SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 2.18.2025
President Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s wildest dreams of worldwide political dominance are coming true.
The isolationist and politically obtuse American public is ignoring the impending disaster of the political order in Germany.
This Sunday German voters will go to the polls and elect a new parliament. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag
The extremist right wing Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), if the polls are correct, will gain over 20 percent of the seats in the Bundestag. Potentially giving the AfD 130 seats in the 630 member parliament. Making this party of extremists and, some would say, Neo-Nazis a major player in Germany and the whole of Europe.
Elon Musk is actively campaigning for the AfD. Vice-President JD Vance went to Munich last week and sang the praises of these extremists.
Excerpted from Wall Street Journal Editorial 2.18.2025
The AfD’s foreign-policy views should give Americans pause. Party co-leader Tino Chrupalla in December suggested Germany should withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because NATO is too dominated by America. Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for chancellor, said in September she believes “U.S. interests in Germany are diametrically opposed to our security interests.” The party taps into a deep well of suspicion of the U.S. and sympathy for Russia among its voters in the former East Germany.
Nor can Americans be blind to the extremism within the AfD. Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia state, criticized construction of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, says the word Lebensraum (the Nazi concept of an ethnic German zone in Europe) should be revived, and has peppered speeches with a nationalist slogan once adopted by Hitler’s storm troopers. Alexander Gauland, an AfD leader in the national parliament, once described the Nazi era as “bird s—” in the context of Germany history.
Ms. Weidel and other leaders haven’t purged these elements from the AfD. That is in contrast to Marine Le Pen’s purge of antisemites from her party in France, expelling even her own father from the party he founded. Ms. Le Pen’s party has cut ties with the AfD at the European Union level in Brussels.
This explains why mainstream German parties have erected a “firewall” around the AfD—something Mr. Vance criticized last week. Mr. Vance is right that Europe’s failed mainstream politicians can’t run from their voters forever, but it doesn’t follow that an American Vice President should throw his weight behind an anti-American party.
Lee's Perspective 