Germany: Far-right leader on trial for using Nazi slogan

Björn Höcke, the chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in the eastern state of Thuringia, stands accused of intentionally deploying a slogan used by the Nazi party's paramilitary wing in a speech at a campaign rally.

His trial begins on April 18 at the Halle Regional Court. It will deal with Höcke's election campaign appearance on December 12, 2023 in the Thuringian city of Gera. At the time, the Waldhaus restaurant there was packed with AfD supporters. 

Höcke took to the stage and told the audience he would have to appear in court because of an indictment from 2021. "Because I once closed an election campaign rally with a rhetorical triad: 'Everything for our homeland! Everything for Saxony-Anhalt! Everything for..." Höcke then encouraged his audience to finish the slogan. They cheered and shouted back "...Germany!" while Höcke stood on the stage laughing and nodding.

"Everything for Germany" (Alles für Deutschland) was the slogan of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA), or storm troopers.

The SA played a major role when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, the NSDAP, came to power in 1933. In this early phase, the storm troopers terrorized Germany, killing, torturing and intimidating mainly communists and Jews. During the Nazi era, Germans committed the Holocaust, killing over six million Jews and many other persecuted groups. They were also responsible for the deadliest conflict in world history, World War II.

With the fall of their self-proclaimed "Third Reich" and the end of German mass murder throughout Europe in 1945, the SA, like all other Nazi organizations, was banned along with its symbols and slogans. Under German law the use of slogans and symbols linked to anti-constitutional organizations such as the Nazi Party is banned in all but historical and educational contexts.

Björn Höcke's history of revisionism

Björn Höcke has claimed in the past not to know the origin of the "Everything for Germany" slogan. His critics doubt that, as he is a former history teacher and taught the subject at a high school in western Germany's state of Hesse. In 2014, he moved to the state of Thuringia in former East Germany and quickly became one of the AfD's most radical representatives there. He has taken part in neo-Nazi demonstrations and has regularly made headlines with revisionist theories about Germany's Nazi past.

In 2016, at an AfD rally, Höcke expressed sympathy for the notorious Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck, who had to serve a lengthy prison sentence as a repeat offender.

In 2017, the AfD tried to expel Höcke following his controversial speech in which he called Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe a "monument of shame." He also criticized Germany's remembrance of the Holocaust. "These stupid politics of coming to grips with the past cripple us — we need nothing other than a 180-degree reversal on the politics of remembrance," he said suggesting a more positive, celebratory take on the country's history. At the time the Thuringian Court of Arbitration rejected his expulsion.

In 2018, Höcke published his thoughts as a book in a "volume of conversations." In it, he suggests it is wrong that "Hitler is portrayed as absolutely evil."

The book is full of radical statements and was later used as the basis for a court ruling in 2019 that Björn Höcke can legally be described as a "fascist," based on a "verifiable factual basis." This regional AfD chapter has been classified as "verified right-wing extremist" by the state's intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Whether because of or despite his radicalism, Höcke has led the AfD in Thuringia to become the strongest political party there. Höcke has never held a political office. But that could change this year: The AfD currently polls at over 30% ahead of this year's state election.

Björn Höcke wants to head the regional government which would make him the first far-right politician in postwar Germany in one of the 16 federal states. That office has considerable political power: Premiers are largely responsible for the education and media policy of their state and decide on the details of executing the federal government's asylum policy. The AfD has long been calling for a radical change of course in asylum and immigration rules. Höcke himself has suggested that the country needs a new leader to ward off the threat Germany is facing: "national death through population replacement."

Björn Höcke has long set the tone in his party and has triggered nationwide debates about his thoughts, worldview, and political actions.

This article was originally written in German.

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