The right-wing extremist network in the Brandenburg AfD parliamentary group

The AfD has excluded Andreas Kalbitz because of his previous relationship with the neo-Nazi association “Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend” (HDJ), which was banned in 2009. But there are numerous MPs in the Potsdam state parliament who can be attributed to the right-wing extremist party network “Der Flügel”, which he co-founded. In addition, at least ten activists from different right-wing extremist groups work in the parliamentary group, including a former functionary of the HDJ, which was banned in 2009. This was the result of research by the rbb, which analyzed a list of names, telephone and office numbers within the state parliament.

Of the Group chairman Hans-Christoph Berndt did not want to comment on the research when asked, not even on the question of whether it was a network. He himself came to the AfD as chairman of the right-wing extremist association “Zukunft Heimat” from the Spreewald in the year before the last state election, and succeeded Andreas Kalbitz in October. Since then, several new employees have been hired from right-wing extremist groups. Among them Erik Lehnert, a close companion of the pioneer of the New Right, Götz Kubitschek.

Lehnert is the chairman of the new right think tank “Institute for State Policy eV”, which was co-founded by Kubitschek. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution runs the association as a suspected right-wing extremist case. The former NPD activist and forest scientist Jörg Schröder also works in the parliamentary group, as a “technically well-versed man”, as the parliamentary manager of the parliamentary group, Dennis Hohloch, confirmed in an interview. In 2014 Schröder ran for the NPD as a candidate in the local elections in Barnim. Most recently he worked in the AfD parliamentary group. The faction’s staff also includes Felix Willer, a former HDJ functionary. Like the NPD, the HDJ is on the current list of incompatibilities of the Federal AfD (from August 2nd, 2021), as is the “Identitarian Movement”, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as “secured right-wing extremist”. And it was precisely for this group that the parliamentary group’s new press spokesman, Jörg Dittus, was active for a long time.

Dittus neither wanted to answer a question about the right-wing extremist background of the group of employees of the parliamentary group, nor to comment on his own political background. The parliamentary manager of the AfD state parliamentary group, Dennis Hohloch, said in an interview with the rbb that there was no reason “to exclude those from the parliamentary group.” He pointed out that his parliamentary group adheres strictly to the incompatibility of the AfD: “We don’t let the constitutional protection dictate the limit,” said the AfD politician, and further: “In the Identitarian Movement, we do not share the opinion of the constitutional protection . ” His parliamentary group in the Brandenburg State Association is thus in contradiction to the federal party’s decision on incompatibility.

The association “Mit Another”, the network for democracy in Saxony-Anhalt, recently observed Jörg Dittus’ political activities in Halle over a longer period of time. “Here he played a central role in the house project of the Identitarian Movement. There he was the organizer of many events,” says Torsten Hahnel from Mit einer eV. In the – meanwhile dissolved – right-wing extremist housing project, the AfD member of the state parliament, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, maintained his parliamentary office. In addition to Andreas Kalbitz and the Thuringian AfD country chief Björn Höcke, he is considered a key player in the officially disbanded “wing”, so the protection of the constitution. The authority assumes that the “wing” is “still functioning as an internal party network”.

As in the Potsdam parliamentary group, according to information from Torsten Hahnel, the connections of different right-wing extremist groups came together in one house: In addition to the “Identitarians”, the “wing” of the AfD, this also included the Institute for State Policy (IfS) from nearby Schnellroda, as well as the new right campaign project “One percent for our country”. An association that was founded by the IfS and the monthly magazine “Compact” from Brandenburg. “Compact” was also classified as a suspected right-wing extremist case by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. After the last state election in 2019, the editorial assistant of “Compact”, Lars Günther, found his way as a member of the Brandenburg AfD parliamentary group. Most recently, he was noticed several times as a participant in the Corona protests in Berlin.

Before his time in the state parliament, he took part in an attempted occupation of the CDU party headquarters by the “identities” at the end of 2016, as did at least one other current parliamentary member of the Potsdam state parliamentary group: Franz-Sebastian Dusatko, who has meanwhile been a close employee of the former parliamentary group leader Kalbitz . He is also a member of the state board of “Young Alternatives” in Brandenburg, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has also classified as a suspected right-wing extremist case. In addition to Dusatko, a few other JA members work for the group. “The Junge Alternative is our youth organization, so there is absolutely nothing to say”, Dennis Hohloch defends his parliamentary group.

The political scientist Gideon Botsch from the Moses Mendelssohn Center at the University of Potsdam speaks of a network of “mosaic rights” in connection with these small groups, but which can be assigned to the same movement. Looking at the AfD parliamentary group, he now notes “a certain concentration of people who at least have clear connections in right-wing extremist networks”. The developments of the AfD in the state parliament remind him of events in the former parliamentary groups of the right-wing extremist NPD in the state parliaments of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which were ousted there after the AfD’s electoral successes. Botsch thinks it is conceivable that the AfD in Brandenburg will develop from a “right-wing extremist movement into a ideology party.”

None of the employees of the AfD parliamentary group responded to an rbb request, not even Erik Lehnert, Jörg Schröder, Felix Wille and Jörg Dittus. In an internal e-mail from Wednesday of this week, which the rbb had, parliamentary group spokesman Dittus had pointed out to the employees that they should not answer the rbb’s request and should not be unsettled by it, especially since the intention of the request was “decomposition” . “We as a parliamentary group do not allow that, external pressure binds us together more tightly,” he wrote.

The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Brandenburg did not want to comment on the rbb research on the right-wing extremist network in the AfD parliamentary group. Unlike the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Brandenburg authority has not yet classified the local AfD as “secured right-wing extremist”. A final evaluation of the suspected right-wing extremist “AfD Brandenburg” is still pending.

Broadcast: rbb UM6, 02.09.2021, 6 p.m.