AfD altern for Germ

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promote 2nd on omg

musk and jdv?

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9 9 26 POD SAVE WORLD REGIONAL, BUT ANOTHER SM RW REGION COMING UP

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AN 9 26

What just happened in Germany should have every American spooked

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AN 4 26

Trump has done his best to curry the favor of Europe’s far right, but after seeing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán go down to humiliating defeat despite Trump’s support, the far right now wants to put daylight between itself and America’s leader.

“President Donald Trump’s offensive behavior toward Christians and his unnecessary and unpopular war in Iran isn’t just splitting his political base at home — it’s also alienating his allies abroad,” wrote MS NOW’s Zeeshan Aleem on Sunday. “Right-wing nationalists in Europe are becoming more and more wary of association with Trump and growing inclined to keep him at a distance to protect their own political projects. The trend marks a blow to Trump’s aspirations of creating an international bloc of right-wing nationalist states that work in concert to quash the left.”

Aleem ticked off a number of prominent Italian conservatives who are denouncing Trump including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a number of German lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Romania’s European Parliament member Diana Sosoaca and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Their criticisms have ranged from his meddling in European domestic politics, his invasion of Iran and his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

“Those bold criticisms speak to how incredibly damaging Trump’s war on Iran has been for his standing within his movement,” Aleem observed. “The surge in global oil prices is politically radioactive; far-right leaders and parties in Europe affiliated with Trump risk becoming associated with the energy crisis unless they take steps to create distance from him.”

Indeed, as recently as last week, the United Kingdom’s Brexit champion Nigel Farage downplayed his relationship with Trump, who he once said was ushering in “the beginning of a golden age,” by instead saying “I happen to know him, but that’s by the by.”

Overall, this pattern speaks to how Trump’s brash approach to governance has alienated America’s European allies.

“Trump, for so many people, epitomizes the ugly American — somebody who is bumptious and vulgar and ignorant about foreign cultures,” former Time Magazine editor Rick Stengel said in a recent podcast appearance on The Bulwark with former Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon on Sunday. “So I think people sort of have come to the end of their patience with America.”

Ironically, Trump has aggressively courted the European far right as his natural ideological allies. Trump appointee Susan B. Rogers was selected as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in large part to ingratiate herself to the far right, such as by describing German migrants as “barbarian rapist hordes,” falsely claiming Sweden’s immigration policy has caused sexual violence (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”) and incorrectly stating that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production.”

Rogers even met with members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, which espouses an ideology widely perceived as neo-Nazi.

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AN 2 26

Conservative columnist and historian Max Boot explained on Monday that President Donald Trump has “become toxic” even among right-wing movements in Europe analogous to his MAGA movement in the United States.

“I've been covering Trump's unprecedented interference in foreign elections, and what strikes me most is how brazen it's become,” Boot wrote for The Washington Post. “We're not talking about subtle diplomatic preferences here—Trump is issuing formal endorsements in other countries' elections as if they were Republican primaries back home.”

After listing the foreign politicians to receive Trump’s endorsement — including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the UK’s Boris Johnson, Giuseppe Conte in Italy, Javier Milei in Argentia, Karol Nawrocki in Poland, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Sanae Takaichi in Japan — Boot wrote that the first problem is that it continues “Trump’s unfortunate habit of personalizing relations with other countries: He rewards leaders he likes and punishes those he dislikes.” Not only does this risk “making an enemy of the political opposition in their countries,” as happened when Trump “all but endorsed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre” only for Poilievre to lose to Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, but it also could boomerang against Trump in areas where he is very unpopular.

“Now Trump is inviting a similar backlash in Europe, where he has become toxic with his tariffs, his attacks on European digital regulations and immigration policies, his attempt to take over Greenland, and his insults about European soldiers supposedly shirking combat in Afghanistan,” Boot wrote. “A poll released last month by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that only 16 percent of Europeans now consider the U.S. an ally. In Denmark, 84 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States.”

Boot added that “Vice President JD Vance was booed at the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Milan, even though Italy has a Trump-friendly prime minister” in Giorgia Meloni. Meloni even joined the rest of Europe in rebuking Trump last month for his Greenland threats, a fact which further demonstrates even the European far right does not necessarily want to be associated with the American president.

“A Politico poll in December found that in France and Germany, only a third of the people who support right-wing parties have a favorable view of Trump,” Boot wrote. “Little wonder that far-right leaders in Europe denounced Trump’s attempted takeover of Greenland and sought to distance themselves from the American leader.”

He concluded, “A president who zealously guards America’s sovereignty should show more respect for the sovereignty of other countries.”

Boot is not alone in raising the alarm about Trump’s meddling in other nations’ politics. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Susan B. Rogers has repeatedly met with far right parties in Europe and characterized efforts to marginalize extremists as anti-free speech, prompting criticisms from the British publication The Guardian. Vice President JD Vance has encouraged Germany to allow the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party to have a greater role in its political life, which was roundly denounced throughout Germany.

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AN 2 26

President Donald Trump's appointee Susan B. Rogers is “arguably… the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies,” according to a prominent British publication that accuses her of propping up far right regimes.

Rogers, who has been Trump’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs since October, has repeatedly characterized efforts to stop the rise of the far right as threats to free speech and met with marginalized extremist parties, according to a Wednesday report in The Guardian.

On the social media platform Twitter/X, Rogers has characterized German migrants as “barbarian rapist hordes,” linked Sweden’s immigration policy to sexual violence (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”) and claimed that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production.”

The Guardian also highlighted Rogers’ meetings with members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, which is widely viewed as neo-Nazi in its ideology. After meeting with AfD parliamentarian Markus Frohnmaier, Rogers wrote that “unlike the Russian government (and the current German one), AfD took an anti-censorship stance in its meeting with me last week. One reason they’re gaining popularity in Germany.”

Rogers defended her meeting by telling The Guardian, “Mr Frohnmaier is the foreign policy spokesman for the most popular political party in Germany. He delivers AfD’s foreign policy positions in the Bundestag, and is the person German media call when they want a policy statement from AfD. For this reason, we talk to him in his official capacity to understand AfD’s positions.”

Yet Rogers has done more than meet with AfD. According to The Financial Times, Rogers has also scheduled meetings with far right parties throughout Europe on a mission to “fund MAGA-aligned think-tanks and charities.” According to a senior member of the UK’s far-right Reform party, Rogers has a “State Department slush fund to get MAGA-style things going in various places” and was keen to “fund European organisations to undermine government policies.”

Others in Trump’s orbit have also worked to prop up AfD. Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk, who performed a Nazi salute at Trump’s 2025 inauguration, has publicly embraced AfD as the “last spark of hope.” Meanwhile Vice President JD Vance wrote a Twitter/X post promoting Musk’s pro-AfD statements while adding, “I’m not endorsing a party in the German elections, as it’s not my country and we hope to have good relations with all Germans. But this is an interesting piece.”

Vance then added, “Also interesting; American media slanders AfD as Nazi-lite, But AfD is most popular in the same areas of Germany that were most resistant to the Nazis.”

Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, describing the Trump administration’s opposition to the pro-democracy multinational alliances that governed the post-World War II international order, argued that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us. Eight decades later, we are once again called to create a free world out of the chaos, and this will not be easy.”

In response to Trump’s support for the far right from Germany and the United Kingdom to Marine Le Pen in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the Munich Security Conference — widely regarded as the world’s top independent forum for analyzing foreign policy — warned that his policies could lead to global conflict.

“Transactional deals may well replace principled cooperation, private interests may increasingly trump public ones, and regions may become dominated by great powers rather than governed by international rules and norms,” the Munich Security Conference’s recent report warned.

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an 10 25

This Trump plan would overhaul US refugee system to 'prioritize Europeans' and German far-right

Ailia Zehra

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mma // jdv

Laura Ingraham celebrates far-right AfD party's surge in Germany

02/24/25

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AN 4 25 ROBT R

A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orban took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state.

When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orban, and Orban started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary.

John believes Trump is emulating Orban’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orban was Trump before there was Trump.”)

Orban’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John:

One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all party dissent.

IFrame Content

Two: Build your base by appealing to fear and hate, branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.

Three: Use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.

Four: Use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.

Five: Centralize your power by destroying the civil service.

Six: Redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree. Weaponize the state against all democratic opponents. Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the leader as an “enemy of the people.”

Seven: Eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society. Target opponents with regulatory penalties like tax audits, educational penalties such as denials of accreditation, political penalties like harassment investigations, physical penalties like withdrawing police protection, and criminal penalties like prosecution.

Eight: Rely on your oligarchs — hugely wealthy business and financial leaders — to supervise the economy and reward them with special access to state resources, tax cuts, and subsidies.

Nine: Ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.

Ten: Get the public to believe that all this is necessary, and that resistance is futile.

John noted that Orban’s influence now reaches across Europe.

In Austria, a political party founded by former Nazis will be part of a new coalition government this year headed by a leader who has close ties to Russia and opposes European support for Ukraine. A similar nationalist far-right government has taken over next door in Slovakia.

Europe’s three biggest countries, Italy, France and Germany, have all swung toward the far-right, but so far they remain democracies.

Italy has a nationalist government headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who’s followed parts of the Orban playbook but has been pushed toward the center and has softened her position on immigration and Ukraine.

In France, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen won last year’s parliamentary elections, but a coalition of opposition parties, prodded by Emmanuel Macron, united to deny her party a parliamentary majority. Their resistance will be tested by new elections in June.

In Germany, the center-left government headed by Olaf Scholz fell at the end of last year. In late February, parliamentary elections took place that determined whether the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would become part of a new government. Viktor Orban, Elon Musk, and JD Vance all endorsed the AfD before the elections, but it came in second with just under 20 percent of the vote, and polls show that 71 percent of Germans believe that the AfD is a threat to democracy because of its overt connections to the Nazi past.

Poland, the biggest new democracy in Eastern Europe, at first adopted but is now resisting the Orban model. A far-right government elected in 2015 almost destroyed the independence of the Polish judiciary, but opposition parties united to defend the courts and defeated the government in 2023, replacing it with a centrist regime headed by Donald Tusk, with a strong commitment to restore Polish democracy.

What lessons can be drawn from all this?

John believes that the best way to respond to Orban’s right-wing populism is by building coalitions for economic populism based on health care, education, taxes, and public spending.

He points to historical examples of this, like the American Farmer-Labor coalition that brought together urban workers, white farmers, and Black sharecroppers and led to the Progressive Movement and the New Deal in the 20th century. Today there’s an urgent need for a new populist movement to attack economic inequality.

John says that defending democracy should itself be a populist cause. In the Orban playbook, the national flag was hijacked by the authoritarian leader. John believes that the flag of American democracy must be reclaimed as a symbol of the rule of law, a society built on human rights and freedoms, and international alliances and humanitarian values.

When these soft-power democratic assets are destroyed, a huge void opens up — to be filled by authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are the ultimate political models for Viktor Orban and Donald Trump.

John urges that we pro-democracy anti-Trumpers move quickly with protests, lawsuits, and loud resistance. He says that those who believe Democrats should just play dead and wait for the 2026 midterm elections are profoundly wrong. Speed is essential.

I was struck by John’s optimism. He believes that the U.S. is better situated than Hungary to resist authoritarianism. We are 30 times bigger and infinitely more diverse, and our diversity is the source of our economic and cultural strength. The U.S. has an enormous and active civil society, a judiciary that remains mostly independent, a free and open if partially captured and manipulated media, and a constitution that guarantees the rights of the people to challenge and change their government.

Trump won less than 50 percent of the vote in last fall’s election, and his approval rating is well below that in recent polls.

National polls show that 70 percent of Americans today see democracy as a core American value. Resistance to the assault on democracy is not only possible, John says, but it’s essential — and it can work, as shown by the growing number of successful lawsuits that have been brought against Trump’s flood of executive decrees and the rising tide of grassroots mobilization by civil society groups across the country who are organizing demonstrations and lobbying legislators to stand up for democracy.

For two and a half centuries, Americans have fought to expand the right to vote, to achieve equal protection, to oppose intolerance and political violence, to gain freedom of speech and religion, to guarantee due process of law.

These goals may now seem to be blocked by Trump, but the U.S. is not Germany in the 1930s nor Hungary in 2025. Americans across the country are beginning to resist. John believes American democracy will emerge stronger for our efforts.

NOW READ: There’s a new dress code in Trump’s DC — and it’s straight out of a dictator’s playbook

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."

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an 2 25

With only a few weeks until Germany’s election, Elon Musk has unambiguously thrown his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a video address to a party rally last week, he appeared to urge Germans to “move on” from any “past guilt” related to the Holocaust.

It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.

Troublingly, the AfD is now firmly entrenched as Germany’s second-most popular political party, behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Like all parties in German elections, however, it cannot win an outright majority. It is also unlikely to be invited to join any ruling coalition that emerges from the February 23 election.

But the AfD’s anti-migrant, anti-government sloganeering has already seriously distorted Germany’s public debate and democratic culture, leaving many to ask whether it even needs to win elections to see its policies implemented.

This was evident following a dramatic week in Germany’s Bundestag.

First, in a radical break with Germany’s political norms, opposition leader Friedrich Merz deliberately drew on the votes of the AfD on Wednesday to ram a radical anti-asylum seeker motion through the parliament.

It was the first time in the history of the Bundestag that a parliamentary majority was reached with the help of the far right. Merz’s action was widely condemned as a “taboo-breaking” step towards legitimising the AfD.

Merz tried to take this a step further with a far-reaching bill to tighten immigration controls on Friday. Although the bill narrowly failed, all of the AfD voted with Merz. Twelve members of his own CDU party refused to back him.

Merz’s courting of the far right is widely seen as politically unnecessary, given his conservative CDU is already leading the national polls, making him the favourite to succeed the Social Democratic Party (SDP)‘s Olaf Scholz as chancellor.

This raises a couple crucial questions heading into the election. Is it insiders or outsiders that are playing the biggest role in bringing the far right into the mainstream? And just how big a role will the AfD play after the election?

The Musk effect

Musk’s embrace of the AfD should come as no surprise, given the integral part he played in Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States. In the German context, however, his behaviour and statements have taken on darker hues.

Germans know only too well what is at stake when democracy is eroded by those who abuse its freedoms to attack it. Had Musk’s now notorious Nazi salutes following Trump’s inauguration been performed in Berlin, for example, he might have faced up to three years in prison.

The catchphrase “never again” has underpinned German politics since the second world war. Yet, the response to Musk’s recent provocations was oddly muted in some sections of the German media.

The German tabloid Bild made embarrassing excuses for his Hitlerian salute, while others spoke vaguely of a “questionable gesture”.

With a few notable exceptions, it was left to activists to remind Germans of the severity of this gesture – projecting an image of Musk’s salute on a German Tesla plant, alongside the word “heil”.

Given the seriousness with which Germany patrols representations of its Nazi past, it was surprising just how few journalists were prepared to state without equivocation that “a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute”.

Merz’s embrace of the far right

Initially, there were some signs Germany’s main political leaders would decry Musk’s attempts to normalise far-right politics in the country.

When Musk called the AfD the “last spark of hope” in December, both Scholz and Merz quickly condemned his meddling.

Scholz has continued to label Musk’s blatant attempts to influence German politics as “unacceptable” and “disgusting”.

Merz claims to be keeping his distance from Musk. But it appears his strategy for winning the election is not far from what Musk is suggesting – mimicking AfD policies and collaborating with the party on anti-immigration votes.

In his most radical break with the centrism that characterised the CDU under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz cracked the “firewall” against working with the far-right this week. Knowing just what it meant, he used the AfD’s support to pass the starkly worded nationalist border protection motion in the Bundestag.

The AfD publicly celebrated their good fortune, calling it a “historic day for Germany”.

Democratic party leaders, meanwhile, registered their shock and dismay. Merkel herself spoke out against Merz, saying it was “wrong” to “knowingly” work with the AfD.

Her intervention appears to have been critical to the immigration bill failing on Friday, with many of her former supporters in the CDU withholding their votes.

What AfD’s rise could mean

Given the two votes in the past week and Musk’s high-profile intervention, many in Germany now fear a CDU victory in the election could signal more collaboration with the AfD.

The Left Party has as an AfD puppet and demanded Musk be forbidden from entering Germany.

The Greens’ Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor, has said Merz’s nationalist coalition would “destroy Europe”. He has also warned Musk to keep his “hands off our democracy”, prompting Musk to label Habeck “a traitor to the German people”.

Musk is by no means the cause of the AfD’s popularity, but his embrace of the extremist party has given it a global profile and credibility in circles that might not have otherwise considered supporting it.

Musk has been a controversial figure in Germany ever since his Tesla “gigafactory” arrived in Brandenburg and was promptly accused of felling 500,000 trees and irreparably damaging precious groundwater reserves. Accusations of Tesla breaching German labour laws and even conducting surprise checks on sick workers have also not endeared him to progressive Germans.

As some commentators have suggested, it is probably not coincidental the AfD’s plans for the German economy would benefit Musk’s business interests. Economic self-interest alone seems insufficient, however, to explain why Musk has gravitated to the extreme right.

The same might be said of Merz. Electoral calculations alone cannot explain his risky courting of the far right. He has long been the frontrunner to win the next election. Cosying up to the AfD will only make it harder to form a coalition with either Scholz’s Social Democratic Party or the Greens.

If these two parties refuse to deal with Merz, the only other bloc large enough to deliver his party control of the government would be the AfD. Would he go so far?

Whether it is formally part of the next government or not, the AfD and its camp followers (such as Musk) could be set to have a much bigger influence on German politics. How this will change Germany in the long term remains to be seen.

Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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POST MUSK?

AN 1 25

JD Vance schooled by German ambassador over defense of far-right 'Nazi-Lite' party

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an 12 24

Tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker on Friday afternoon who accused him of "endorsing a neo-Nazi party."

Following Trump's win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Musk has recently tried to use his influence to tilt Germany’s election, endorsing on his platform, X, the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. Musk wrote Thursday night, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

He shared his comment while resharing a post from far-right influencer, Naomi Seibt, who said Germany’s "presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example."

Seibt has pushed white nationalist ideology, according to The Guardian. She has also denied that climate change is largely driven by fossil fuels.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) slammed Musk on his platform.

"The AfD's mission is to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi movement. One leader's license plate is an open tribute to Hitler. A top AfD official said about migrants, 'We can always shoot them later...or gas them.' Another described Judaism as the 'inner enemy' in Germany," wrote Murphy.

Speaking with CNN anchor Dana Bash, Murphy railed that Musk's behavior is "not normal."

"AfD is essentially a neo-Nazi party in Germany," he said. "They exist to essentially rehabilitate the image of the Nazi Party," he said.

ALSO READ:New Trump foreign affairs pick has history of forging ties with right-wing authoritarians

The party has "all sorts of very dangerous ideas about ridding Germany of anyone that is not naturally born in that country," Murphy added. "They are an extremist group and it is just extraordinary that maybe the most important adviser to the United States, somebody that has been parading around the halls of Congress as a key adviser to the president is endorsing a neo-Nazi party inside of Germany."

Murphy warned the consequences could be "catastrophic" if the United States takes the official position in favor of neo-Nazis.

The criticism didn't sit well with Musk, who ripped Murphy on X.

"What a huge liar. The AfD policies are identical to those of the US Democratic Party when Obama took office! I don’t think there is a single difference."

While the AfD doesn't explicitly exhibit characteristics of white nationalism, the party's ideology and rhetoric closely align with far-right and right-wing populist ideologies, including elements of white nationalism.

The party's 2016 manifesto explicitly said, "Islam does not belong to Germany" and it has campaigned on slogans including "Burkas? We’re more into bikinis" and "Our country first!"

Furthermore, party co-chairman Alexander Gauland has talked of fighting an "invasion of foreigners."

Watch Murphy's clip at this link.

===

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2024/12/20/elon-musks-latest-political-move-has-everyone-on-the-left-reaching-for-their-smelling-salts-n2183468

The Five Words Tweeted by Elon Musk That Have the Global Elite Reaching for Their Smelling Salts

By Teri Christoph | 4:25 PM on December 20, 2024The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Elon Musk has done it again.

Fresh off of tweeting the original Continuing Resolution (CR) into oblivion, Musk has now set his sights on Europe, and what he tweeted about Germany has the international community of leftists retreating to their fainting couches and calling Jeeves to bring the smelling salts.

I’ve Got a Question for All Those Democrats Who Are Gnashing Their Teeth Over Elon Musk

Elon Musk Issues Ominous Threat to Any Member Who Votes for the 'Cramnibus'; Vivek Also Weighs In

In response to a video posted to X by Naomi Seibt—a young German YouTuber who is known as the "anti-Greta Thunberg"—in which Seibt calls out Germany's presumptive chancellor Friedrich Merz for not wanting to work with the "Germany First" AfD party, Musk tweeted out five words:

Well, you would have thought he had called for Christmas and Kwanzaa to be canceled and all the gifts to be given to Jewish children based on the tantrums thrown by globalists everywhere. Here's a taste of some worldwide headlines:

"Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’" (The Guardian)

"Backlash builds as Elon Musk endorses Germany’s far right" (Politico EU)

"Anger after Musk backs German far right" (France 24)

Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists (New York Magazine)

They are big, big mad.

The propagandists at NBC had this to say about the endorsement:

Elon Musk waded into Germany’s election Friday, expressing his support for a far-right anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party that's being monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

Sounds like Germany has its very own Deep State, doesn't it?

Let's take a closer look at what Musk is actually endorsing here. Is AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) the second coming of Adolph Hitler (not that the modern-day left would have a problem with that based on their unabashed support of Hamas)?

Here's how AfD describes itself on its official website, under the headline, "COURAGE FOR GERMANY. FREE CITIZENS, NOT SUBJECTS":

We are liberals and conservatives. We are free citizens of our country. We are convinced democrats.

And what does AfD stand for?

As free citizens, we stand up for direct democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law, the social market economy, subsidiarity, federalism, the family and the living tradition of German culture. Because democracy and freedom are based on shared cultural values and historical memories. In the tradition of the two revolutions of 1848 and 1989, with our civil protest we articulate the will to complete national unity in freedom and to create a Europe of sovereign democratic states that are bound together in peace, self-determination and good neighborliness.

We are committed to fundamentally renewing our country in the spirit of freedom and democracy and to restoring these principles. We are open to the world, but we want to be and remain German. We want to permanently preserve human dignity, the family with children, our Western Christian culture, our language and tradition in a peaceful, democratic and sovereign nation state of the German people.

AfD is basically as close to a Germanic MAGA movement as you're going to get. They are Europeans, though, so not as MAGA as they could be, but still, the most promising party to save the country with the largest economy in Europe. You'll notice that the attacks against AfD are the same exact attacks that they've been leveling against Donald Trump for years, and look where that's gotten them.

The worldwide left is running scared at Donald Trump's looming second term, Elon Musk's growing political influence, and the rise of hardline conservative politicians like Giorgia Meloni and Marine LePen. European governments are collapsing at a regular rate, yet the left keeps pushing the same propaganda that saw them soundly defeated in the U.S. on November 5th.

Germany is expected to vote on February 23 to replace the leftist government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz that collapsed earlier this week.

Teri Christoph

Teri Christoph is the author of the Smart Girl Politics meme-letter. Follow her on Twitter or check out her carefully curated meme-posting over on Facebook.

Feel free to hit her up with memes, complaints and the like at teri.christoph@gmail.com.

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an 12 23

the New York Young Republican Club recently held its annual gala in New York's financial district, and former President Donald Trump gave the keynote address with some of the global far right's most notorious political figures in attendance.

According to Talking Points Memo (TPM), the gala's attendees included not just American far-right politicians like Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), but also European right-wing extremists like Austrian politician Gerald Grosz and European Parliament member Susanna Ceccardi, who is from Italy's far-right Lega party. German politician Maximilian Krah — whose party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been criticized as a "neo-Nazi party" — was also at the event.

"Donald Trump rubbing elbows with Nazi-linked groups might be surprising if Trump’s last month wasn’t defined by him parroting Hitler and Mussolini, and promising to rule as a dictator so he can rip away Americans’ freedoms and round up millions of Americans into detention camps," said Ammar Moussa, who is the rapid response director for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign.

"The American people rejected Trump and his MAGA attacks on democracy in 2020, and it’s why he’s going to lose again next November," Moussa added.

Gerald Grosz was initially a member of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, which was founded by Anton Reinthaller — a former Nazi Party leader and SS officer. Grosz and his colleague Jorg Haider, who was the son of a Nazi stormtrooper who praised Adolf Hitler's regime, eventually joined a Freedom Party offshoot. While they all come from different countries, TPM described Grosz, Ceccardi and Krah as comrades-in-arms in movements that are "staunchly nationalist and anti-immigrant" in nature.

Prior to Trump's speech, he was introduced as the "45th, 46th and 47th presidents of the United States," which alludes to Trump's baseless conspiracy theory that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election. Trump doubled down on his "dictator" comments during his speech, repeating that if elected to another term he would assume dictatorial powers on day one of his administration to build a border wall and "drill drill drill."

The New York Young Republican Club's flirting with global far-right figures is in line with how international political scholars have described the modern GOP. In 2019, Harvard University political scientist Pippa Norris surveyed roughly 2,000 political experts around the globe on the authoritarian leanings of various modern far-right parties. She found that the American Republican Party has more in common with authoritarian, fascist-adjacent parties like Turkey's AKP and Hungary's Fidesz than with their counterparts in G7 countries like the Tories in the UK and the conservatives in Canada.

7 23

https://www.rawstory.com/german-far-right-party-afd-scores-another-electoral-victory/

4 23 email

no lnx many vid?

Welcome back to HEATED! Emily here. Arielle and I are in Boise, Idaho today and tomorrow for the Society for Environmental Journalists annual conference, where we’ll be learning about things like how to better use the Freedom of Information Act; how to ethically cover tribal issues; and how to better understand next-gen “clean energy” technologies, among many other things.

This morning, I’m actually attending a panel about the subject of today’s newsletter: Eco-fascism. Unfortunately, it’s a subject that—as you’ll learn today—is only getting more relevant. But I’m eager to gain more perspective to inform my future reporting.

Arielle and I are only able to attend events like these because of our paid subscriber community, which funds 100 percent of everything we do. When you become part of it, you get the piece of mind of knowing you’re not only making our journalism possible, but actually helping us become better, more well-rounded reporters.

If you want to follow along and hear more about what we’re learning in Boise, give Arielle and I a follow over at Substack Notes.

Why U.S. conservatives are flirting with eco-fascism

As we approach Earth Day, it’s worth remembering that not everyone shares the same view of what "environmentalism" means.

EMILY ATKIN

APR 21

Thanos, noted eco-fascist. Source: Marvel Studios

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been trying to get back into a regular practice of monitoring conservative news sites for climate content. So far, I’ve mostly just come across your garden-variety climate denial and fossil fuel talking points.

I recently came across one article, however, that was both alarming and unlike anything I’d ever read. And though I don’t normally like to amplify batshit stuff like this, a prominent researcher on the topic convinced me it was worthy of discussion.

It was an op-ed considering the potential upsides of eco-fascism.

A screenshot of a PJ Media article headlined “‘Eco-Fascism’: Ideological Scourge or Salvation?”

Eco-fascism, for the uninitiated, is best known as the ideology embraced by the mass shooter who killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket last year. The shooter, as E&E News reported at the time, was motivated by “the racist conspiracy theory that the ruling class is using immigration to politically and culturally ‘replace’ white people.”

The Buffalo shooter called on others “to view immigration as ‘environmental warfare,’” and to “reclaim environmentalism in the name of white nationalism.” His calls echoed those of the mass shooter who killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019, who was also a self-proclaimed eco-fascist.

In the aforementioned April 9 op-ed for PJ Media, conservative journalist Ben Bartee condemned these murders. But he also questioned whether the ideology that motivated them “might inject some new, much-needed perspective on the merits of ecological conservation into the zeitgeist.”

HEATED is accountability journalism for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Bartee said conservatives need to embrace environmentalism—but not the climate-focused, social justice-motivated environmentalism of the Left. Liberal environmentalism, he argued, contains no “sincere environmental concern” and is merely a “pretext to shut down industrialized Western economies.”

Eco-fascists, on the other hand, “take their mandate to conserve the natural world from the ravages of humanity’s industrial machinations in a more militant and sincere, if misguided, direction,” Bartee wrote. And while eco-fascism does have some problems, he said, it’s a “smear” to label it racist or white supremacist.

“Some racist mass shooters might nominally be eco-fascists, but not all eco-fascists need necessarily be racist mass shooters,” he said. (Congratulations to anyone who had “Eco-fascists getting the #NotAllMen treatment” on their 2023 bingo card.)

Bartee ended his piece by lamenting that eco-fascism has become “tainted by association” with mass murderers and white supremacists. For that reason, he concluded, the ideology will “forever likely remain on the margins of politics, unembraced by any mainstream movement.”

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric at home

Tucker Carlson says his racism shows he really, truly cares about the environment.

Peter Staudenmaier, a professor of history at Marquette University, has written two books on the history of eco-fascism. He believes Bartee’s op-ed is more than just a fringe news site’s flirtation with eco-fascism, but emblematic of a broader struggle happening within conservative U.S. environmental politics.

“It read to me like a person who's sort of struggling within himself to define his environmental message,” he said. “He does not want to be directly associated with [eco-fascists], because they're terrorists and bombers. But he is drawn to some of those ideas, to some of those forms of environmental thinking.”

This struggle, Staudenmaier argues, is born from U.S. conservatives realizing they need to do more than simply deny and/or ignore climate change. To solve this problem, some U.S. conservatives are going the way of market-based solutions. But others are going the way of nationalist ones.

They’re not all just small op-ed writers like Bartee, either. Here are some examples from the last few months of prominent conservative individuals and organizations spouting fascist-inspired environmental thinking:

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said the government and media don't care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio because the residents are "overwhelmingly white and politically conservative.” He added: “In both cases, had it affected the rich or the favored poor, it would be the lead of every news channel in the world.” (February 2023).

Popular right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk said President Biden does not care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, because it happened primarily to white people. "It's because the war on white people continues,” he said. “Why would you care for the white working class voters in eastern Ohio?" (February 2023).

The House Judiciary Committee tweeted a clip from a hearing, claiming "Illegal immigration damages our ENVIRONMENT every single day." (February 2023).

The Federation for American Immigrant Reform (FAIR) published a blog claiming Biden’s family planning and immigration policies would harm the environment because they would lead to population growth in ecologically sensitive areas. (February 2023).

The conservative Center for Immigration Studies published an article claiming immigration harms the U.S. environment. "One of the problems with bringing in new people is that while their negative impact on the environment is minimal in their home countries, after they arrive they start acting like Americans, driving cars, using fossil fuels, and thus damaging the environment just like Americans do." (December 2022).

The rise of rhetoric like this is why Staudenmaier thinks Republicans may only be a few years behind other countries’ conservative parties that have more openly embraced eco-fascist ideals.

“I can't say for sure, but that's where I think things are trending right now,” he said. “And that's a big deal.”

The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric abroad

A primary example is Germany’s anti-immigrant far-right party, Alternative for Germany. For many years, its environmental politics were similar to the American right-wing: based mostly on climate denial and support for coal.

But after the 2019 elections saw the country’s Green Party surge, the youth wing of AfD recommended moving away from climate denial, noting that climate issues move “more people than we thought.” Instead, they recommended using concerns about the climate and environment to further promote their anti-immigrant rhetoric. This includes instilling more fear about non-white outsiders; linking the preservation of the environment to the preservation of “culture;” and building border walls around their country to keep their environment clean.

Since then, the AfD youth wing’s position “has slowly won out within the party as a whole,” Staudenmaier said. “I think for the next set of elections, it may become the official stance.”

Germany isn’t the only country greenwashing its racist and xenophobic rhetoric in a bid to sway voters. Writing for Dissent, Kate Aronoff noted it happening in France’s far-right National Rally, under Marine Le Pen’s leadership. “Le Pen herself has argued that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist. Those who are ‘nomadic,’ she said, ‘do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.’”

While this global rise in eco-fascist rhetoric is deeply concerning, it’s not inevitable. But the only way to prevent it is to understand its potential power.

“For those of us who are committed environmentalists, we can't get complacent. We can’t simply assume that environmental ideals automatically go hand in hand with a commitment to social justice or equality,” Staudenmaier said. “If we want to see those things go together, then we need to work to make them go together, because it's never going to happen naturally.”

Arielle Samuelson contributed reporting.

ref report cjr

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ecofascists.php

betsy hartmann

last November, Tucker Carlson invited Justin Haskins, the editorial director of the Heartland Institute, to discuss climate change on his popular talk show. The Heartland Institute is a climate-denial think tank, and given Fox News’s penchant for climate misinformation, the appearance of one of its representatives on the channel was hardly surprising. According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group, “The millions of Americans who tune into Fox News are regularly bombarded with messages intended to undermine climate science, cast climate advocates as hysterical and frame climate policy as dangerous and un-American.”

The episode offered something different from Fox’s usual slant, however. Haskins’s rhetoric departed from climate denialism, pure and simple, in favor of blaming immigrants for causing environmental damage—an ideology known as the “greening of hate.” Supposing that climate change really is human-caused, Haskins mused, then why let in all those immigrants from countries like Mexico and Guatemala, where CO2 emissions per person are way lower than in the US? Carlson jumped in: “Isn’t crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn’t want to live?”

Both men were repeating lines of argument routinely deployed by the Tanton network, a collection of more than a dozen anti-immigration groups founded or funded by John Tanton, a wealthy ophthalmologist from Michigan. Tanton, who died last summer, believed that the root cause of environmental destruction is overpopulation by the wrong sorts of people. To protect both nature and the nation, one must preserve white supremacy by keeping immigrants out.

Tanton was a shrewd political operator who, in the seventies, was a leader of the Sierra Club and the Zero Population Growth organization. He was a clever fundraiser, too; over the years he secured generous financial backing fromCordelia Scaife May, an heiress to the Mellon family fortune.With her support, he set up multiple anti-immigration organizations, including the influential Federation for American Immigration Reform, Numbers USA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Tanton lured mainstream environmentalists into the nativist camp by exploiting the public’s fears of overpopulation and environmental doom. He was successful at first, but in the nineties the Tanton network’s attempts to take over the Sierra Club ran up against resistance from a coalition of progressive activists. (Full disclosure: I was part of that coalition.)

The network remained largely off the radar of liberal media outlets until the election of President Donald Trump. A number of top Trump advisers and appointees—Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, and Jeff Sessions, to name a few—have close ties to the Tanton network. So far, the anti-immigrant messages emanating from the White House and right-wing media have leaned on economic and security narratives rather than Tanton’s environmental arguments. But the Carlson-Haskins exchange from November offers a preview of how the political calculus could change.

outright climate denial is falling, even among Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans’ views on climate and energy found that 67 percent of the public thinks that the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. Predictably, 90 percent of Democrats believe this, as opposed to 65 percent of moderate to liberal Republicans and 24 percent of conservative Republicans. But Republicans are also split along generational and gender lines. More than half of millennial and Gen Z Republicans want more government action, compared to less than a third of boomers and those older. And Republican women are significantly more likely to favor climate action than Republican men. As the direct impacts of climate change become ever more apparent in severe heat waves, storms, wildfires, droughts, and coastal flooding, climate denial is likely to become an increasingly hard sell.

The European right is facing similar challenges, and some parties are adapting their positions on climate change. Last spring, the youth wing of Alternative for Germany, the country’s largest ultra-right party, called on its leadership to reexamine climate skepticism after the party received a poor showing in the European Parliament elections compared to the Greens. In Austria, a new coalition government has formed between the conservative People’s Party and the progressive Greens. The People’s Party has pledged to crack down on Muslims and immigrants; it has also committed to the Greens’ goal to make Austria carbon-neutral by 2040.

:{:{If political necessity forces the US Republican Party in this same direction, the Tanton network stands ready to help. Its main think tank, the CIS, served as an important source of immigration-}:

related disinformation for the 2016 Trump campaign. CIS has also carefully cultivated access to the liberal press by cloaking its agenda in the neutral language of research studies and statistics. A study by Define American and the MIT Center for Civic Media found that from 2014 to 2018, more than 90 percent of references to CIS in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today were made “without contextual information as to the nature of the group or its ties to the Trump administration.” In January, the New York Times ran an anti-immigration op-ed written by a member of CIS who identified himself, in the headline, as a “liberal.” It was likely an attempt to spin the organization’s image away from a less favorable label: being named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.}:

how the conservative media treats climate change matters deeply. The views of moderate Republicans who favor bipartisan action on climate change, whether through taxing carbon, investing in alternative energies, or improving infrastructure, warrant far more space than they’re getting in right-wing outlets like Fox and Breitbart as well as in conservative newspapers like the Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, liberal media need to play a much stronger role in educating the public about the key issues and debates that will emerge when the federal government finally gets serious about establishing a national climate policy. Years of climate denial have left the public largely illiterate about the brass tacks of an effective and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.

It’s of equal and vital importance that liberal media expose the influence of the Tanton network. To guarantee close and continuous scrutiny of the network, why not assign reporters to a “Tanton beat”? Only a few days after theTimespublished the CIS op-ed, a Tanton network litigator wrote on the organization’s website that immigration-caused population growth drives carbon emissions, pollution, and destruction of open space in the US. We must correct this narrative rather than giving disinformation a platform.

The environmental stakes are high. The stakes are also high for the safety and security of immigrants. The white-supremacist shooters who went on killing sprees last year in El Paso, Texas, and Christchurch, New Zealand, rationalized their deadly violence against immigrants in part on environmental grounds. “The environment is getting worse by the year,” the El Paso shooter lamented in his manifesto. “Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources.” The Christchurch shooter wrote that he was an ecofascist concerned about the threats of climate change, overpopulation, and immigration: “They are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world.Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.”

As outright climate denial diminishes among conservatives, we can expect the Tanton network to renew its focus on the environment to push anti-immigrant policies—cloaking the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Now is the time to prevent a serious resurgence of the greening of hate.

von storch

Beatrix von Storch is said to have insulted woman as a “Gestapo”

The CDU member Thomas Jarzombek reports on an incident in the Bundestag on Twitter. AfD politician Beatrix von Storch is said to have insulted a woman with a Nazi comparison in an elevator.

The AfD politician Beatrix von Storch is said to have made a bad Nazi comparison in the Bundestag. The CDU MP Thomas Jarzombek reports on Twitter.

There he describes the incident as follows: “Beatrix von Storch is just coming into the elevator on the phone, without a mask over her mouth and nose. A lady asks her to put the mask on correctly. Thereupon she is loudly insulted as ‘Gestapo’. Without words.” When asked by t-online, Jarzombek confirmed the incident. He doesn’t know who the woman was who Storch is said to have insulted.

The “Gestapo” tortured and killed thousands

The abbreviation “Gestapo” stands for “Secret State Police” – the notorious apparatus of terror that the Nazis continued to expand from 1933 onwards. Until 1939 the “Gestapo” was subordinate to Hitler’s deputy Hermann Göring, then it was subordinate to the Reich Security Main Office and thus to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The “Gestapo” was feared for the brutal persecution of opponents of the regime. Between 1933 and 1945, around 15,000 people were interrogated and tortured in the basement of the main building in Berlin, many of whom were then deported to concentration camps and murdered.

Von Storch neither confirmed nor denied the process when asked by t-online. In an email from her office it says: “I reject any trivialization of the ‘Third Reich’.” And further: “Healthy and even tested MPs are prevented from exercising their mandate. Any debate beyond this topic wants to distract from it.”

Von Storch’s family was involved in the Nazi regime

Nazi comparisons – regardless of who uttered them – always aim to defame the political opponent and are considered “murderous arguments”. In the case of the MPs von Storch, there is also the fact that her family was an active participant in the Nazi regime and benefited financially from it.

Von Storch’s maternal grandfather, Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, was Reich Finance Minister from 1932 to 1945. Because of the “Aryanization” of Jewish property by the tax authorities, he was convicted as a war criminal in 1949, but was released from prison in 1951. Von Storch’s paternal grandfather, Nikolaus von Oldenburg, was a member of the NSDAP [nazi party] and SA and maintained close contacts with the regime.

In a letter to SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1941, for example, he asked “whether I will be able to buy larger goods in the east after the end of the war”. Himmler’s prompt reply was positive.

SturmAbteilung (SA) was founded in 1921 under the name Schutz- und Sportabteilungen [Protection and Sport Division]. The SA was a paramilitary organization created to protect the Nazi meetings and disrupt the other parties. The SA grew rapidly in both numbers and power. When the Nazis came to power, [SA Chief] Ernst Röhm demanded that the SA should replace the Army. he was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives

Beatrix Amelie Ehrengard Eilika von Storch , née Duchess of Oldenburg (born May 27,1971 in Lübeck ), is a German politician ( AfD ) and lawyer . She has been the deputy national spokeswoman for her party since December 2019. Since October 2017, she has been one of five deputy parliamentary group chairmen of the AfD parliamentary group and a member of the Bundestag , which she entered in the 2017 federal election via the state list of the AfD Berlin . From 2014 to 2017 she was a Member of the European Parliament and from April 2016 to 2017 member of theright-wing anti-EU group Europe of Freedom and Direct*Democracy*(EFDD). From January 2016 to November 2017 she also acted without legitimacy through a valid election ^[1]^ as one of two state chairmen of the AfD Berlin; since then she has been one of three deputy state chairmen. ^[2] ^^[3] She belongs to the right-wing conservative wing of the party ^[4] within the AfD. She is also anti-Semitism commissioner for the AfD parliamentary group . ^[5]

Together with her husband Sven von Storch , she is active in right-wing political networks , some of which she initiated and controlled herself ; she is considered a lobbyist .

family

Beatrix von Storch came from the house of Oldenburg on her father's side .

parents

She is the eldest daughter of the civil engineer Huno Duke of Oldenburg (* 1940) and his wife Felicitas (* 1941), née Countess Schwerin von Krosigk . ^[6] ^^[7] She grew up with her sister Sophie (* 1972) ^[8]^ in the municipality of Kisdorf in the Schleswig-Holstein district of Segeberg . ^[7]^

grandfathers

Her grandfathers were the last Hereditary Grand Duke Nikolaus von Oldenburg^[9] , a member of the NSDAP and the SA, and Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk , who served as Reich Finance Minister from 1932 to 1945 ^[10]and was convicted as a war criminal in 1949 . ^[11] ^^[12]

husband

She has been married to Sven von Storch since October 2010 . ^[13] ^^[14] The couple have no children. ^[10]^ Frau von Storch is a Protestant .

education and profession

After graduating from Gymnasium Kaltenkirchen in 1990 and training as a bank clerk in Hamburg, she studied law at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg and the University of Lausanne . ^[7]^ She passed the first state law examination in Heidelberg , ^[15]^ the clerkship in Brandenburg . She has lived in Berlin since 1998 . After the second state examination in 2001, she was admitted to the bar and specialized in insolvency law . ^[16]^In 2008 she worked for the commercial law firm Voigt & Scheid Rechtsanwälte^[17] and after its dissolution on January 1, 2009 ^[18]^ in the law firm Voigt Salus . ^[19]^ In 2011, according to a Tagesspiegel report, she gave up her job as a lawyer specializing in insolvency law andlived off her savings in order to be able to fully devote herself to her political activities.^[10]

Networking activities and lobbying

Von Storch has been politically active since the mid-1990s. To influence politics, she uses a conservative network of associations and initiatives that she and her husband Sven founded and run. These include in particular the Göttingen district , the civil coalition e. V. , the BürgerKonvent and the websites FreieWelt.net and Bundestagen-Check.de . ^[20] ^^[21] [22] She is sometimes perceived in public as a lobbyist .^[23]

Von Storch is the author of the magazine *,*peculiarly free*,* and a member of the Friedrich A. von Hayek Society , which, however, asked her to leave in early 2016. ^[24]

"Göttinger Kreis" and "Alliance for the Rule of Law"

Von Storch is a co-founder of the association Göttinger Kreis – Students for the Rule of Law e. V. , who campaigned for compensation for the expulsions and expropriations through land and industrial reform in the Soviet occupation zone . ^[15] ^^[25] The club organized various events, including with Mikhail **Gorbachev** . ^[26]^ The Alliance for the Rule of Law she leads is also calling for the land reform land to be returned to its previous owners. ^[27]^

Citizens Convention

→ Main article : Citizens Convention

Among other things, Beatrix von Storch was a board member of the non-partisan association Bürgerkonvent together with Vera Lengsfeld .The association was dissolved in May 2015. ^[28] ^^[29] According to the statutes, the aim of the association was "to promote participation in the formation of political will among the population through civic education" and to "improve the future viability of society in Germany and Europe". The leading founding members were the Bonn political scientist Gerd Langguth and the social scientist and publicist Meinhard Miegel .

civil coalition

→ Main article : Civil coalition

Von Storch was a co-founder in 2005 and has since been the first chairwoman, spokeswoman and secretary of the civil coalition e. V. According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , all seven founding members came from their own families, her husband Sven is the second chairman and treasurer. ^[22]^ The association sees itself as an association of citizens who are committed to more civil society commitment and represent their common interests to governments and parliaments. ^[30]^ The blog Die Freie Welt , which is published by her husband Sven and Beatrix von Storch is responsible for public relations, belongs to the network, ^[31]^as well as the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISSB) and the Alliance for the Rule of Law and Family Protection Initiative. ^[32]^

The civil coalition initiated and organized a class action lawsuit by over 5,000 citizens before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against the purchase of government bonds from indebted EU countries by the European Central Bank (ECB). ^[33]^

In 2012, the Handelsblatt described the civil coalition as a protest company that feels committed to a conservative worldview. ^[34]^

According to an article in Cicero , von Storch plays an important role “in the conservative camp outside the Union ” via theCivilian Coalition – with 14 employees (as of 2013) as the mainstay of the resistance it organizes against the**euro bailout plan** . She has “almost a hundred thousand” supporters. The family protection initiative, which advocates childcare allowance and against same-sex marriage , is also affiliated . ^[35]^ However, this information is repeatedly called into question. According to a report by the daily mirror^the association consists exclusively of family members, the number of supporters is far below the specified mark of 100,000. ^[36]^

According to Andreas Kemper , the civil coalition is "the most politically effective Christian fundamentalist force in the AfD". ^[37]

Accusation of private use of donations

A week before the federal elections in September 2013, the newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that it had documents, statements and affidavits showing that private expenses of the von Storchs were financed by donations from the civil coalition e. V. would suggest. According to this, Sven von Storch withdrew 98,000 euros in cash in seven equal tranches from a club account within a few weeks in 2012, for whose whereabouts there is no evidence. In addition, several electricity bills for an apartment owned by the Storchs and for "sculptures and garden items" were paid from the association's funds, as was the rent for an apartment on Kurfürstendamm . On a multi-week Chiletrip, Sven von Storch, who was born there, also withdrew 10,000 euros in cash. Fabian Leber commented in the Tagesspiegel: "The piquant thing about it is that, according to the extract from the association register, the board consists only of the von Storch couple - she is chairman and secretary, he is her deputy and cash auditor." ^[38]^

Beatrix von Storch explained her husband's cash withdrawal of 10,000 euros by saying that his bank card did not work abroad. The loan had an interest rate of four percent. ^[39]^ Regarding the whereabouts of the 98,000 euros from 2012, she repeatedly stated that the money had been deposited in a safe deposit box because of the uncertainty on the financial markets and the euro crisis . A notary in Berlin certified this on September 16, 2013: “All the documents are available and will of course be sent to the responsible tax office in the proper and timely manner submitted.” She rejected all “accusations and conjectures” as “unfounded and unfounded” and spoke of “transparent slander” based on the information provided by a former employee who was fired at the beginning of 2013. It is "significant" that this woman is an active FDP member. ^[40] ^^[41]It was a "media campaign". ^[39]^

politics

Von Storch was briefly a member of the FDP in 2011 . ^[42]^ In 2013 she was one of the 68 main signers of the Wahlalternative 2013^[43] ^and ^joined ^the ^Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which was founded in the same year . At the federal party conference of the AfD in July 2015 in Essen , von Storch was elected deputy federal spokeswoman (federal chair). She received 86.7 percent of the votes cast. In January 2016, von Storch was elected state chair of the AfD Berlin by the Berlin state party conference . It received 189 votes to 54, with 22 abstentions. ^[44]^After allegations of fraud due to double voting, notarial recounting ^[45]^ and the determination by two party courts that von Storch was unlawfully in office,a new board of directors was elected in November 2017. By September 2017, von Storch had not complied with the court's request to inform the party members about the invalid election. ^[1]^ Since the federal party conference in December 2017 in Hanover, von Storch has no longer been the deputy federal spokeswoman, but has been an assessor on the fourteen- member federal executive board . ^[46]^ In the 19th German Bundestag von Storch is a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland , as well as a deputy member of Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection.^[47]

At the party conference of the AfD Berlin on March 13, 2021, Beatrix von Storch lost 120 to 122 votes in the fourth ballot in the election for Berlin state chairwoman Kristin Brinker .^[48]

Von Storch opposes an alleged " sexualization of society", represents a conservative approach to gender roles and a traditional family image and rejects same-sex marriage . ^[49] ^^[10] According to her own statement, she was a co-organizer of the “Demo for All” in Stuttgart^[50] ^directed ^against ^the ^education ^plan ^2015 ^[50]^{and took part in the “ March for Life}^ ” demonstration of the life rights movement against abortion and life rights in Berlin in September 2014 assisted suicide .^[51] She opposes the “Do it with me” campaign by theFederal Center for Health Education , which uses posters to promote the use ofcondoms to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Instead, according to Storch, there should be a public campaign for sexualabstinence . ^[52]^

At the AfD party conference in Dresden in April 2021, von Storch opposed a proposal made by the Thuringian AfD state chairman Björn Höcke for the new AfD election program for the 2021 federal election . Höcke and his side of the party (formerly Flügel) had called for a so-called "migration moratorium", which included stopping all immigration, with an initial majority vote of the AfD delegates at the party conference. Von Storch criticized this with the words: "[...] we have just decided that migrants who want to come to us and who bring less than five million euros with them are no longer welcome here. Only with 4.5 million you can't immigrate here anymore!" ^[53]^ For this, von Storch received a reprimand from the executive committee, since she had first reported on the rules of procedure and had used her speaking time for her criticism of Höcke's demand. ^[54]^

Von Storch supports former US President Trump 's claim that his re-election was stolen . Although the Supreme Court dismissed Trump's lawsuit for alleged systemic manipulation, von Storch told ZDFheute that she was "sure that the elections were rigged there, yes". ^[55]^

In July 2021, she met Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo Bolsonaro on a trip abroad. ^[56] [57]

Candidate for the federal election 2013

Von Storch ran for second place on the Berlin state list in the 2013 federal election and as a direct candidate for the Berlin-Mitte federal constituency ; ^[27]^ she received 3.0% of the**first votes** . ^[58]^

During the election campaign, von Storch wrote an open letter to the Catholic Archbishop Robert Zollitsch , in which she opposed so-called gay marriage , presented a conservative family image and accused the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference of abuse of office because of his public warning against the AfD . ^[59]^ Günther Lachmann condemned in the worldthe archbishop's political influence, but described Storch's open letter as unsuitable for politically benefiting from this "slip". The letter was presumptuous in its choice of words and a "doomed to fail attempt to moralize a man of God." Von Storch provided the opponents of her party with arguments that could "bring down" the AfD. ^[60]^

After the election, she employed the state chairman of the AfD Mecklenburg-Vorpommern , Leif-Erik Holm , as office manager in her Berlin office. ^[61] ^^[62] [63]

Candidate for the 2014 European Elections

On January 25, 2014, von Storch was elected fourth place on the list for the 2014 European elections by the federal party conference of the Alternative for Germany in Aschaffenburg with 142 out of 282 votes . ^[64]^ According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , von Storch was said to have been supported in this election by the party's internal group ,Christians in the Alternative for Germany . calls for a ban on abortion andeuthanasia and rejects equality forsame-sex partnerships .^[22] ^Prior to this nomination, von Storch haddenounced the alleged power of a so-called gay lobby, according to reports in Spiegel and taz .^[65]

Member of the European Parliament

Beatrix von Storch in the European Parliament (2014)

In the European elections in Germany in 2014 , she was elected a member of the European Parliament as an AfD candidate . ^[66]^ There she was a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) and alternate on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON). She was also a member of the delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee (D-CL) and the delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (DLAT). In 2014, she ran unsuccessfully for the post of Vice Chair of the Women's Committee.^[67]She was Parliamentary Secretary until May 2015. ^[68]^ With her election to the Bundestag in November 2017, von Storch relinquished her membership of the European Parliament toJörg Meuthen . ^[69]^

Statements on the refugee situation in 2016 – use of firearms against refugees

In the refugee debate, von Storch explained in a Facebook post at the end of January 2016 that people entering Germany via Austria had no right to asylum under Section 18, Paragraph 2 of the Asylum Act and should therefore be refused entry. Referring to Section 11 of the Act on Direct Compulsion (UZwG), she concluded: "And if [they] do not accept the STOP at the border, the law enforcement officers in the border service can also use firearms against people." When asked, she wanted it too Do not exclude women and children. ^[70]^After criticism, she exempted children, but not women, from her claim; the use of firearms against children is "correctly not permitted". Her statement, as well as a similar statement by Frauke Petry , was heavily criticized by politicians from all other parties, by society representatives and in the media, and was rejected by**the police union** . ^[71] ^^[72] [73]

In response to criticism from members of the AfD federal executive board, who, according to Der Spiegel , criticized Petry's and Storch's statements as a "tactical mistake, like revealing the right attitude at the wrong time", von Storch told party friends that she had "screwed up" and Petry "just want to help". Her statement that the contribution was a "technical error" that she "slipped" on her computer mouse ^[74]^ caused scorn and ridicule on the Internet. On Facebook , von Storch denied that she had never said "the story with the mouse" and that it was "simply too stupid". ^[75]^

According to constitutional law expert Christoph Schönberger , the use of firearms by police officers at the border is "at best theoretically" conceivable. The use of firearms is disproportionate if an unarmed, non-aggressive person is trying to enter the Federal Republic. The law has in mind the constellation that a person systematically evades control. This applies in particular to criminals or drug-related crime. Merely protecting the external border from a refugee entering the country is by no means enough to justify the use of firearms. ^[76]^

In May 2016, the Bild newspaper reported that von Storch was under police protection because of death threats against her . ^[77]^

Expulsion from the European party ECPM and change of faction

Von Storch has been an individual member of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) party since July 2014 . According to a report by the Reformatorisch Dagblad , the ECPM board expelled von Storch from the party in March 2016, citing her comments on the use of firearms at the border against women and children and her contacts with the FPÖ as reasons . ^[78]^

An expulsion from the parliamentary group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) ^[79]^ was forestalled by Storch by leaving. On April 8, 2016, she joined the right-wing populist group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD). ^[80]

Entry into the 19th German Bundestag

For the 2017 federal election , Storch ran in the Berlin-Mitte constituency , where she came fifth among direct candidates with7.9% of the first votes, and entered the 19th German Bundestag via the state list of the AfD Berlin .

On October 5, 2017, she was elected one of five deputy chairmen of the AfD parliamentary group. ^[81]^

Reports by the Cologne police and others on suspicion of incitement to hatred

On the occasion of the New Year's Eve celebrations in 2017, the police in Cologne wished all citizens a happy new year via Twitter .Four tweets with identical content were published in German, English, French and Arabic (in this order). ^[82]^ Beatrix von Storch commented under the tweet with an Arabic New Year's wish:

"What the hell is going on in this country? Why is an official police website from North Rhine-Westphalia tweeting in Arabic. Do you mean to soothe the barbaric, Muslim, gang-raping hordes of men like that?”

– Beatrix von Storch : Twitter, January 1, 2018 ^[83]^

The Cologne police then filed a criminal complaint against Beatrix von Storch on suspicion of incitement to hatred ( section 130 of the Criminal Code [StGB]). ^[84]^ The public prosecutor 's office received "several hundred" further criminal charges against von Storch. ^[85]^ Twitter deleted the tweet for violating the company's hate content rules. She then repeated her Twitter post and posted the content on Facebook , adding that "with regard to Muslims , she only means those for whom the state has set up shelters for women". ^[86]^The AfD related the blocking of the Twitter account to the Network Enforcement Act, which came into full effect on the same day. ^[85]^ According to the legal scholar Matthias Jahn , the tweet did not constitute a crime of incitement to hatred. He argued that the lawyer and AfD MPs are deliberately pushing the limits of what is permissible. ^[87]^ The public prosecutor's office in Berlin dropped the investigation in mid-February 2018. ^[88]^ For the Germanist Heinrich Detering von Storch inserted the "Muslim" between "barbaric" and "gang rape" "as naturally as if it belonged to the same conceptual field". ^[89]^

defense of Constitution

Five quotes from Storchs were part of a justification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in January 2019, based on statements by 50 AfD officials , that there were “evidence for a policy by the AfD that was directed against the free democratic basic order ”.In particular, von Storch is quoted as describing an alleged connection between an Islamic upbringing and an increased willingness to use violence, calls for “anti - Shariah legislation” and blanket surveillance of mosques, generalizing that Muslims cannot be integrated into western societies, and equating the political system of the Federal Republic with developments in the Nazi state. The BfV sees indications of a violation of human dignity in accordance with Art. 1 GG , of religious freedom in accordance with Art. 4 GG , demands for the alignment of trade or action of the protection of the constitution not with law and order, but with political guidelines as well as such a disparagement of the political conditions, that indications of efforts against the principle of democracy can be assumed. ^[90]^ Eight months later , a working group set up by the AfD under Roland Hartwig also came to the conclusion that "eight clues would have been listed by the office in a comprehensible manner", including allegations against von Storch. ^[91]^

Political classification by political scientists and journalists

Von Storch is attributed to the right-wing conservative wing of the party. Oskar Niedermayer described her as an “ arch-conservative ” in the inner-party spectrum of the AfD in the area of family and gender politics. ^[92]^ David Bebnowski from the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research described von Storch as “ reactionary ”. ^[93]^ She is "the radical force for the radical Christian-conservative concerns" of the AfD, stands for "restorative demands" and is considered a "representative" of a "'classic' family model[s]", a "militant anti-communism" and one "nationalistic patriotism". ^[94]^ Alexander Haeuslerconfirms von Storch's "nationalistic understanding of democracy". ^[95]^

For Kathrin Haimerl, news editor at Süddeutsche.de , the AfD with the "ultra-conservative" Storch "will be able to connect to the extreme right-hand edge of the political spectrum of opinion". ^[96]^

controversies

Legal dispute with the Berlin Schaubühne

On December 15, 2015, the Berlin Regional Court dismissed Storchs and Hedwig von Beverfoerdes ' motions for an injunction to prohibit the Berlin Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz from using portrait photographs of them in Falk Richter 's playFEAR . "Richter's characters," wrote Daniel Müller in DIE ZEIT , "have terrifying visions in FEAR, fall into feverish nightmares, scream, grunt, suffer. In the background, images of lazy-toothed, blood-thirsty zombies flicker across the stage incessantly, including portraits of Beate Zschäpe and […] also countered by Beatrix von Storch and […] Hedwig von Beverfoerde.” ^[97]^ However, the court saw no encroachment on human dignity and no serious violation of personality either . Equality with mass murderers like the right-wing terrorist Breivik or neo-Nazis does not result from the use of the portraits. Insofar as the personal rights of the applicants pursuant to Art. 2 Para. 1 of the Basic Law are violated by the play - even if not in a particularly serious manner - the right to artistic freedom pursuant to Art. 5 appliesParagraph 3 of the Basic Law. In the context of the balancing to be made, artistic freedom takes precedence. ^[98]^

Attack against VfL Osnabrück

In the spring of 2018, Beatrix von Storch attacked the third division football club VfL Osnabrück for a campaign “against the right ” with the words “Dear Honks from VfL Osnabrück, can you clarify something? Who or what exactly is 'right'? And when exactly do you stand up against ' Links '?” The club replied with the words “Thank you for the reaction, Beatrix von Storch, we seem to have struck a chord. We take your insult and the content of your tweet as a compliment and feel confirmed in our position.” ^[99]^ According to the association, “against the right” stands for a sign against all kinds of extremism , among other things. VfL Osnabrück also agreed that Storch would send a jersey for the campaign if he could identify himself with the values. ^[99]^

Tweet on the occasion of the rampage in Münster on April 7, 2018

In a Twitter post on April 7, 2018, von Storch described the German perpetrator Jens R. of the rampage in Münster as an "imitator of Islamic terror ". Previously, before it was clear who was responsible for the crime, she had tweeted the Merkel quote " We can do it " in capital letters with an angry emoticon , thus linking the crime to refugee policy. ^[100]^ Four people were killed and numerous others injured in the rampage. ^[101]The Secretary General of the CSU ,Markus Blume , then asked von Storch to give up her Bundestag mandate. ^[102]^The AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen also criticized her. ^[100] Four days later, von Storch apologized. ^[103] [104]

Bundestag speech of February 17, 2022

In the Bundestag debate on International Women's Day 2022, von Storch criticized "almost all" members of parliament as supporters of a gender ideology. In this context, she described the member of the Bundestag Tessa Ganserer biologically and legally as a man. If she's "wearing a skirt, lipstick, heels, that's totally fine." But the fact that Ganserer got into the Bundestag via the women's quota of the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen party and is listed as a woman is illegal. Katrin Göring-Eckardt , Vice-President of the Bundestag, demanded that Beatrix von Storch show respect for "colleague Tessa Ganserer". Britta Hasselmann, parliamentary group leader of the Greens, called von Storch's statements "vile, bottomless, [...] homophobic and deeply inhuman". Karl Lauterbach , Federal Minister of Health (SPD), called von Storch's contribution to the debate "a disgrace" in a comment on Twitter. "All parties except the AfD oppose the inhuman speech". ^[105]^

writings

with Sven von Storch, Botho Graf zu Eulenburg: Göttingen circle - students for the rule of law e. V. In: Bruno J. Sobotka (ed.): Ban on Compensation? The expropriations in the former Soviet Zone between 1945 and 1949 . Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-7758-1369-1 , pp. 610–613.

literature

Helene Walterskirchen : Aristocrats. Life between tradition and modernity. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-8000-3778-5 , pp. 121-130 (interview).
David Bebnowski: Beatrix von Storch: Restorative Networker . In: The Alternative for Germany. Rise and social representation of a right-wing populist party . Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-08285-7 , pp. 25-27.

web links

Commons : Beatrix von Storch - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Beatrix von Storch in the European Parliament 's Members' Database
Biography at the German Bundestag
Beatrix von Storch on parliamentwatch.de
Beatrix von Storch in the Munzinger Archive , retrieved on July 8, 2020 ( beginning of article freely available)
home page
Profile on the party's website
*Beatrice of Stork.*In :Lobbypedia.de
interview

portraits

Constantin Magnis: *Your main job is protest.*In: Cicero , June 12, 2013.
Antje Sirleschtov: "Unacceptable burdens for citizens".In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 7, 2013.

itemizations

Sven von Storch (born December 23,1970 in Osorno , Chile ) is a German-Chilean merchant . With his wife Beatrix von Storch he heads various political networks close to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) .

Sven von Storch's father relocated to Chile after World War II after the Storch family's estate in Parchow , Rostock district in Mecklenburg , in what was then the Soviet occupation zone , was expropriated. He built a new life as a farmer in Chile and found his wife there, who was also from Germany. Sven von Storch grew up in Chile as one of four sons and received his schooling there. In the eleventh grade he attended a school in Germany. After graduating from high school in Chile, Sven von Storch came to Germany to study business administration and has lived in Germany ever since. He completed his studies asDiplom-Kaufmann . After the fall of communism in the GDR , his brother Thomas bought back what had previously been his grandparents' property in Mecklenburg from the German state. This brother died in a plane crash in 2004. ^[1] ^^[2] [3]

During his studies, Sven von Storch met his future wife around 1993; they married in October 2010 ^[1]^ and live together in Berlin .

Political activities [

The first project together with his later wife was the founding of the Association of Göttingen Students for the Rule of Law . He protested against the Kohl government's refusal to return the property of the landowners expropriated in the Soviet occupation zone between 1945 and 1949. ^[4]^ The two later founded the association "Alliance for the Rule of Law", which campaigned against the recognition of expropriations by the land reform carried out in the Soviet occupation zone by the then federal government under Helmut Kohl . ^[5]^

According to Alexander Häusler , Beatrix and Sven von Storch run a campaign network in the background of the AfD, which has a pool of clubs and websites for which Sven von Storch is responsible. ^[6] ^^[7] [8]

The Civil Coalition e. V
The Civil Alliance e. V ^[9]^
The Institute for Strategic Studies Berlin (ISSB) e. V
The website “Demo für Alle” which mobilizes against sex education and equality for homosexual partnerships. ^[10]^
The "Family Protection" website, which i.a. conducted a smear campaign against the Greens in the 2021 federal election campaign. ^[11]

The civil coalition association runs the projects eurocheck.de (now removed), parliamentarians-check.de, “Initiative Familienschutz” and “Decision for Life”, which are also managed by Sven von Storch. These serve to present the political positions of the AfD, such as the rejection of the Renewable Energy Sources Act and gender mainstreaming , but do not claim to be directly connected to the party. ^[4]^ Sven von Storch is the editor of the internet blog Die Freie Welt .

Media reports :{ :(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit| edit source:{]}:

Media such as Die Welt and Der Spiegel reported that Sven von Storch was accused of having withdrawn a total of 98,000 euros from the civil coalition association account for private purposes . The Storch couple explained that the money was in a safe deposit box belonging to the civil coalition in Berlin in order to ensure the association's liquidity even in the event of a bank run . ^[7]^

denial 2019 madrid: Wolfgang Mueller, General Secretary of the Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), a climate science denial group that has worked closely with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and Samantha Mathew from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), are also on the CEI list.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) & Heartland Institute Connections

In May 2019, Spiegel reported EIKE was working closely with the right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Spiegel notes that “EIKE is not a scientific institute, but merely an association. There are no legal restrictions on the term ‘institute.’” [244]

“On its website, the group argues that climate policy is a ‘pretense’ for leaders to ‘control the economy and the population’ and to “burden people with taxes,” Spiegel ads. “It tries to stir up hatred against the ‘Friday for Future’ demonstrations and against Greta Thunberg, who some EIKE members refer to as ‘Greta Tuna’ or that ‘climate protection hussy.’ As far as institutes go, this one only seems to churn out unsophisticated propaganda.” [244]

Michael Limburg of EIKE claimed by phone that ”EIKE is unaffiliated with any political party.” However, “Limburg himself ran as an AfD candidate in the national election in Gerany and co-wrote a paper for the party’s federal committee on energy policy, which now serves as the basis for the party’s climate policy. EIKE spokesperson Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, a physicist, was invited by the AfD as an expert on multiple occasions.” [244]

Spiegel also highlights EIKE‘s connection to the Heartland Institute, which “which provides EIKE with support at conferences.” When asked about the ties to Heartland, Limburg confirmed thatEIKE was “loosely connected” to both Heartland and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Both groups have recieved significant funding from both the oil industry (over $500,000 apiece from ExxonMobil) and right-wing foundations like the Mercers and Koch Family Foundations. [244]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-report-shows-the-disturbing-love-for-trump-among-germanys-far-right-groups

...Bennhold points out that although Trump is “deeply unpopular among a broad majority of Germans,” the German far right is a major exception and admires his “unvarnished nationalism and tolerance of white supremacists, coupled with his skepticism of the pandemic’s dangers.” To make matters worse, the extremist QAnon cult has been gaining German converts.

“In Germany, as in the United States, Mr. Trump has become an inspiration to these fringe groups,” Bennhold observes. “Among them are not only long-established hard-right and neo-Nazi movements, but also, now followers of QAnon — the internet conspiracy theory popular among some of Mr. Trump’s supporters in the United States that hails him as a hero and liberator. Germany’s QAnon community, barely existent when the pandemic first hit in March, may now be the biggest outside the United States along with Britain, analysts who track its most popular online channels say.”

Matthias Quent, director of Germany’s Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (das Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft in German) told the Times that Germany is seeing the “Trumpification of the German far right.”

“Trump has managed to attract different milieus, and that’s what we’re seeing here, too,” Quent observed. “We have everything from anti-vaxxers to neo-Nazis marching against corona measures. The common denominator is that it’s people who are quitting the mainstream, who are raging against the establishment.”

Alernative für Deutschland (AfD) - Germany

Since entering Germany’s parliament two years ago on an anti-Muslim and anti-immigration manifesto, the AfD has embraced climate science denial as a new campaign strategy.

Its election manifesto denies human-induced climate change and claims that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has meant “world food harvests have increased significantly”.

“We doubt that man has significantly influenced or even managed the recent climate change, in particular the current warming. Climate protection policy is therefore a mistake,” the manifesto states.

As such, the AfD rejects “all EU measures that justify the reduction of CO2 emissions with the protection of the climate”, including the Paris Agreement, which it describes as a “shift of funds from the highly industrialized countries to underdeveloped countries”.

Most recently, the AfD has conducted a targeted smear campaigns against the climate school strike movement and the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Climate change barely got a mention on the AfD’s social media channels when the party was founded in 2013. But it mentioned climate change more than 900 times in the past year alone, mainly promoting anti-Thunberg rhetoric, according to a joint investigation by the counter-extremism organisation the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and Greenpeace’s Unearthed.

Party chairman Jörg Meuthen, the lead candidate standing in the election, has repeatedly attacked Green politics and described climate change as “a replacement religion of all left green world parties and patronisers”.

Meuthen repeatedly accused those that want climate action of “Greta hype”, labelling them “CO2 believing disciples”.

Maximilian Krah, another AfD candidate, also targeted Thunberg 10 times in tweets between December 2018 and April 2019, describing the movement she inspired as a “psychosis” and the consequences of a post-Catholic age.

He also compared climate change to homeopathy, claiming the EU could soon declare the latter a science.

Earlier this year, coal miner Guido Reil, also a candidate, defended the party’s false claim that and that it is having no impact on the climate.

The AfD’s anti-climate campaign efforts have been backed by the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), a German-based climate science denial which is known for co-hosting a climate conference with the Heartland Institute, a US-based think tank which has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

EIKE’s advisory board include Christopher Monckton, a former British politician and advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who was later affiliated with Ukip and a notorious climate science denier.

guk

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/28/naomi-seibt-anti-greta-activist-white-nationalist-inspiration

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/23/meet-anti-greta-young-youtuber-campaigning-against-climate-alarmism/

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Climate and Environment

The anti-Greta: A conservative think tank takes on the global phenomenon

How a group allied with the Trump administration is paying a German teen to question established climate science.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg. (Sebastien Van Malleghem for TheWashington Post)

Desmond Butler and

Juliet Eilperin

Feb. 23, 2020

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes it’s found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces “climate alarmism,” calls climate consciousness “a despicably anti-human ideology,” and has even deployed Greta’s now famous “How dare you?” line to take on the mainstream German media.

“She’s a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism,” said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago that has the ear of the Trump administration.

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as “the star” of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust?” asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the youngest to ever win the honor.

The teenager has called on the nations of the world to cut their total carbon output by at least half over the next decade, saying that if they don’t, “then there will be horrible consequences.”

“I want you to panic,” she told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

Naomi, for her part, argues that these predictions of dire consequences are exaggerated. In a video posted on Heartland’s website, she gazes into the camera and says, “I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”

Graham Brookie directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council that works to identify and expose disinformation. While the campaign “is not outright disinformation,” Brookie said in an email, it “does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

Brookie added: “The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.”

Naomi said her political activism was sparked a few years ago when she began asking questions in school about Germany’s liberal immigration policies. She said the backlash from teachers and other students hardened her skepticism about mainstream German thinking. More recently, she said that watching young people joining weekly “Fridays For Future” protests inspired by Greta helped spur her opposition to climate change activism.

“I get chills when I see those young people, especially at Fridays for Future. They are screaming and shouting and they’re generally terrified,” she said in an interview. “They don’t want the world to end.”

Naomi said she does not dispute that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, but she argues that many scientists and activists have overstated their impact.

“I don’t want to get people to stop believing in man-made climate change, not at all,” she said. “Are manmade CO2 emissions having that much impact on the climate? I think that’s ridiculous to believe.”

Naomi argues that other factors, such as solar energy, play a role — though the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth has actually declined since the 1970s, according to federal measurements. A slew of peer-reviewed reports, from scientific bodies in the U.S. and elsewhere, have concluded that greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century, producing a range of devastating effects from massive marine die-offs in South America to severe wildfires in Australia and sinking ground in the Arctic.

In addition to climate change, Naomi echoes far-right skepticism about feminism and immigration. The German media have described her as sympathetic to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), the biggest opposition party in parliament, whose leaders have spoken of fighting “an invasion of foreigners.” Naomi says she is not a member of AfD — she describes herself as libertarian — but acknowledges speaking at a recent AfD event.

Her path to Heartland began in November with a speech at EIKE, a Munich think tank whose vice president is a prominent AfD politician. By then, Naomi was already active on YouTube, producing videos on topics ranging from migration to feminism to climate change. In the audience was Heartland’s Taylor. He said he immediately recognized her potential and approached her about working with Heartland.

Founded in 1984 and funded largely by anonymous donors, Heartland has increasingly focused on climate change over the past decade. Its staff and researchers enjoy ready access to the Trump administration, and one of its senior fellows, William Happer, served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council between September 2018 and 2019.

An emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, Happer has repeatedly argued that carbon emissions should be viewed as beneficial to society — not a pollutant that drives global warming. During his time with the Trump administration, he sought to enlist Heartland’s help in promoting his ideas and objected to a U.S. intelligence official’s finding that climate impacts could be “possibly catastrophic,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Why would an American think tank want to get involved in German politics? Because it worries that Berlin’s strong stance on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions could be contagious, according to a recent investigation aired on German television.

For two decades, Germany has been a leader in pressing other nations to curb carbon output and shift to renewable energy. Though it is falling short of its ambitious goals, Germany has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions this year by 40 percent compared to 1990 — and by up to 95 percent by mid-century.

In December, during the Madrid climate conference, two undercover staffers from the nonprofit investigative newsroom CORRECTIV approached Taylor and claimed to work for a wealthy donor from the auto industry who wanted to give Heartland a half-million euros. Taylor took the bait, and followed up with a three-page proposal outlining a campaign to push back against German efforts to regulate emissions.

“These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary,” says the document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. “Worse, other nations — including the United States and European Union nations — are increasingly being influenced by unwise German policy.”

The proposal described Naomi as “the star” of a “Climate Reality Forum” organized by Heartland during the Madrid talks. With “over 100,000 people viewing her talk on climate realism,” the proposal said, Naomi was well-positioned to fight German climate policies.

“Funding for our Germany Environmental Issues project will enable Heartland to provide Naomi with the equipment and the sources she needs to present a series of effective videos calling attention to the negative impacts of overreaching environmental regulations,” the proposal says.

CORRECTIV aired its report on Heartland earlier this month on German TV. Taylor dismissed the report, saying, “Heck, I would have spoken with them if they told us who they were, and the answers would have been pretty much the same.”

The investigators filmed Naomi at a public event, posing as would-be donors. She struck back with her own video response. Invoking Greta, she said, “To the media, I have a few last words: How dare you?"

Greta Thunberg confronts world leaders at the U.N. climatre summit: 'How dare you?'

Despite echoes of Greta’s style, Naomi has objected to the comparison.

“The reason I don’t like the term anti-Greta is that it suggests I myself am an indoctrinated puppet, I guess, for the other side,” she says in one video. Asked if she meant that as a criticism of Greta, Naomi says: “That sounds kind of mean, actually.” She added: “I don’t want to shame her in any way.”

Taylor said the tendency to associate Naomi with Greta is “kind of natural” — and benefits Heartland’s message.

“To the extent that Naomi is pretty much the same, just with a different perspective, yeah, I think that it’s good that people will look at the two as similar in many ways,” he said.

Still, Naomi has a long climb to reach the level of global attention lavished on Greta. While Greta measures her social media following in the millions, Naomi counts slightly under 50,000 YouTube subscribers.

Through her spokespeople, Greta declined to comment.

https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories-en/2020/02/11/the-heartland-lobby/

ref

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A joint investigation from CORRECTIV and Frontal21 reveals how the American Heartland Institute is supporting climate change deniers in Germany with the goal of undermining climate protection measures. We went undercover to meet with the institute’s chief strategist. He told us how the network of climate change deniers works, how donations are disguised and how they intend to use a German YouTuber affiliated with the AfD to reach young people. In the end, he made us a concrete offer.

Shortly before the crucial conversation, shortly before Heartland’s chief strategist tells us how it’s all orchestrated, we sit together, some enjoying steaks. The German lobbyist and YouTuber, Heartland’s chief strategist from America, a British lord and Trump’s former security advisor are all present.

It’s the evening of Dec. 3, 2019. The location: Madrid, in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel. Gray marble flooring, expensive furniture high columns. A few kilometers away, heads of states and governments are negotiating at the World Climate Conference on how the global rise in temperature can be curbed.

We are tracking an international network of climate change deniers, ranging from conservative American billionaires to the German AfD. We want to understand their links and strategies. We tried to get the information by going through the normal channels, but we failed. There was only one way to get into the inner circle: We had to go undercover. That’s why we’re sitting at this table – and that’s why we’re nervous.

We keep checking the hidden cameras, one of them in Katarina’s pen, which she’s wearing on her conference blazer. We try to keep the cameras stable while acting naturally and making small talk.

The people around the table consider the negotiations at the Climate Conference nonsense – yet they have come to Madrid to meet in the shadows of the World Climate Conference with an international lobby of climate change deniers .

Their goal: to spread doubt about human responsibility for current global warming. Their opponents are anyone who recognize this responsibility: politicians, activists, journalists and climate researchers.

CORRECTIV reporters Jean and Katarina are not at the table. Instead, meet Mathias and Karina, two public relations consultants who work for a strategic communications agency in Berlin. We pretend to probe for potential donor opportunities for our clients in the automotive industry and energy sector, who want to anonymously support the work of climate deniers with money. Big money.

The New Right, particularly theAfD, put the fight against climate protection high on their agenda last year. They continue to fight against young activists like Greta Thunberg and present themselves as the defender of the diesel car. Former AfD leader Alexander Gauland recently proclaimed that climate change was a new key topic for his party: “Criticism of the so-called climate protection policy is the third major issue for the AfD after the Euro and Immigration”. It is a polarizing topic.

The AfD relies on an international network of climate change deniers. Here, in the hotel lobby, many of the key players have gathered. One of them is EIKE, aopaque German association that provides politicians with arguments against climate protection. We want to learn as much about them as possible, but we can’t be too pushy. We need to play our roles, discreetly and firmly. We can’t get busted.

At some point Mathias gets up and speaks to James Taylor, chief strategist and director of climate policy at the Heartland Institute, a libertarian thinktank based in the US. We suspect many of the threads that we’ve been following will convene at Taylor. If we want to learn how this network spreads doubts about human-induced climate change, we need to talk to him.

Mathias politely asks if he has a moment for a question.

Taylor understands: It’s time for business.

They get up and head to a seating area a few meters away. It’s not completely isolated, but sufficiently enough that nobody can eavesdrop. While walking, Mathias starts to explain:

“I have a client.”

Throughout the next half hour, Taylor shares the inner workings of his disinformation toolbox. He believes that Mathias, the PR agent sitting opposite him, wants to help his clients funnel cash into the intricate network of climate change deniers.

Taylor explains how he is able to raise awareness of topics in exchange for money, how people can make tax-deductible donations anonymously through a U.S. foundation, and how the Institute’s publications mimic the tone of the New York Times so obscure ideas are taken more seriously. He detailed how he intends to make a young YouTuber from Germany the star of climate denier, and how he works closely with German partners whose ideas are consistently cited by the AfD in the Bundestag.

Then a few weeks later, Taylor will send an offer in writing. It is something like a strategy document for a PR campaign in Germany: A campaign that the public will not recognize for what it really is, making it even more effective.

The goal: No more prohibitive climate laws. Diesel instead of electric cars, energy from coal instead of wind turbines, industry growth instead of environmental protection.

The document, a product of our joint investigation with ZDF Frontal21, gives exclusive insight into the million euro business of climate change deniers. It proves how disinformation is professionally scattered around society with the help of supposed experts, corrupt scientists, intentional spin and YouTube.

A Fight

Against Science

There is a worldwide consensus among climate researchers that climate change is largely caused by humans. Hundreds of climate researchers regularly evaluate the current state of scientific knowledge in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their forecasts are conservative, yet dramatic.

Climate change deniers are disputing the results of the IPCC – supposedly based on the same methods. They call themselves “climate skeptics” or “climate realists” and conduct scientific studies to cast doubt on human-induced climate change. They write papers and magazines, organize conferences and dedicate time to lobbying. They are waging an information war to disseminate doubts about human-induced climate change.

If it were up to them, then their self-proclaimed “science“ would be confronting science. Thus, the question of whether human-induced global warming actually exists would be a question of opinion – with good arguments on both sides.

However, hardly any climate researchers or scientists agree with them. The facts speak clearly.

“The communication practiced by the Heartland Institute has nothing to do with science. These are definitely politically motivated statements,” said Kathleen Mar, a scientist at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam.

Throughout the US there is a traditional belief that competition and continued growth are good for the economy. It is a mindset fundamentally intertwined with the rejection of state intervention in such economic matters. Libertarian think tanks like the Heartland Institute — financed by the foundations of wealthy entrepreneurs like the Mercer family and, until a few years ago, the Koch brothers – are founded in this tradition. In Germany, this current of opinion is relatively small. But it is getting louder when it comes to the topic of human-induced climate change.

The AfD is using the frustration over climate policy to gain momentum. It’s a good topic for populist politics, given that policies meant to halt climate change often involve placing restrictions that threaten personal comfort: less driving, less garbage production, less meat consumption, less travel. The AfD is increasingly using the arguments of climate change deniers at the EIKE association by inviting representatives to technical conferences and Bundestag committees. But the spin doctors are somewhere else.

There Is No Other Choice

But To Work Undercover

We wanted to understand the extent of the climate change denial network, exactly how it’s funded, and how it’s members think and work. So we started our investigation by looking into climate change deniers in Germany. We made the decision to go undercover because we believed it was the only way to get authentic insight.CORRECTIV is well known among the German EIKE association, as their publications regularly fail our fact checks– and they frequently publish furious counter-articles. In 2018, a journalist at CORRECTIV was banned from participating in one of EIKE’s conferences when she tried to obtain press credentials. Also that year, the head of EIKE violently threatened a reporter from the ARD magazine, Monitor. We carefully weighed our decision. In the end it was clear to us that we would not get very far following the typical path.

So we built our undercover identities: Karina and Mathias, two PR agents who, on behalf of a client from the automobile industry, wanted to learn how to send money to climate change deniers in Germany –discretely, without attracting attention.

We create a fictional agency called “Faidros”, printed business cards to reinforce our fake identities, got a second pair of cellphones with new numbers and set up a website. We pretended to be experienced consultants who increase public awareness of climate-skeptical arguments on behalf of industrial clients.

Our undercover journey started in Munich. To be able to participate in an EIKE conference as private individuals, we paid 220 euros each to the association. We used PayPal because it allows you to change your name without being immediately exposed by online searches. Then we received an email confirming that the money had arrived and the venue would soon be announced. A cumbersome way to organize a conference.

An Invitation

to Madrid

Munich, late November. The tables are organized in long rows. A desk and a large screen are in front. Roughly 250 people walk through the entrance hall of the closed Munich-Riem Airfield, the so-called Coat of Arms Hall. They are mostly older men, some with doctorates or professorships, many of them already retired. We stand among them, equipped with business cards, wearing conference clothing and hidden cameras. We are significantly younger than the average attendee. Karina is a woman under 30. We stand out.

EIKE’s annual conference had almost been canceled. After protests, the contract between the original hotel and EIKE was terminated. But shortly before the planned start, we received an email with the new venue.

EIKE stands for “Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie” (European Institute for Climate and Energy). Many channels of self-proclaimed “climate realists” meet at this association in Germany, which states on its website that human-induced climate change is a “hoax affecting the general public”.

Like Heartland, the non-profit organization claims to be a scientific think tank and advertises its online studies as “peer reviewed”.

“They take scientific terms and misuse them for political purposes. They are not interested in scientific work at all,” said Potsdam sustainability researcher Mar about the self-appointed climate experts. “I would immediately ask myself who these scientists are, what their qualifications are.”

Holger Thuss, the chairman of EIKE who threatened the Monitor’s reporter last year, kicked off the Munich conference. He set the framework for the conference by saying climate protests have assumed “terrorist proportions”.

Then we saw James Taylor, the chief strategist of the Heartland Institute, for the first time. He went on stage in good spirits to give a lecture. He looks like a company manager, slightly stocky, black hair pulled back, ironed shirt, a smile on his lips. A smart man with a meaty American accent, and an engaging speaker. Standing on the stage, he congratulates everyone for making it to the conference and says that the original hotel’s cancellation is encroachment on freedom of expression.

Taylor is a successful lobbyist and spin doctor who says of himself that he is more libertarian than conservative. He considers hostility to be praise for his work. Taylor also appears frequently on American television, and for some time he wrote a column in Forbes magazine.

For the next two days, the group of almost exclusively white men present scientific-looking graphs, diagrams and tables. There are those who consider themselves to be on the side of science, presenting their methods, explaining, arguing and evaluating series of experiments.

And then there are the conspiracy theorists, the esotericists and the ultra-religious. A man sitting next to us in the audience says it is contempt of God to judge whether something God created is good or bad. He was talking about CO2.

EIKE was founded in 2007 and has close ties to the AfD. Michael Limburg, the organization’s vice-president, is employed by the office of Karsten Hilse, a member of the German Parliament, the Bundestag. He confirmed this to CORRECTIV. Limburg is an AfD member himself, and he participated in drafting of the AfD’s party program on climate policy as well as ran for the Bundestag in 2017 on the Brandenburg state list.

[graf]

The Transatlantic Network Over the past 20 years, the Heartland Institute has received funds from various companies and wealthy families

in the United States for the purpose of denying the climate change. It has also helped EIKE to spread its ideas in Germany.

Police officer Karsten Hilse sits on the environmental committee of the Bundestag on behalf of the AfD. He gave a speech in the Bundestag in March 2018. At the time, while being laughed at by members of other government parties, he declared war on the “false doctrine of human-induced climate change”. A year later, he distributed leaflets that contained a quiz to demonstrators of “Fridays for Future”, who he intended to embarrass.

Hans-Joachim Lüdecke, EIKE’s press officer, wrote an expert statement for the environmental committee at the invitation of the AfD. Now, members of EIKE’s entourage are writing for a new wave of right publications such as “Freie Welt” (Free World). The blog is run by the right-wing association “Zivile Koalition” (Civil Coalition), which is led by the deputy federal spokeswoman for the AfD, Beatrix von Storch.

We asked members of EIKE what kind of relationship the association has with the Heartland Institute. Michael Limburg, EIKE’s Vice-President, answered in writing: “We maintain a good relationship based on similar interests.”

After the conference, we invited Heartland lobbyist Taylor to dinner. We talked about his Institute, which is based in Chicago with just 40 employees.

While making small talk, Taylor explains that he knows how to convince people: “I think I present the actual logic, but people aren’t motivated by an actual logic. So you have to go and argue emotions.”

Things are going smoothly and we indicate our reason for meeting with him without revealing too much. We are successful, too: At the end of the evening we receive an invitation. In 10 days, climate change deniers will meet once again on the sidelines of the World Climate Conference in Madrid. The organizer of the counter-conference is the Heartland Institute.

“Our event will take place on December 3,” said Taylor. “We have eight or nine speakers and a five-hour program.”

The next stop for these consultants from “Faidros”: Madrid.

The Denial Lobbyists

Among Themselves

The “Climate Reality Forum” takes place on the first floor of the Marriott Hotel in Madrid, a small room with suspended ceilings. There are about 20 people, half of whom will give lectures today. Water in tetra packs with an environmental seal are on the tables.

The conference is significantly smaller than the one in Munich. It is shorter, without journalists, and the Heartland Institute does the filming and online streaming itself with two large cameras. The World Climate Conference was originally scheduled to take place in Chile, but a month earlier the Chilean President cancelled it due to protests against social inequality that took place throughout the capital city, Santiago de Chile. Climate change deniers also had to reschedule, rebook flights and hastily organize a new conference.

We met some acquaintances from Munich and greeted each other amicably. “It’s nice to see you again,” said one of the few women in the room. She is a YouTube influencer, 19 years old and blonde. Later on we would learn that she is supposed to become the star of the scene.

One of the speakers is William Happer, professor emeritus of physics and former security advisor to US President Donald Trump. In 2015, a team from Greenpeace, disguised as an oil and gas company, asked Happer to write a scientific paper to prove the benefits of high CO2 emissions for plants. Happer, then a professor at Princeton University, agreed – for an hourly rate of $250.

“I don’t know how far this shrillness will get,” said Happer, visibly aged, in Madrid. “First global warming, then climate change and now climate crisis and climate emergency – what else?”

German climate change deniers are also present. Wolfgang Müller, Secretary General of EIKE, praised the Heartland Institute before his lecture: “Heartland is a paragon in the fight against this climate madness.”

Christopher Monckton, an English lord residing in the Scottish Highlands, speaks later. Monckton advised neoliberal British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s – and does the same today for the British right-wing populist party UKIP. His suggestions include asking to quarantine people who are HIV positive. Monckton is a dazzling character, always polite and eloquent, who happens to also represents some of the crudest beliefs.On stage he pretends to give a speech to country representatives at the World Climate Conference. The delegates, he says, promote a cult of death through their ignorance. “Everything on which this conference in Madrid is based is fundamentally wrong.”

A few hours later, when the conference is over, Lord Monckton sits contentedly at the grand piano in the hotel lobby, playing a few songs. The other speakers sit a few meters away, ordering drinks and snacks to their table.

We sit in between, asking questions, laughing, answering without getting too personal. Secretly, we check the undercover cameras we are carrying with us.

The YouTuber talks about studying economics in Münster: She stopped because the program was too socialist for her. She also says that she is going to work for the Heartland Institute soon.

The YouTuber did not respond to a request for comment after the conversation.

Later at the bar, Karina met Debbie, who introduces herself as a cattle rancher from the States. After a while Debbie pulls a pen out of her pocket and points to the hidden camera at the end. She says she intends to secretly film people at the official UN Climate Conference. “You have no idea about what people will tell you if they don’t know who you are.” The pen is the same model, even the same color as the pen tucked into Karina’s blazer pocket.

The Moment of Truth

Finally, Mathias asks Taylor for a private meeting. This is the moment we have been working for over the past few weeks. Taylor sits relaxed in the armchair, his white shirt unbuttoned at the top, with a glass of red wine in his hand.

Business talk.

From the start, Mathias directs the conversation towards the possibility of donating to groups that deny climate change anonymously. His client, he says, is interested in a long-term investment — but requires that under no circumstances can he be linked to the transactions.

If the donor does not want to be named, there are some groups in the US, Taylor says. “One is Donors Trust.” You can tell them which group the money should go to – Donors Trust will then channel the funds.

Donors Trust’s activities are not illegal, but they do bypass the otherwise quite extensive transparency regulations in the US. Both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Trust are tax-exempt foundations that redistribute corporate donations to conservative and market-liberal think tanks. US tax law requires them to disclose to whom the funds are given. However, they are allowed to keep the name of the donor undisclosed on the grounds of anonymous. In practice, this means oil and coal companies can support anti-climate campaigns via Donors Trust or Donors Capital without having to reveal their financial support.

In the past, big players in the fossil industry like Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers were among Heartland’s major donors — but they withdrew public support a few years ago. We checked this by looking at tax returns, which are largely public in the US.

Now, Donors Trust is now one of the association’s biggest donors. The American magazine “Mother Jones” described Donors Trust in 2013 as a “Black Box ATM”. You could say that the foundation lends its name to the actual donors. Taylor confirmed this during the conversation.

Donors Trust is now directing between two thirds and three quarters of its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions, says Taylor. He sells this as his personal doing.

Soon after, Taylor starts to speak about the German YouTuber sitting at the table a few meters away.

“We’re looking to bring her on board,” says Taylor, pointing in her direction.

Mathias asks: “The young lady?”

“To do some videos for us. Presenting to young people.”

The young influencer is to start forming new groups. She should be a dropout from mainstream society, with whom as many as young people as possible should identify. According to a Facebook post by the Rhineland-Palatinate Association of “Junge Alternative” (Young Alternative), she is a member of the AfD’s youth organization. The AfD and its members regularly distribute her videos. Taylor says the fight against climate protection measures needs a better image, to move away from old white men and instead showcase a younger generation. The YouTuber is going be the new face of the movement. She is Taylor’s media strategy for the masses.

Taylor also knows how to reach those who are not on YouTube but do vote in parliament. For a long time, he published a monthly brochure that the Heartland Institute sent to politicians.

He says it was specifically written “We do it as if it were for The New York Times or any other leftist newspaper.”

He explains that the rule for their editors is to write it as if they were news stories. They cannot write anything that looks like it is opinion. “You present our angle on it, but you do it by who you decide to quote”, he says”.

Taylor’s team uses supposedly journalistic standards to raise doubts about human-induced climate change. What he is not interested is rigor and balance.

And he succeeds at that, or at least that’s what he says. There are people who will realise it is Heartland how is writing these articles, he explains, but others feel it is something they could use, and this is how they get to them.

Taylor repeatedly emphasizes the good work done by EIKE. He says it is amazing what they can do in a year with such a small budget, and claims that the organization has 200,000 euros available. They help each other, he says, by participating in each other’s conferences. Heartland also gave EIKE a small sum of money for the Munich conference in late November. When asked about EIKE’s budget, the organization’s representatives said that their “donation volume” per year is “significantly below the stated amount”.

But whenever Mathias steers the conversation toward our client’s possible investment, Taylor brings his own institution into play — even though Mathias emphasizes several times that the client wants to donate to EIKE because he is mostly concerned about the European market.

“Then he tries to convince me to give my client’s money directly to Heartland, instead of EIKE“, Mathias recalls. Taylor politely adds that EIKE could, of course, use it much better in Europe. Then, a few seconds later, he talks about the benefits of Heartland establishing and disseminating specific information at the request of the client in exchange for money.

A half hour has passed. Taylor and Mathias promise to stay in touch before returning to the other conference goers. Mathias writes down the conversation so he can jog his memory later.

This is far more than we had hoped for. Taylor has given us a deep insight into the business of climate change deniers. We now know about some of the strategies they use to disseminate disinformation.

But we want to have it in writing.

The Phone Call

A few weeks later, we call Taylor for a follow-up. How does Taylor intend to get into business in Germany? Would it even be possible to purchase content as a donor?

We mention our client from the auto industry and bring up the current diesel bans in Germany and the growing popularity of electric cars, which are hurting his business.

Again, Taylor advertises the 19-year-old YouTuber as a promising social media strategy in Germany.

Mathias asks: Can his client decide what she says in her videos?

Taylor hesitates, but doesn’t say no. Of course, she would have to agree with and feel comfortable with what is going to be said. And he’s pretty sure that everyone involved wants the same thing.

Mathias: “Perhaps we could agree on certain buzzwords. Disseminate certain information.”

Taylor: “Absolutely. Key points, keywords, the way to present something.”

Content in exchange for money. It’s like a deal in the advertising industry. The only difference is that the content is political.

Taylor thinks he’s in business with Mathias. Shortly after our phone call, we text Taylor to send us a written offer to convince our client.

He agrees.

Two Hours Later:

The Offer

The document arrives via email, just two hours after our conversation. It’s three pages long, with the title: “Funding Proposal: Germany Environmental Issues”.

In the proposal, Taylor summarizes what we discussed over the phone – and goes into even more detail. He outlines a plan for a possible campaign against climate protection policies in Germany. It’s an immoral offer formulated in the advertising language of a pitch. Recognize the problem, present the solution.

He describes German climate policy as “unwise”.Conventional power plants could be closed and replaced by expensive, unreliable wind turbine systems. Diesel vehicles could be banned. “These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary”, says the proposal. Even worse: Other countries would be negatively impacted by Germany, which is often viewed as a pioneer.

Taylor suggests that the Heartland Institute instead draws attention to projects that “raise German living standards through common-sense environmental stewardship.”

For climate change deniers, this means one thing: As few environmental protection measures as possible.

Taylor uses the same language utilized by Heartland and EIKE, the same language pushed by climate change deniers on social media and also by the AfD in the Bundestag: Climate alarmists are thoughtless and hysterical people who jeopardize economic growth. So, in reaction, they stand up: the climate realists, the only sensible people in the debate.

The central pillar of the German campaign is to be the AfD-affiliated YouTube influencer praised by Taylor in Madrid, “(…) she is eager to direct her viewers to topics on environmental overreach that harm German households,” writes Taylor. The funding will allow Heartland to equip her in such a way that she can produce a series of effective videos.

For the first time, Taylor is also involving staff from his institute. Their titles and degrees are intended to ensure credibility beyond YouTube.

Peter Ferrara, a graduate in economics from Harvard University and former advisor to US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, is to join the team. Ferrara can “(…) research and present important information on the severe economic costs of German environmental restrictions”.

Taylor also has a plan to counter the argument that diesel car emissions are harmful to health.

To tackle this particular issue, he plans to get a physician and a biostatistician in on the plan. The two scientific professionals, Dunn and Milloy,“are two of the science experts Heartland would – if properly funded – like to utilize calling attention to the minimal health impacts of diesel engines, coal power plants, and other conventional energy sources”

Their degrees and job descriptions will give off a supposed level of expertise.

The strategy is similar to the one used by Heartland US. Without mentioning EIKE explicitly, Taylor writes that “Heartland would proactively explore opportunities to galvanize our friends and allies to advocate in conjunction with our Germany Environmental Issues project.“

Taylor proposes two US trusts as payment vehicles, with confidentiality and legality guaranteed: Donors Trust and National Philanthropic Trust. “Donors fund an account with the organization and then direct the organization how it would like to distribute the funds” In exchange: One percent of the donated amount will be debited quarterly.

It is an offer designed to be convincing. And it actually is convincing, because it shows how strategically and discreetly the climate change denier network functions. It establishes topics, tailors communication strategies and offers entire campaigns while granting the donors and masterminds complete anonymity.

After the conversation, we offered the Heartland Institute the possibility to make a statement. However, they did not response to our comment.

The Influencers

Other people in the climate change denier network are, however, in the public eye: young influencers on YouTube as well as older men who present themselves as professionals at conferences, in interviews and in pseudo-scientific discussions.

The network of climate change deniers extends across the Atlantic and grows increasingly closer to the authorities. They use professional communication strategies, funded by anonymous donations.

Heartland functions as a kind of model for its German counterpart, EIKE – even if the latter has only a fraction of the budget at its disposal. Still, under German law, EIKE does not have to disclose its finances. The association itself reports that it has “almost only small and very small donors”.

In the US, Heartland’s ideas have reached the President. In Germany, EIKE benefits from the fact that the AfD now uses climate policy for itself, framing it in the context of the euro and immigration.

Heartland had already extended its hand into Europe before we went undercover. Our reporting confirms that for years, Heartland and EIKE jointly sponsored conferences, even though an EIKE spokesman said he was not aware of this when we reached out for comment. The German association is an ally to Heartland: they share the same goals and attend each other’s conferences. And on Heartland’s website, the chairman of EIKE, Holger Thuss, is listed as an “expert”. We also learned that that Heartland will run campaigns for German foundations and corporations in exchange for donations.

Climate change denial is spreading not just in the US, but also in Germany. Members of the movement do not outright deny climate change itself, instead preferring to question whether it is the fault of man’s fault, and if it even poses a serious risk. This frames their ideas as diverse, and presents the possibility that everyone else is simply hysterical. They paint their challengers as hotheads who want to introduce socialism instead of protecting individual freedoms.

Thus, the wording of the “false doctrine” of climate change, of the hysterical and erring “climate alarmists” – conceived and disseminated by institutions such as Heartland and EIKE – ends up on social media and in the Bundestag. Look no further than AfD member Karsten Hilse, who spoke of “the false doctrine of human-induced climate change” – the same language used by the YouTube influencer. Numerous members of EIKE and speakers at Heartland conferences use the same rhetoric.

A few weeks after the Madrid conference, a video appeared on Heartland’s YouTube channel. It shows fragments from the speech given by the 19-year-old influencer at the conference in Madrid, intermittent with statements by Greta Thunberg. The video ends with a question: Who do you believe more?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/white-extremists-are-on-the-rise-around-the-world-emboldened-by-heroes-and-hate-music/

(AFP) – They may lack centralised organisation or even a common goal, but white supremacists encouraged by the exploits of extremist “heroes” canonised on social media pose an ever-growing security threat, analysts say. After nine people in Germany were killed by a gunman with “a very deeply racist attitude,” the country’s interior minister on Friday warned that the far right still posed a “very high” security threat.The shootings on Wednesday at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau were the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West attributed to self-appointed defenders

...

Emboldened by 'heroes' and hate music, white extremists on the rise

AFP

Didier LAURAS

,AFP•February 21, 2020

[A day after nine people were killed by a gunman with "a very deeply racist attitude," Germany's interior minister warned that the far right still posed a "very high" security threat (AFP Photo/Odd ANDERSEN)

Paris (AFP) - They may lack centralised organisation or even a common goal, but white supremacists encouraged by the exploits of extremist "heroes" canonised on social media pose an ever-growing security threat, analysts say.

After nine people in Germany were killed by a gunman with "a very deeply racist attitude," the country's interior minister on Friday warned that the far right still posed a "very high" security threat.

The shootings on Wednesday at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau were the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West attributed to self-appointed defenders of a "white race" perceived to be under threat from migration, globalisation and Islam.

From Christchurch to Pittsburg, Halle to El Paso, militants have been emboldened by a narrative of hatred spread on the internet with an ease that observers find worrying.

"This digital ecosystem is fuelling a cumulative momentum, which serves to lower 'thresholds' to violence for those engaged in this space, both in the United States and elsewhere," Graham Macklin, assistant professor at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, said in a recent article.

One attack "encourages and inspires another, creating a growing 'canon' of 'saints' and 'martyrs' for others to emulate," he wrote -- noting that Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in 2011, had become "an aspirational figure" for many.

Internet a 'facilitator' -

According to the Soufan Center, a global security think-tank, white supremacism has entered a phase of globalisation driven by niche websites popular among neo-Nazis, such as Gab and 8chan, and even the so-called "white power" music scene.

"White supremacy extremists rely on a diverse set of techniques to radicalise potential recruits," it said in a recent report, with attackers "lionised" on such platforms "as heroes, martyrs, 'saints,' 'commanders' and other honorifics."

White extremists do not share a single, common goal -- some seek self rule, others the expulsion of minorities -- but all believe their "race" to be under threat.

Many adherents to transnational white supremacy extremism hold millenarian and apocalyptic beliefs about an imminent race war, with some ardent believers in the end of time and influenced by elements of Christian identity," Soufan said.

Some believe their governments are conspiring with minority populations to bring about their demise -- the so-called Great Replacement theory, based on the title of a 2011 book by French writer Renaud Camus.

Anais Voy-Gillis, an extreme right specialist at the French Institute of Geopolitics, said: "The current context, with notably the migrant crisis of 2015, has surely contributed to the radicalisation of many people who are now ready to cross over to action."

Not only fringe sites are used to spread messages of fear, hate, and racial superiority.

The gunman who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last March, killing 51 Muslim worshippers, live-streamed his attack live on Facebook.

A few months later, an anti-Semitic attack in the east German city of Halle, which claimed two lives, was posted on the streaming platform Twitch.

"There are many radical groups in the world and the internet is a facilitator for them to get together nationally and even internationally," Voy-Gillis told AFP.

- 'Exporter' of white supremacism -

In Europe, a well-organised coordination of far-right efforts seems unlikely, for now.

Last June, a French parliamentary committee conducted an analysis of far-right groups in the country, including attempts to make contact with like-minded organisations elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany, Greece, Belgium, Italy, Britain, Spain and Austria.

At the time, the boss of France's DGSI domestic intelligence service Nicolas Lerner told investigators the chances were "extremely limited" that these movements would have the ability to work together at a European level.

But within a country's borders, the threat is real.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Friday that right-wing extremism was the "biggest security threat" facing his country, as he announced a more visible police presence and bolstered surveillance at mosques, train stations, airports and borders.

In the United States, an FBI report last November showed that 65 percent of "lone wolf" perpetrators of terror attacks where white.

Nearly a fifth (19 percent) of 52 such attacks committed in the United States between 1972 and 2015 were motivated by ideologies "advocating for the superiority of the white race," it found.

It was the same percentage as attackers motivated by radical Islamist doctrine.

"For almost two decades, the United States has pointed abroad at countries who are exporters of extreme Islamist ideology," Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in November.

"We are now being seen as the exporters of white supremacist ideology; that's a reality with which we are going to have to deal," he said. yahoo

actright

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Your Phone Is Leaking Information

ActRight’s Darian Rafie is an experienced political consultant in the United States who has played key roles in a number of companies that have worked for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party in Ohio and Michigan; received payments from a super PAC supporting Texas Republican Ted Cruz (as did ActRight in 2015); and worked with the Tea Party group Think Freely Media.

Speaking to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter, Rafie said he “did a lot of fundraising politically with Trump,” mostly through political action committees (PACs) but also “directly with the campaign… [and] directly with the party” and that he expects one of his companies to be working “in the majority of states” in the 2020 presidential election campaigns.

“There is a lot of stuff to be done with mobile phones and geo-fencing areas,” he told the reporter. “Say there’s a rally somewhere, one of these big Trump campaign rallies. What we’ll do is we’ll draw a polygon around that event and then we’ll register all the phones that were there… Then we follow those phones home, then we know who they are, and what they do, and now I know what your Netflix unique ID is, and I’ve got your Facebook unique ID, so then I can communicate with you through a whole variety of ways.”

Rafie said, “you can do that in Europe” too, though “it’s a little more limited… because the privacy laws are better [there], for the consumer.”

He said: “It’s actually really scary, when you peek beneath the covers, and realize that this phone that you’re carrying around with you is leaking everywhere all of your information,” which can be correlated with personal data “very quickly.” In the United States, he explained, “all of the data is routinely collated and correlated and available for sale.”

Over email, Rafie clarified to openDemocracy that this company uses “ad networks” as do “many political campaigns and businesses in the United States…. to delineate an area and identify unique device IDs and their associated advertising profiles.”

“We should all be frightened by the amount of data routinely collected, collated and sold by ad networks (such as Google and Facebook),” he added.

Friends Across Europe’s Far Right

On stage at the World Congress of Families meeting in Verona, Italy, in late March, CitizenGo’s Arsuaga urged European and other international ultra-conservatives to pursue an indirect, “less understood, practiced path to power” that he summarized as: “By controlling [politicians’] environment… you also control them.”

Speaking to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter at this event, Arsuaga revealed that CitizenGo also has “a lot of contact” with the Fidesz and Lega far-right parties in Hungary and Italy, respectively, along with “some contact” with the far-right AfD in Germany.

Asked if he discussed his group’s campaign strategies with these parties, Arsuaga told the undercover reporter, “yeah, yeah… we inform them about what we are going to do.”

He also offered to introduce openDemocracy to Lega party senator Simone Pillon and an AfD official believed to be Maximilian Krah, who was photographed with Salvini at the Verona event.

In Germany, CitizenGo’s events have attractedPrincess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis—another World Congress of Families speaker, patron of conservative Christian causes and a friend of Steve Bannon—along with the AfD’s Benjamin Nolte.

In Italy, CitizenGo was one of the organizers of the WCF event in Verona along with the ProVita anti-abortion campaign that has ties to the neo-fascist party Forza Nuova.

CitizenGo has also been involved in training Italian activists including via a four-day workshop in 2018 with the Leadership Institute—a U.S. conservative group that counts Vice President Mike Pence among the alumni of its trainings in America.

OpenDemocracy contacted the Lega, AfD and Fidesz parties, but they did not respond to requests for comment on their relationships with CitizenGo.

‘A Loud and Clear Wake-Up Call’

Lawmakers from across Europe have expressed alarm at openDemocracy’s findings about CitizenGo and its international networks.

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1/25/19

yellow vests are anti-austerity (afd wants Dexit?) EU capt by corps

bloomberg

.... the final weeks of the 2016 election campaign, voters in swing states including Nevada and North Carolina saw ads appear in their Facebook feeds and on Google websites touting a pair of controversial faux-tourism videos, showing France and Germany overrun by Sharia law. French schoolchildren were being trained to fight for the caliphate, jihadi fighters were celebrated at the Arc de Triomphe, and the “Mona Lisa” was covered in a burka.

“Under Sharia law, you can enjoy everything the Islamic State of France has to offer, as long as you follow the rules,” the narrator of one ad. [vid] Unlike Russian efforts to secretly influence the 2016 election via social media, this American-led campaign was aided by direct collaboration with employees of Facebook and Google. They helped target the ads to more efficiently reach the intended audiences, according to internal reports from the ad agency that ran the campaign, as well as five people involved with the efforts.

Facebook advertising salespeople, creative advisers and technical experts competed with sales staff from Alphabet Inc.’s Google for millions in ad dollars from Secure America Now, the conservative, nonprofit advocacy group whose campaign included a mix of anti-Hillary Clinton and anti-Islam messages, the people said.

The content of some ads left some employees of Harris Media—the Austin-based digital advertising firm that runs campaigns for Secure America Now—feeling uneasy. “It was designed to strike fear in people’s hearts,” said one former Harris employee who requested anonymity.

The extent to which Facebook and Google work with political campaigns and groups hasn’t been widely understood. On Oct. 8, 60 Minutes aired an interview with the Trump campaign’s digital director saying he had Facebook employees work as “embeds” in the campaign who were selected for being Republicans. Facebook said its services for Trump were standard for any advertiser during an important event.

Google also works with political groups on their advertising strategies, helping them hone their copy and figure out how to best target their desired audiences, says Wendy Moe, professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “It’s a tricky issue,” she says, because once the companies decide they’ll do hands-on work for political groups, “it’s hard for them to say we’ll help these groups, but not others.”

The issue gets thornier when it comes to working with groups on the fringes of the political spectrum. Earlier this year, for instance, Facebook worked closely with Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which was also represented by Harris Media. In meetings at Facebook’s Berlin office, executives encouraged the AfD and Harris Media to use Facebook Live in addition to its ad spending to better target German voters, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last month.

Google and Facebook, similarly, worked closely with Secure America Now as it spent several million dollars on election-season ads, according to the people who worked on the campaign. On June 16 of last year, for instance, sales managers from Google’s elections team hunkered down in its New York offices with officials from Secure America Now and Harris Media to talk about how to improve their digital ad campaigns.

In the months that followed, Secure America Now targeted swing-state voters not only with its faux-tourism videos, but also ads that linked Democratic Senate candidates with Syrian refugees and terrorists. “STOP SUPPORT OF TERRORISM. VOTE AGAINST CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO,” stated one ad targeting the Nevada Democratic Senate candidate who eventually won the race. “YOU SAW THE THREAT. NOW VOTE TO PROTECT NEVADA,” declared another ad.

A screenshot from a Secure America Now video.

Source: Secure America Now

In some cases, the ads were highly targeted on social media and aimed at groups of people, such as Hispanic voters in Nevada, that they felt could be swayed by the anti-refugee message, according to two people who worked on the campaign. The ads were viewed millions of times on Facebook and Google, according to the internal reports about the campaign.

Facebook’s collaboration with Secure America Now went beyond optimizing its ad reach, and included efforts to test new technology. In one instance, Facebook used the Secure America Now campaign to try out a vertical video format, which the Facebook reps were eager to see used on a large scale.

Working with Harris Media, Facebook devised a case study last year to compare the popularity of the new format to others. The video they used was “Are We Safe?”, which contrasts colorful scenes of Main Street America with black-and-white pictures of Muslims who have carried out attacks in the U.S. Facebook tested 12 different versions of the video. It then followed up with a survey of users who had viewed the video to see which format was most popular. (Square videos, it turned out.)

Officials for Facebook and Harris Media declined to comment. Secure America Now didn’t respond to several requests for an interview.

Google also declined an interview request. But a spokesperson for the company says Google eventually blocked several ads from Secure America Now for violating its policies, including ads for the faux-tourism videos. The company wouldn’t say when it blocked the ads, but in a written statement it said that if ads violate its vigorously enforced policies, “we immediately disapprove them and stop showing them.”

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Despite Schulz’s personal embarrassment, the SPD’s control over the foreign ministry and the finance ministry is a coup that will cede significant power to the left-of-center party as the European financial picture continues to face uncertain times. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the fact that the SPD made the GroKo contingent on a party vote signalled an acknowledgment that the potential partnership with the CDU/CSU was unpopular and complicated enough to require broad validation before the party could sign on.

And not to be forgotten, the coalition government makes the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the strongest opposition party in the Bundestag.Not only does that position validate the party’s radical right wing and anti-immigration positions, but it puts the AfD in the position to act as the leading foil to the coalition.

From an international security perspective, it will be important to keep an eye on the GroKo’s stance toward Russia. While the CDU/CSU and SPD coalition government is a new iteration of an old coalition, the SPD will remain in charge of the foreign ministry, and Germany’s current foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), has publicly articulated his desire for rapprochement with Russia. He has been open in his support of economic ties to Russia, especially the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline—which would be another offshore natural gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. But Gabriel is not the front-runner for foreign minister in the GroKo. On top of that, recent tensions between Gabriel and his party—he told one media source that he believes his work is underappreciated by the SPD—may marginalize his views on a Russian detente. As I mentioned in September, the SPD has historically been more open to dialogue with Russia. But Merkel was instrumental in implementing EU sanctions against Russia—and with EU equities as they are, there’s a good chance that Germany will remain the backbone of European opposition to Russia.

Moreover, newfound German stability is unfolding on the heels of a suspected Russian cyberattack against the German Federal Office for Information Security, reported on Feb. 28. One German news source and cybersecurity group, Palo Alto Networks, reported that the Foreign Ministry had also been targeted by the group known as FancyBear (remember them?) in this attack. Der Spiegel and Deutsch Presse-Agentur attributed the attack to “Snake,” another group with Russian affiliations. The Kremlin has denied the allegations—but, then again, it always does. Setting the truth of the attribution aside, the episode is likely another building block in the growing tension between Western democracies and Russia over the latter’s technological interference in the democratic infrastructure of the former.

Millions of tweets were flying furiously in the final days leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. And in closely fought battleground states that would prove key to Donald Trump’s victory, they were more likely than elsewhere in America to be spreading links to fake news and hyperpoliticized content from Russian sources and WikiLeaks, according to new research published Thursday by Oxford University.

Nationwide during this period, one polarizing story was typically shared on average for every one story produced by a professional news organization. However, fake news from Twitter reached higher concentrations than the national average in 27 states, 12 of which were swing states—including Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, where Trump won by slim margins.

While it’s unclear what effect such content ultimately had on voters, the new study only deepens concerns about how the 2016 election may have been tweaked by nefarious forces on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. “Many people use these platforms to find news and information that shapes their political identities and voting behavior,” says Samantha Bradshaw, a lead researcher for Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project, which has been tracking disinformation strategies around the world since 2014. “If bad actors can lower the quality of information, they are diminishing the quality of democracy.”

Efforts by Vladimir Putin’s regime were among the polarizing content captured in the new Oxford study. “We know the Russians have literally invested in social media,” Bradshaw told Mother Jones, referring to reports of Russian-bought Facebook ads as well as sophisticated training of Russian disinformation workers detailed in another recent study by the team. “Swing states would be the ones you would want to target.”

The dubious Twitter content also contained YouTube videos—including some produced by the Kremlin-controlled RT network, which were uploaded without any information identifying them as Russian-produced.

The dubious Twitter content in the new study also contained polarizing YouTube videos–including some produced by the Kremlin-controlled RT network, which were uploaded without any information identifying them as Russian-produced. All the YouTube videos have since been taken down, according to Bradshaw; it’s unclear whether the accounts were deleted by the users, or if YouTube removed the content.

The Oxford researchers captured 22 million tweets from November 1 to November 11 in 2016, and they have been scrutinizing the dataset to better understand the impact of disinformation on the US election. The team has also analyzed propaganda operations in more than two dozen countries, using a combination of reports from trusted media sources and think tanks, and cross-checking that information with experts on the ground. Their recent research has additional revelations about how disinformation works in the social-media age, including from Moscow.

Putin’s big investment in information warfare

In studying Russia’s propaganda efforts targeting both domestic and international populations, the Oxford researchers found evidence of increasing military expenditures on social-media operations since 2014. They also learned of a sophisticated training system for workers employed by Putin’s disinformation apparatus: “They have invested millions of dollars into training staff and setting targets for them,” Bradshaw says. She described a working environment where English training is provided to improve messaging for Western audiences: Supervisors hand out topical talking points to include in coordinated messaging, workers’ content is edited, and output is audited, with rewards given to more productive workers.

The battle to identify bots

One telltale sign of bots stems from a group of accounts that tweet much more frequently than typical humans—or accounts that tweet on exact intervals, say, every five minutes. The bot-driven accounts may lack typical profile elements such as profile pictures (see also: the generic Twitter egg) and often don’t engage in replies with other social-media accounts. In addition to spreading fake news, “they can also amplify marginal voices and ideas by inflating the number of likes, shares and retweets they receive, creating an artificial sense of popularity, momentum or relevance,” the Oxford team reported recently.

While it’s difficult for researchers to untangle how many Twitter bots are Russian-controlled, they regularly see Russian accounts in the mix: For example, on Twitter, they found accounts following Trump that tweeted most frequently during Russian business hours and switched regularly between English and Cyrillic.

About one-fifth of campaign-related tweets during the month before the election likely were generated by bots, one study found.

On Facebook, it’s much more challenging to sort out which content is bot-driven, says Bradshaw. That’s in part because on Facebook, bots typically operate pages or groups, which can be even more opaque than individual accounts.

The presence of bots during the election homestretch

The Oxford researchers also found that bots infiltrated the core conversations among their Twitter data during the election period—and several of their analyses revealed that bots supported Trump much more than Hillary Clinton. A separate research effort by Emilio Ferrara at the University of Southern California, cited in Oxford’s report, determined that about one-fifth of campaign-related tweets during the month before the election likely were generated by bots. Ferrara’s team recorded 4 million tweets during that time period posted by about 400,000 bots.

How Germany fought off the fake-news scourge

In the days before the September 24 parliamentary election, the Oxford researchers found that political bots were minimally active on Twitter in Germany. The most tweets tracked were in support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which won 13 percent of the vote and became the first far-right party to earn a presence in Parliament in 60-plus years. The research also found that Germans were much less likely to share fake news stories than their American counterparts, sharing links from professional news organizations four times as often as links from sites pushing fake news. Researchers theorize that voters in Germany and other parts of Europe may have been inoculated to the effects of bot-driven fake news, thanks to the ongoing fallout from 2016. “I would speculate the Russians overplayed their hand in the US elections,” Bradshaw says. “Voters in the US weren’t really prepared, but that was part of the discourse in other countries like Germany.”

But the battle is only beginning. In the hands of bad operators “the bots get a bit smarter,” Bradshaw says. When those controlling them realize that the bots are being tracked, for example, they may adjust the frequency that they tweet in order to fly below researchers’ radar. Bradshaw also notes that voice-simulation technology combined with video-simulation technology is making it increasingly possible to create fake news—say, a video showing politicians making statements that they never actually said. “In innovations in technology,” she cautions, “the attackers always have the advantage.”