By mid-March 2024, millions of people had participated in anti-far-right rallies that covered the entire length and breadth of Germany. The anti-right-wing and anti-AfD demonstrations have been active for the 11^th week in a row. And it doesn’t look like they will stop.

Nevertheless, the AfD continues to employ well over 100 right-wing extremists as staffers in Germany’s federal and state parliaments. Despite the much hated so-called “deep state” – a conspiracy fantasy – the AfD is actually 44% financed by the German state. 

Much of the €30 million ($33 million) that they eat up is money from the German tax payer. This money is not only used to undermine the democratic state but also to employ 100 Neo-Nazis as staffers. Officially, these are so-called researchers, political advisors, consultants, assistants, office administrators, and so on.

Today, the AfD is the largest employer of Neo-Nazis in Germany – over 100 of the party’s 500 staff members are known right-wing extremists. In Germany’s parliament or Bundestag, every member of parliament – including those of the AfD – has a budget to employ staff.

Since March 2024, Germany’s Bundestag administration has been providing each member of parliament with a lump sum of almost €26,000 euros ($28,400) per month for the payment of staff. 

Parliamentarians can decide for themselves how many staff they will distribute this money to. Depending on the training and tasks, full-time staff earns between €2,000 ($2,200) and almost €9,600 ($10,500) per month.

After a recent report by Bavaria’s regional state TV, there are democratic parliamentarians like Renner who call for ban of AfD-employed Neo-Nazis because of their plan to violently destroy Germany’s constitutional-democratic order. This includes destruction of the Bundestag – the official name of Germany’s parliament.

While Germany’s democratic parties employ assistants of no particular party affiliation, the AfD employs Neo-Nazis. In addition to individual MPs who can employ staff, there are also parliamentary groups who have their own, additional employees. 

The idea is that administrative staff takes care of organizational matters. In other cases, they are responsible for a specific topic. For example, the AfD has a Neo-Nazi who mutated into an economic advisor. 

This administrative assistant game adds up to cost the German taxpayer a tidy bundle. All together, there are 735 members of parliament (MEPs) in Germany, and with the aforementioned groups included, they currently have 5,600 employees.

About one tenth of the overall number of staff works for the Neo-Nazi AfD. And of these, as recent research by state-TV Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) has demonstrated, about 100 are particularly interesting. 

These 100 “are currently” or “have been” active in right-wing extremist cohorts, far-right groups, and outright Neo-Nazi organizations. According to BR, the AfD has a rather secretive, so-called “internal list of names” of Neo-Nazis who work in parliament (Bundestag). 

Beyond that, there is also an official staff directory issued by the government. This, of course, includes the AfD. Unsurprisingly, the AfD did not participate in the BR-TV’s research. For obvious reasons. 

Yet, once the research was published, the AfD strongly rejected and condemned the BR-TV report, which in English is called “Neo-Nazis in the Heart of Democracy.” 

Perhaps the AfD is following in the propaganda footsteps of Donald Trump. Trump continues to offer unsubstantiated claims that all 91 felony cases against him are part of a political witch hunt. 

The AfD too claims that all news which tells the truth about their membership and about their plans to overthrow democracy is also part of a political campaign to defame the AfD. 

Virtually the same angry comments erupted from the AfD when their secret meeting – called Wannsee 2.0 – came to light a few months ago, along with their plans to mass deport migrants and those who do not fit the Volksgemeinschaft picture that stems from the NSDAP era in Germany. It was that meeting and their plans for a “solution” that have triggered 11 weeks of mass rallies against the AfD.

Many AfD employees are mentioned by name in reports by Germany’s federal police, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Many of these extremists presently hold leadership positions inside the AfD. 

They have appeared as speakers at the blandly named Institute for State Policy, aka the IfS, a Neo-Nazi think tank with a headquarters in Schnellroda – an East-German town in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The key role of the IfS is to serve as a forum for Neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists. 

What makes matters worse is that a large contingent of the more than 100 Neo-Nazi employees of AfD parliamentarians were or are members of the AfD’s Nazi-crested youth organization called Junge Alternative. 

Besides the fact that its logo is that of a stylized wolf, symbolizing the predator that each member should emulate, the JA has been categorized as a confirmed extremist organization by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 2023.

Virtually the same Neo-Nazi connections for the AfD staff were found among those who are from the AfD’s regional offices in East-Germany’s Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. 

The AfD in these three East-German states has already been classified as a “confirmed extremist organization” – the official designation for what in common parlance is known as a Neo-Nazi organization. 

At least 25 AfD staff member and potentially dozens more come from these three regional associations in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. and all are particularly close to local Neo-Nazi cohorts. 

Many disgruntled kids from the eastern states became radicalized because they grew up in the post-unification years, where meagre and yet comforting state-socialism disintegrated in the face of the “wonders” of hungry capitalism. 

Disillusioned, poorly educated and unemployed, too many of the young people ended up being fascinated by Neo-Nazi violence, hooliganism, and petty criminality – things that gave them a sense of power and fed their urge for rebellion against the status quo.

The “wonders”(!) of West-German capitalism have been graphically illuminated in Manja Präkels’s still untranslated book “Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß”.

Back in Berlin, the AfD parliamentary managing director and Herman Goering-loving Bernd Baumann has described BR-TV’s report as being “part of a nasty campaign.” Baumann (not Bormann) also spoke about the ongoing legal process in Münster. 

The case was instigated by the AfD against the BfV. Its goal is to prevent the state agency from calling the AfD “right-wing extremists.” Baumann also spoke of “nebulous suspicions” in the BR-TV report. 

Baumann employs hate-influencer Marie-Thérèse Kaiser. Pretty-faced Kaiser – an AfD staff member – is particularly active in online hate platforms. 

The former model is also involved in the far-right Lukreta women’s initiative which is closely linked to the neo-fascist identitarians. Kaiser creates videos that are part of the organized campaign of far-right propaganda.

The right-leaning Bild newspaper identified, among others, “John Hoewer (36). According to BR, he is a board member of the Ein Prozent (One Percent) association. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution considers the association to be a confirmed right-wing extremist organization. 

However is also said to be an employee of AfD MP Sebastian Münzenmaier (34). BR reports that it has identified five AfD employees in the Bundestag who are said to have close links to One Percent.”

Sebastian Münzenmaier is an anti-Islamic, petty criminal, right-wing hooligan-linked, AfD parliamentarian. There are photos of his AfD staff member Hoewer at a martial arts training with known Neo-Nazis. There is also a video showing him in thuggish confrontations with demonstrators who are marching for democracy. 

Frank Pasemann, who was expelled from the AfD for being overtly “too extreme” and therefore a PR risk for the party, is employed by a current AfD deputy, former Neo-Nazi, far-right, heavy-drinking, misogynistic student fraternity member, Jürgen Pohl who is a close associate of the AfD’s most outspoken Neo-Nazi ideologue and internal mini-Führer Björn Höcke. 

Pasemann believes, for example, that the trial of Germany’s worst Neo-Nazi killers – the NSU, who murdered ten people, including a policewoman – was merely a show trial. Unsurprisingly, Pasemann is also known for his rampant anti-Semitism. 

Another extreme-right-wing AfD staff member who was identified by CORRECTIV in their research on mass deportations, is Mario Müller, a violent, brutish, criminal, ex-full-time Neo-Nazi, and mini-Führer of a hooligan-Neo-Nazi outfit called “Action Commando Delmenhorst.”

Violent Neo-Nazi Müller was outspoken in his far-right ideological viewpoint during the infamous Potsdam secret meeting on mass deportations. On several occasions, Mario Müller has been convicted of violent crimes.

The big problem is that all of these anti-democratic actors have access to sensitive parliamentary documents at Germany’s Bundestag. 

Quite apart from their anti-democratic worldview, their appropriation of state funds in order to eliminate democracy, and their – to put it mildly – “unreliability” as parliamentary staff, their far-right ideological Weltanschauung is based on the targeted exercise of extreme right-wing violence which can be meted out against democracy at will.

Their actions and associations with Germany’s right-wing extremists are not just to fight democracy but  also to destroy Germany’s constitutional order. In short, the AfD’s Neo-Nazi staff should not be authorized to enter Germany’s parliament – nor be allowed anywhere near any of the institutions which uphold democracy.

Since the AfD’s Neo-Nazi staff have had access to Germany’s parliament, have been issued state-approved ID-cards, and are paid handsomely, they have been working on what Hitler’s chief propagandist Goebbels once said (our translation):

“It will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy that it provided its mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed. The persecuted leaders of the NSDAP, as deputies, enjoyed immunity, diets and a free train ticket. As a result, they were protected from the police, were allowed to pass themselves off as ordinary citizens and, in addition, had the costs of their activities paid by the enemy. It was possible to make excellent capital out of democratic stupidity.”

Compare this with the newest right-wing proclamation from Jack Posobiec at the recent annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the USA:“I just wanted to say, welcome to the end of democracy.  We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”  He then held up a Christian Cross on his necklace, stating that: “We’ll replace it with this right here. That’s right, because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory is to God.”

---