The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came out on top in state elections in Thuringia on Sunday. Bjorn Höcke is one of the movement’s most radical faces.
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It is said “over the moon” after his far-right party’s victory in the regional elections in Thuringia. Björn Höcke, the local leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD), assured on Sunday 1 September that he was “ready to take responsibility for governing” this state in the centre-east of the country, where he received 32.8% of the votes.The AfD’s rise to power in the region is likely to be prevented by a cordon sanitaire, especially after German Chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, has called “all democratic parties to form stable governments without the extreme right.”
Whatever the outcome of the negotiations, in Thuringia, the AfD is gaining ground, led by one of the most radical faces of the German far right. Racist and conspiratorial remarks, use of Nazi slogans… Franceinfo draws a portrait of Björn Höcke.
A family nostalgic for the “lost homeland”
At the end of World War II, Björn Höcke’s grandparents, expelled from East Prussia by the Soviet Red Army, settled in western Germany, near the border with Belgium, according to The Guardian. Three decades later, Björn Höcke, born in 1972, grew up lulled by their stories about the “lost homeland”, which does not fail to awaken in him “a political interest”, as he told a local television channel Salve TV in 2015. His father is among the subscribers of the anti-Semitic newspaper. The farmers, founded in 1969 by a former Waffen-SS Holocaust denier, according to an investigation by the weekly The Time.
At the turn of the 2000s, Björn Höcke became a history professor. “The students – many of them from immigrant backgrounds – were not receptive to my educational concerns, particularly the transmission of German and European cultural traditions.“, he relates in a book published in 2018, consulted by Tea Guardian. In this book, he accuses students from Turkey and Africa of having one day expressed “their aggressive rejection of “Germanness”.
An extremist political rise
Björn Höcke entered politics in the early 2010s in Thuringia. He became spokesperson for the AfD in 2013, before being elected regional MP in 2014 and appointed, that same year, chairman of his parliamentary group, a position he still holds ten years later. On his home turf, Björn Höcke further radicalised the AfD, within which he launched an extreme movement, the Wing (Flügel), notes France 24.
For years, AfD figures have been trying to expel Björn Höcke from the far-right party, where his comments have shocked people. In 2015, he claimed not to “assume that every member of the NDP”, a German neo-Nazi party, may “to be called an extremist”, reports Tea Guardian. In 2017, he called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame”. The Wing was eventually dissolved by the AfD in 2020, after Björn Höcke’s branch was placed under surveillance by the intelligence services, according to Deutsche Welle.. However, the leader of the far-right in Thuringia remains a member of the AfD.
Words borrowed from the Nazis
In 2017, the party’s federal council expressed concern about the “excessive proximity” by Björn Höcke “with National Socialism”according to The Guardian. The same observation was made by researcher Axel Salheiser, interviewed in 2020 by Deutsche Welle, who mentioned terms “strangely similar” has those used by the Nazis. Before him, the sociologist Andreas Kemper had noted more than ten “similarities”including calling his rivals in the AfD “degenerates” or his political opponents “corruptors of the people” – a term used by Hitler in Mein Kampf, remember Tea Guardian. In 2019, a court ruled in favor of protesters who called Björn Höcke a “fascist”.
This yearBjörn Höcke was convicted twice for using Nazi slogans. In May, he was fined for repeating the slogan national socialist “Alles für Deutschland” (“All for Germany”) during a meeting in 2021. In July, he was fined again for asking the public in 2023 “Everything for?”encouraging him to respond “Germany”. The use of Nazi terminology is strictly forbidden in Germany, as are other symbols of that era.
In April, at a rally near Erfurt, Thuringia, which franceinfo attended, Björn Höcke also made unfiltered xenophobic and racist remarks. He also defended conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic.
A pro-Russian line
Although he did not grow up in eastern Germany, Björn Höcke is reaching out to citizens nostalgic for the GDR. On Friday, he posted a video on his X account showing himself riding a Simson motorcycle, a cult brand from the former East Germany. “It’s a piece of freedom, a piece of ancient culture and we are fighting for traditions,” he boasts.
An “Ostalgia” that he also cultivates through assumed pro-Russian positions. Opposed to the continuation of arms deliveries to Ukraine, Björn Höcke is in favor of negotiations with Russia, “a country in difficulty” and who “wants peace”according to him.