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Michael Kuenne

The AfD Is a Threat to Jewish Life in Germany

Bundestag, Photo: Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0
Bundestag, Photo: Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0

As the country prepares for federal elections in 2025, far-right party Alternative for Germany is making political gains across Germany. But for the country’s Jewish voters, the AfD represents more than a bad choice, it embodies real danger.

While the party tries to present itself as a protector of Jewish life against antisemitism, its history tells a different story, one marked by Holocaust relativism, far-right extremism, and a vision of German nationalism that excludes Jews from the nation’s future.

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The AfD (Alternative for Germany) has a well-documented history of antisemitic rhetoric and historical revisionism. Publicly, the leaders of this party have made comments that belittle the Holocaust and Germany’s guilt about Nazi crimes. For example, Björn Höcke, one of the most famous AfD figures, called the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame” and called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance. Assertions like these are not isolated; instead, they are part of a broader effort by the party to minimize or even romanticize aspects of Germany’s Nazi history.

More concerning is the fact that the AfD’s election programs have systematically omitted any reference to the Holocaust or Germany’s historical responsibility. It speaks volumes about its intentions by deliberate silence of the party on the matter. Saving historical memory was not an affair of political convenience for the Jewish communities, but to make sure that this phrase “Never Again” doesn’t remain mere words.

Besides revisionist history, the AfD advocates for policies that would directly damage Jewish religious and cultural life in Germany. The party has repeatedly called for kosher slaughter bans, which are an essential religious practice among Jews. Prominent AfD figures have also gone on record to argue for restricting circumcision, brit milah, drawing a fallacious comparison with child abuse. These policies, if implemented, would make Jewish religious life impossible in Germany.

The AfD also has deep connections with antisemitic conspiracy theories. A very common narrative is that of “globalist elites” controlling politics, using the very same antisemitic tropes as Nazi propaganda. AfD politicians commonly use the term “Great Replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory claiming that non-European immigrants are used to “replace” the native population. That kind of rhetoric has historically been used against Jews, blaming them for societal decay.

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The AfD claims to be a friend of Israel, but its motives are crystal clear and unmistakably selfish. It does not really show solidarity with Israel but uses the country to legitimize its own Islamophobic agenda. For the AfD, Israel is less a democracy than an ideal model of nationalist, militarized ethnocentrism. That is why calls to abandon Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust accompany the party’s alleged “support” for Israel.

When Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, for example, the AfD largely remained silent. While most German parties generally expressed their solidarity with Israel’s right to self-defense, AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla opposed arms deliveries to Israel-to say nothing of the party’s lip service in support of Jewish security.

The AfD is not only a Jewish problem; it’s a democratic problem. The AfD has been classified by the German domestic intelligence service as a right-wing extremist organization, and its youth arm has been put under formal surveillance due to its extremist activities. The party has connections with neo-Nazi groups, and with calls for mass deportations, even of naturalized German citizens, the relation to authoritarianism is one not of flirtation but of full embrace.

The Jews in Germany, perhaps more than anybody else, know the way this street goes. If a political party begins its entire movement by demonizing one minority, history stands to prove that it will catch up with all the rest. Already, the AfD has started to show the way in attacks against Muslims, refugees, and LGBTQ+ communities. Jewish voters must not be tricked into some sort of exemptions within this ideology.

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The vast majority of Jewish leaders and institutions in Germany have unequivocally denounced the AfD. Time and again, the Central Council of Jews in Germany has warned that the AfD is a fundamental danger to Jewish life. The former Israeli Ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, labeled AfD rhetoric as “deeply offensive to Jews and to Israel.” The message is clear: Jews have no place in a Germany that the AfD envisions.

The election in 2025 for Jewish voters in Germany is not a matter of preference; it’s about their existence. The AfD elects an enemy of democracy, an enemy of historical truth, and an enemy, per se, of Jewish life in Germany.

It is now a matter of prime importance that the Jews and all democratic forces of Germany stand as one to ensure that the AfD remains what it should have always been: a fringe party, excluded from power, rejected by all who believe in justice, historical responsibility, and human dignity.

 

About the Author
Michael Kuenne works as a journalist on antisemitism, extremism, and rising threats to Jewish life. His reporting continually sheds light on the dangers that come from within radical ideologies and institutional complicity, and where Western democracies have failed in confronting the new rise of Jew-hatred with the due urgency it does call for. With hard-hitting commentary and muckraking reporting, Kuenne exposed how the antisemitic narratives shape policymaking, dictate public discourse, and fuel hate toward Israel. His writings have appeared in a number of international media outlets, including The Times of Israel Blogs. Kuenne has become a voice heard for blunt advocacy in regard to Israel's right to self-defense, critiquing ill-conceived humanitarian policies serving only to empower terror, while demanding a moral clarity which seems beyond most Western leaders. With a deep commitment to historical truth, he has covered the resurgence of Holocaust distortion in political rhetoric, the dangerous normalization of antisemitic conspiracies in mainstream culture, and false equivalencies drawn between Israel's actions and the crimes of its enemies. His reporting dismantles sanitized language that whitens the record of extremism and insists on calling out antisemitism-whether from the far right, the far left, or Islamist movements, without fear or hesitation.
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