Komende Zondag/Maandag zijn er in de Duitse deelstaat Saxony-Anhalt verkiezingen. Met wat we nu weten lijkt de AfD daar flink te
groeien.
Ook voor geheel
Duitsland groeit de AfD door, zij het wat minder sterk:
Ik heb mijzelf de voor dit topic relevante vraag gesteld in hoeverre de AfD wordt ondersteund door de overheden van Rusland maar ook van de VS. Dit omdat beiden een belang zien in een invloed binnen de EU. Het is wel even doorzoeken geweest maar enkele bronnen zijn wel te vinden.
Beïnvloeding vanuit Rusland.
Enkele bronnen vertellen hierover iets.
Der Spiegel - April 2019 - Documents Link AfD Parliamentarian To Moscow
Tagesschau - April 2019 - Propagandareise ans Schwarze Meer
Wat oudere documenten die Rusland aan de AfD koppelt bewijzen dat AfD al langere tijd een "prospect" voor Moskou is om te exploiteren. Zo waren de Duitse AfD en de Oostenrijkse FPO in April 2018 aanwezig op een "fourth Yalta International Economic Forum" bijeenkomst in, of all places, een vijfsterren hotel op de Krim, op dat moment al wat jaren door Rusland bezet gebied.
Der Spiegel over de gasten:
The men who pressed the button with the German politician are faithful supporters of Russia and, seemingly, of its president, Vladimir Putin. They included an Austrian deputy mayor of the right-wing populist Austrian People's Party (FPÖ), as well as a former lawmaker in the Russian parliament, the Duma, and Sergei Aksyonov, the prime minister of Crimea installed by Putin. Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014 in violation of international law. Since then, the United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on the country. But that didn't keep Frohnmaier from traveling to Yalta.
The sanctions, the member of the German parliament said, finally need to end: "It is simply fact that Crimea is now Russian Crimea. The people who view this highly critically won't be able to change that. Crimea isn't coming back, and I think people just have to accept that now."
Frohnmaier sounded like a PR agent for the Russian president. He often sounds like that on many days.
Rusland was al in 2017 bezig Duitse verkiezingen te beïnvloeden:
The Russian leadership sees the biggest opposition party in the Germany parliament, the Bundestag, as an ally in the war against "degenerate Europe," as neo-fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin once described it. Their common goal is to weaken the enemy. Exclusive documents from the Moscow state apparatus show how this goal is to be attained. They also show how AfD politicians are, in this sense, turning themselves into Putin's pawns.
The emails include, for example, a strategy paper created before the 2017 German federal election that describes several "foreign-policy activities," ranging from the "organization of meetings, vigils and other protest actions in EU countries to the successful support of resolutions in the national parliaments of the EU and to media campaigns." The goal was to promote Russian interests and enable the "discrediting" of Moscow's opponents.
Hierbij waren vooral onervaren partijen als AfD een doelwit:
Who could be better suited for this than the AfD's people, who are almost all foreign-policy novices? Experts unanimously agree that, for years, Russia has been seeking to exploit right-wing populists as a megaphone for its strategy of expansion in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, to provide legitimacy for dubious elections and as agitators in German town squares.
Het artikel is veel langer en bevat veel details hoe dat in zijn werk gaat.
Euractiv - 15 juli 2026 - Russia accused of spreading disinfo for German far right ahead of polls
Euractiv spreekt hierin over beïnvloeding via sociale media
In recent months, posts spreading misinformation have been appearing in ever greater numbers across X, TikTok and Bluesky. For lawmakers focused on security issues, the prime suspect is Moscow, which – in its efforts to destabilise Germany – is accused of relying on the AfD. The party denies this, claiming instead that it is the victim of “political” manipulation.
Dit wordt als volgt concreet gemaakt, Duitsland trad hier tegen wel op:
Antibot4Navalny, a group of anonymous anti-Kremlin activists named after the late Russian opposition figure, detected a first campaign in June. This involved mocked-up versions of well-known media outlets, including AFP, popping up online that focused on fanning divisions between eastern and western Germany. After being reported, the accounts sharing the posts were blocked.
The group detected a second campaign in July, which saw politicians accused of corruption and sex offences in posts purporting to come from leading German media such as public broadcasters ARD and Deutsche Welle. Two parties were not targeted – the AfD and BSW, a small, pro-Russian, far-left outfit. Antibot4Navalny believes the campaigns were linked to Matryoshka (Russian doll), a Kremlin influence operation, which has been linked to spreading fake content for political purposes before.
Die Russische betrokkenheid blijft desondanks lastig vast te pinnen:
While there is no irrefutable proof of Russian involvement, “there is no other plausible explanation,” said one activist from the group, interviewed by AFP via a messaging app.
De Duitse overheid onderkend wel het risico:
Asked by AFP, the government did not comment directly on “Matryoshka” but said that “information manipulation operations… have long constituted a daily threat.”
Beïnvloeding vanuit de VS.
Vanuit de VS zijn we wel bekend met de werken van The Heritage Foundation. Tussen de AfD en de Amerikanen is de nodige uitwisseling geweest.
The American German Institute heeft dit in kaart gebracht met een rij aan interacties. Merk op dat die interacties tussen januari 2025 en juni 2026 plaatsvonden.
Waarom de ketting aan interactie schijnbaar niet verder gaat na juni kan te maken hebben met de dalende populariteit van de huidige Amerikaanse overheid bij de Duitse kiezer (
Politico, maart 2026) Al in maart bekoelde die liefde blijkbaar:
While rank-and-file members of the AfD continue to cultivate contacts with Trump administration officials and MAGA Republicans — and see it as in their long-term interest to do so — the party’s leaders are urging lawmakers to tamp down the overt, public embrace.
Het volgende voorval illustreert dit:
That dynamic is on ample display this week in Berlin. On Wednesday night, AfD foreign policy lawmakers were set to dine with U.S. State Department official David Goldman and a member of the political section of the U.S. embassy, Ian Campbell, according to an invitation seen by POLITICO that was confirmed by two invitees. The group was to have dined in a parliamentary club across from the Reichstag building after an event focused on German-U.S. relations amid a “changing world order.”
But two days before the dinner, AfD leader Alice Weidel told senior party lawmakers to reduce the number of high-profile trips party politicians are making to the U.S. to cultivate ties with MAGA Republicans, according to four people who were present at the meeting. The calculation is that its growing alignment with the U.S. administration is increasingly turning into a liability for the AfD.
Deze houdingsverandering zou te maken kunnen hebben met de lage populariteit van het beleid van de huidige Amerikaanse overheid:
Surveys show that most Germans are against this month’s strikes on Iran, and attitudes toward the U.S. are nearing record negatives, with only 15 percent of Germans saying they view the U.S. as a trustworthy partner in one recent poll. This helps explain why the AfD’s leaders last month condemned the war with Iran, warning that “renewed destabilization of the Middle East” is “not in Germany’s interest.”
The effort to create some distance from Trump isn’t entirely new. AfD leaders loosened their embrace of the Trump administration earlier this year as public sentiment in Germany turned against the U.S. president over his talk of taking control of Greenland and his decision to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Effecten van deze beïnvloeding
Uit het eerder genoemde Euractiv artikel lijken de effecten van de Russische social media campagne beperkt:
Antibot4Navalny told AFP that while the volume of content is “impressive”, the campaign’s reach so far is limited.
CDU lawmaker Marc Henrichmann acknowledged that Germans are “a bit more cautious” when it comes to tackling state-backed disinformation, and called for the country’s spies to be given stronger powers.
He believes Russia is waging “cognitive war” aimed at spreading fear and dividing Germany, which has launched a massive overhaul of its armed forces and become Ukraine’s leading donor as it seeks to keep Russia’s military ambitions in check.
“One thing is certain: the AfD is (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s mouthpiece in Germany and is consciously exploiting these narratives,” he charged.
Het Politico artikel kijkt zo naar de beïnvloeding van de Amerikanen:
Early in Trump’s second term, the AfD eagerly embraced endorsements from Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur and Trump supporter, and celebrated Vice President JD Vance’s attack on European firewalls against the far right at last year’s Munich Security Conference.
But that position had not been the default for the AfD, which is traditionally more sympathetic to Moscow. In fact, many AfD politicians have previously expressed resentment over American military interventions around the world and what they view as the U.S. postwar domination of Germany. In an interview last year with the American Conservative bimonthly magazine, AfD leader Weidel suggested Germany is a “slave” to the U.S. and said the country would not fight in foreign wars for an American “empire.”
“Don’t expect the unfree to take over this fight for you,” Weidel said at the time. “There will be no such thing.”
Against that backdrop, the party’s cooling posture toward the U.S. — at least outwardly — marks a shift back toward the old normal.
Dit bevestigt het beeld dat al die verschillende nationalistische partijen als AfD zich nog niet zo gemakkelijk als
een beweging in de EU laten inzetten. Dit betekend echter nog niet dat ze EU-belangen niet zouden kunnen schaden.
Gevolgen wanneer AfD in Saxony-Anhalt de grootste wordt
The Conversation - 2 September 2026 - Is Germany’s far right AfD about to take over a state government for the first time?
Omdat het buiten de scoop van dit topic is een hele korte schets wat de partij voorstaat te doen:
- changing the school curriculum to downplay the significance of the Nazi era
- introducing the routine singing of the German national anthem in school assemblies and ending what it calls “inclusion” in mainstream education for children with special needs
- Defunding the protestant church, which the AfD has accused of being too focused on social not theological questions, would also be a real possibility
Meer in de lijn van dit topic echter:
A particular worry is around Germany’s “constitutional protection” or secret services. There is consideration being given to setting up parallel offices in Saxony-Anhalt to protect sensitive operations in the event of an AfD administration. Many branches and elements of the AfD are under observation by German intelligence agencies on the basis of suspected extremism.
Impact op de nationale politiek agenda wordt pas duidelijk nadat andere deelstaatverkiezing hebben plaatsgevonden:
There will almost certainly be wider political ructions from this election if the AfD tops the poll, and even more so if it wins outright control of the state government. Any major changes at the top of German politics will probably wait until after elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg West Pomerania later in the month.