Germany’s Far-Right AFD: Party Expands Beyond Eastern Base

The expan­sion of Ger­many’s far-right AfD par­ty has gained sig­nif­i­cant momen­tum as the par­ty attempts to broad­en its appeal beyond its tra­di­tion­al East­ern strong­holds. On 22 June 2025, The New York Times report­ed that the par­ty, recent­ly des­ig­nat­ed as extrem­ist by Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice, is achiev­ing notable suc­cess in West­ern indus­tri­al cities like Duis­burg by tai­lor­ing its anti-immi­grant mes­sage to local eco­nom­ic con­cerns. The arti­cle begins:

It was a warm spring day in Duis­burg, a rusty indus­tri­al hub in West­ern Ger­many, and Alan Ima­mu­ra, a mem­ber of the City Coun­cil, was chat­ting with con­stituents in a shop-lined pedes­tri­an mall on the city’s impov­er­ished north side. Until recent­ly, Mr. Ima­mu­ra said, he was not wel­come in places like this. That is because he is a lead­ing local fig­ure in the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many, known as the AfD, a far-right par­ty whose nation­al orga­ni­za­tion was recent­ly declared an extrem­ist group by the coun­try’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice. Much of the AfD’s sup­port comes from the for­mer East Ger­many. But in recent years, it has devel­oped a beach­head in parts of West­ern Ger­many. Dur­ing Feb­ru­ary’s fed­er­al elec­tions, sev­er­al neigh­bor­hoods in Mr. Ima­mu­ra’s dis­trict gave the AfD some of its best results in the coun­try, com­ing close to 40 per­cent of the vote.

           Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/world/europe/germany-afd.html [pay­wall]

Key Points

• The AfD achieved near­ly 40 per­cent sup­port in some Duis­burg neigh­bor­hoods dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary fed­er­al elec­tions, mark­ing sig­nif­i­cant gains in the West.
• Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice des­ig­nat­ed the AfD as extrem­ist, cit­ing an “entrenched xeno­pho­bic mind­set” in par­ty lead­er­ship structures.
• The par­ty tar­gets post-indus­tri­al decline areas, where unem­ploy­ment reach­es 13.4 per­cent, com­pared to Ger­many’s nation­al aver­age of 3.5 percent.
• AfD strate­gi­cal­ly courts immi­grant vot­ers with Turk­ish-lan­guage con­tent, achiev­ing 20 per­cent sup­port among vot­ers with migra­tion back­grounds nationwide

Germany’s AfD & the Global National Conservative Alliance

The Alter­na­tive für Ger­many (AfD), Germany’s nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty, has become a focal point of both domes­tic and transna­tion­al polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, as its extrem­ist des­ig­na­tion by Ger­man intel­li­gence agen­cies rais­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the lim­its of demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion and the role of state sur­veil­lance in a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. The party’s rapid growth and rad­i­cal­iza­tion, marked by a surge in extrem­ist mem­ber­ship and increas­ing­ly xeno­pho­bic rhetoric, have not only trig­gered con­sti­tu­tion­al and diplo­mat­ic crises but also posi­tioned the AfD as a linch­pin with­in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), which seeks to unite right-wing and far-right move­ments across Europe and beyond.

This alliance is char­ac­ter­ized by shared ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments to nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, anti-glob­al­ism, and cul­tur­al con­ser­vatism, as well as oper­a­tional link­ages through par­tic­i­pa­tion in inter­na­tion­al far-right events and col­lab­o­ra­tion with fig­ures such as Hungary’s Vik­tor Orbán and France’s Marine Le Pen. The AfD’s influ­ence is fur­ther ampli­fied by exter­nal actors, par­tic­u­lar­ly Rus­sia, which has active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed ties with AfD politi­cians to prop­a­gate anti-EU and anti-immi­grant nar­ra­tives, lever­ag­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and finan­cial incen­tives to desta­bi­lize Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tems. Despite the con­tra­dic­tions between the AfD’s pro­fessed val­ues and the real­i­ties of author­i­tar­i­an gov­er­nance abroad, its inte­gra­tion into the GNCA under­scores the party’s trans­for­ma­tion from a nation­al protest move­ment into a key node in a transna­tion­al net­work that chal­lenges lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and institutions.

Exter­nal References:

1. Far right looks for elec­tion break­through as Ger­many falters

2. AfD Con­gress Con­firms the Par­ty’s Radicalisation

3. Far Right’s Ties to Rus­sia Sow Ris­ing Alarm in Germany

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.