around Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss hatched their plans. At the Neumarkt in Schleiz, several Höcke listeners also held upside-down German flags, a symbol of those who reject the Federal Republic and deny that it is a sovereign state.

AfD “family festival” in Schleiz

Source: Jan Sternberg/RND

The Höcke AfD, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies as “certainly right-wing extremist” in the Free State, actually wanted to present itself differently in this election campaign: willing and able to govern. The Höcke on the election posters smiles in a friendly manner, with “Prime Minister” written under him. On his election campaign website, he can be seen wearing AfD-blue mirrored aviator glasses, as if the former history teacher was about to personally take off on the “deportation plane” from Erfurt airport. Political consultant Johannes Hillje calls the desired charisma of this cool-looking Höcke on the posters “feel-good right-wing extremism”.

Höcke is having a hard time

“The East will do it” is written in large letters on the back wall of the stage in Schleiz – the AfD’s path to government responsibility is to begin in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. And as the shining election winner, Höcke could also finally put his stamp on the entire party.

But things are not going so smoothly this summer, even though the AfD events are well to very well attended. The real Höcke in Schleiz appears far less glamorous than his posters in the heat of the election campaign. In a light shirt and without aviator sunglasses, he steps onto the stage after three previous speakers. The audience greets him with shouts of “Höcke, Höcke”. As at other “family festivals”, the 52-year-old gives an almost hour-long election campaign speech in Schleiz. Höcke may be the AfD’s most feared rhetorician, but he shows little of that on this tour. He speaks to mild applause about the economy, pensions and the war in Ukraine. There are only two cheers. Once when he promises that under the AfD the “rainbow flags in front of Thuringian schools will be taken down”. And once when he announces that the AfD will fight “tooth and nail against the further acceptance of illegal migrants”.

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There was hardly any applause from the AfD audience, however, for Höcke’s description of his two trials in Halle for using an SA slogan, which together earned him a fine of almost 30,000 euros. In court, Höcke was particularly notable for his whiny behavior and attacks on the public prosecutor; at the start of the election campaign, he even called the trials an “experience of dictatorship.” But the victim narrative did not work as expected in the election campaign.

In any case, it does not seem as if Höcke still believes in the surprise victory that would make him prime minister even without a coalition partner. In the spring, the AfD was at 36 percent in a state poll, and even an absolute majority seemed within reach. Now the right-wing extremists are still ahead of everyone else with around 30 percent, but the BSW is already being traded at almost 20 percent. Höcke’s team is having a hard time dealing with the new competition and has declared it, along with the “cartel parties,” to be its main opponent. The BSW is a “cadre party,” says Höcke in Schleiz, whose members primarily want to “get the mandates and the sinecures quickly.”

For his critics, Höcke has “lost all touch with reality”.

Ironically, the AfD in Thuringia has made very similar accusations against Höcke. The party should not be allowed to be “destroyed by egocentrics like Björn Höcke,” wrote Klaus Stöber, a member of the Bundestag from the Wartburg district, on Facebook a few weeks ago. The background to this was a dispute over direct candidacies. The state executive committee had tried hard to secure seats in supposedly safe constituencies for Höcke and his closest confidants. If the AfD wins many constituencies directly, candidates on the state list could be left behind. Höcke himself is not running in Eichsfeld, where he lives, but in Greiz – his chances are better there.

In the Wartburg district, however, the AfD is running in two constituencies without any direct candidates, after the local party cadres refused to put Höcke’s confidants on the list. The state executive committee, in turn, simply refused to allow the local favorites to sign. For critics like Stöber, Höcke has “lost all touch with reality” as a result.

There are also quite a few people in the federal AfD who hope that Höcke will achieve a rather mediocre result in the state elections. Höcke would be trimmed down to his role in Thuringia and would not be able to interfere with the recently re-elected top duo Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. At the AfD federal party conference in Essen at the end of June, Höcke, contrary to his usual habit, only spoke once – to promote a candidate who then failed. And he also has to share the role of figurehead of the extreme right wing of the party with Maximilian Krah from Saxony.

The counter demonstration is obscured by police cars

On the other side of Schleizer Neumarkt, half-hidden by three police minibuses, the “Village Love for All” alliance has built two walls made of moving boxes. On one side are the articles of the Basic Law on fundamental rights, on the other side are printed exclusionary statements by Höcke and other AfD politicians. Around 50 counter-demonstrators, supported by the “Grandmas against the Right” and trade union representatives from Erfurt, whistle and chant against Höcke’s speech.

Demonstrators protest against the AfD Thuringia summer festival.

Source: Bodo Schackow/dpa

The “Dorfliebe für alle” alliance was founded in January when the district administrator was newly elected here in the Saale-Orla district and the AfD representative Uwe Thrum was in the runoff election against the CDU candidate Christian Herrgott. Herrgott won – and immediately announced that asylum seekers would be required to work. Now Thrum wants to defend his direct mandate, but this time the “Dorfliebe” activists are not trying to prevent this by tactically calling for the CDU to vote. The alliance is now organizing hiking meetings for women and children and a park festival for children and senior citizens.

A gust of wind overturns fundamental rights

Bettina Reinisch from the alliance “Village Love for All” upholds basic rights in Schleiz.

Source: Jan Sternberg/RND

Bettina Reinisch from “Dorfliebe für alle” calls this “work in the pre-political space,” a work against the silencing of other voices due to the dominance of the AfD in the region. “We want to counteract speechlessness and isolation,” says the cultural mediator.

Then she falls: a gust of wind has knocked over the cardboard wall with the articles of fundamental rights. Bettina Reinisch puts it back up – and laughs at what a symbolic image it is in this election campaign summer in Thuringia.