Is the AfD a threat to Germany? Mehdi Hasan & Maximilian Krah | Head to Head
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Claim 1
A poll came out last month from ZDF. Very respected poll found 72% of Germans say the AFD is a danger to democracy.
A ZDF Politbarometer poll published in January 2024 found that 72% of respondents viewed the AfD as a threat to democracy.
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Claim 2
In the German intelligence agency's report on the AfD, you were cited hundreds of times by name. They said, 'Your view of humanity is incompatible with the German Constitution.'
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) frequently cited Maximilian Krah's statements in its legal assessment of the AfD, concluding that his ethnocultural concept of humanity violates the human dignity protections of the German Basic Law.
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Claim 3
You were also famously on record saying, quote, 'Not all members of the Nazi SS were criminals.' Something so outrageous that even your own party, they kicked you out of their parliamentary delegation.
Maximilian Krah told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he would 'never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.' Following the outcry, newly elected AfD MEPs voted to exclude him from their European Parliament delegation in June 2024.
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Claim 4
Marine Le Pen, the French farright leader, said that's too much even for me. And they cut off ties with you.
Following Krah's remarks about the SS, Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) declared a clean break and announced they would no longer sit in the same EU Parliament group (ID) as the AfD.
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Claim 5
Germany has the second largest number of refugees worldwide after Colombia.
According to UNHCR data from late 2023 and mid-2024, Iran and Turkey host the largest populations of refugees and other people in need of international protection globally, followed by Colombia and Germany.
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Claim 6
Alice Weidel distinguished between Germans and 'passport Germans' (Passdeutsche) in 2019 and defended the use of the term in an interview with Welt in August 2023.
Alice Weidel used the controversial term 'Passdeutsche' in 2019 in a tweet and explicitly defended her use of the term during her Welt TV summer interview in August 2023.
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Claim 7
Alice Weidel's wife/partner is from Sri Lanka.
Alice Weidel's registered civil partner, Sarah Bossard, is a Swiss film producer who was born in Sri Lanka and adopted by a Swiss family.
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Claim 8
Maximilian Krah said that the equality of citizens based solely on a piece of paper is the founding myth of the modern state.
In his 2023 manifesto 'Politik von rechts' (Politics from the Right), Krah wrote that the equality of all citizens based solely on the paper they hold is the founding myth of the modern, liberal state.
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Claim 9
Maximilian Krah said in 2023 that 'das Volk' (the people) is a community of similars and a natural, biologically verifiable reality.
In his 2023 book, Krah defined 'das Volk' as a 'natural, biologically verifiable reality' rather than a mere social contract, reflecting ethnopluralist ideology.
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Claim 10
The manifesto for the state of Saxony-Anhalt calls Islam a culturally alien religion and says Islam does not belong to Germany.
The AfD's national manifesto explicitly declares that 'Islam does not belong to Germany,' and its regional election programs, including that of Saxony-Anhalt, describe Islam as a 'culturally alien religion' ('kulturfremde Religion').
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Claim 11
The next Saxony-Anhalt state election is in September 2026.
The state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt was last elected in June 2021. Since the legislative term in Saxony-Anhalt is five years, the next election is scheduled for 2026.
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Claim 12
The AfD has an internal organization called 'Migrants within the AfD'.
AfD party members with immigrant backgrounds officially founded a group called 'Netzwerk Migranten in der AfD' (Network of Migrants in the AfD) to represent their interests within the party.
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Claim 13
The AfD may secure their first state premiership in Saxony Anhalt in September.
There was no state election in Saxony-Anhalt in September 2024; the state elections held that month were in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. The speaker confused Saxony-Anhalt with Saxony.
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Claim 14
Maximilian Krah wrote that Israelis are great because they are ethnonationalists, whereas current Jews in Germany have nothing to contribute and are mostly left-wing/communist.
In his 2023 book 'Politik von rechts', Krah praised Israel as an admirable ethnonationalist project, while asserting that contemporary German Jews have 'nothing of their own to add' to German culture and are almost exclusively left-wing.
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Claim 15
You did have a Chinese spy working in your office.
In April 2024, Jian G., an aide to German AfD MEP Maximilian Krah, was arrested and charged by German federal prosecutors with spying for a Chinese intelligence service.
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Claim 16
In the European Parliament, you voted against a resolution for China to stop suppressing the Uyghurs.
Krah has repeatedly voted against European Parliament resolutions condemning China's treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, including a December 2020 resolution on forced labor.
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Claim 17
On the 70th anniversary of Chinese rule of Tibet, you congratulated China for being proud of what they achieved in Tibet.
In May 2021, Krah published a video congratulating China on the 70th anniversary of what Beijing officially terms the 'peaceful liberation of Tibet', praising its development.
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Claim 18
You're also vice chair of an EU China lobbying group that disbanded after an investigation into its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Krah served as vice-chairman of the EU-China Friendship Group, an unofficial parliamentary group that was suspended in 2021 due to concerns over state-backed Chinese influence and undeclared lobbying.
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Claim 19
At that time China was the biggest trade partner of Germany.
China was Germany's largest single trading partner for eight consecutive years up to 2023.
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Claim 20
I'm not investigated. No, there is no case against me. Not even an investigation.
While German prosecutors could not open a formal, full criminal investigation due to Krah's MEP immunity, the Dresden Public Prosecutor's office did initiate formal preliminary investigations (Vorermittlungen) to check for initial suspicion of foreign bribery.
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Claim 21
Sigmar Gabriel, the former socialist minister, just came out yesterday and said the same thing [that there should be direct contact/negotiations with Russia].
In mid-June 2024, coinciding with the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland, former German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) stated in interviews that direct diplomatic negotiations with Russia would eventually be necessary to end the war.
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Claim 22
If you look at trade of the UK, of Germany, of France, of Italy, with countries in Central Asia, you will see in 2022 they skyrocket.
Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, exports from European nations like Germany, France, Italy, and the UK to Central Asian countries (such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) surged dramatically, acting as a workaround to deliver goods to Russia.
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Claim 23
The AFD has never been in government in Germany.
Since its founding in 2013, the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has never been part of a federal or state-level coalition government in Germany, as other major political parties have maintained a 'firewall' (Brandmauer) refusing to govern with them.
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Claim 24
A study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation found that one in five AfD supporters tend to agree that rich Jews rule the world, and 6% of AfD supporters show elevated agreement with antisemitic statements compared to 2% of the general population.
A 2023 study by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) on antisemitism in Germany found that 19% (nearly one in five) of AfD voters agreed with the statement 'rich Jews rule the world', and 6% of AfD supporters exhibited a manifest antisemitic worldview compared to 2% of the general public.
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Claim 25
There is not one attack against the Jewish community in Germany from far-right Germans.
There have been numerous far-right antisemitic attacks in Germany, most notably the 2019 Halle synagogue shooting, which was a far-right terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community during Yom Kippur.
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Claim 26
Federal government data shows that antisemitic violence has surged in recent years with far-right Germans responsible for three times as many incidents as Islamists.
German federal police statistics (PMK) consistently attribute the vast majority of registered antisemitic crimes to the far-right (PMK-Rechts), significantly outnumbering incidents attributed to religious/Islamist or foreign ideologies by three-to-one or higher ratios.
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Claim 27
There are around 12,000 Syrian doctors in Germany (including 6,000 naturalized and 6,000 non-naturalized), making them the largest group of foreign doctors.
Official German Medical Association (BÄK) data from late 2023 shows there are 6,120 Syrian doctors without German citizenship in Germany, making them the largest national group of foreign doctors. Including naturalized doctors of Syrian origin, the total is estimated at approximately 12,000.
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Claim 28
70% of refugees in Germany work in high-skill professions.
Data from Germany's Institute for Employment Research (IAB) shows that while refugee employment rates have risen (reaching 64% after 7-8 years), the majority of employed refugees work in helper (low-skilled) or skilled support roles, with only a small fraction (around 5% to 6%) working in highly skilled or academic professions.
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Claim 29
50% of refugees in Germany are not working and are on welfare.
According to official figures from the Federal Employment Agency and the IAB, the employment rate for refugees who arrived since 2013 was around 54% to 64% depending on their length of stay, meaning roughly 40% to 50% remain out of the workforce, with many relying on citizen's benefit (Bürgergeld) or welfare support.
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Claim 30
51% of citizenship money (Bürgergeld) receivers in Germany are non-German passport holders.
According to official statistics from the German Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), as of late 2023 / early 2024, approximately 47% to 51% of Bürgergeld (citizen's income) recipients did not hold German citizenship, with some monthly cohorts or subsets of employable beneficiaries specifically crossing the 51% threshold.
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Claim 31
Germany does not have a scheme where you can get citizenship by buying property or investing in a business.
Germany does not offer a 'golden passport' or direct citizenship-by-investment scheme. While there are pathways to residency through business investment (under Section 21 of the Residence Act), this does not grant automatic citizenship, which is subject to standard naturalization requirements.
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Claim 32
There is a trial going on of three former AfD members (including one former city councilor and two party members) for plotting to coup the government.
Three former members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—including Birgit Malsack-Winkemann (a former AfD Bundestag member) and Christian Wendler (a former AfD city councilor in Olbernhau)—went on trial in 2024 as part of the suspected Reichsbürger coup plot led by Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss.
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Claim 33
The German coup plot (Reichsbürger plot) was maintained by people who were mostly older than 65 and did not have a real bazooka or a machine gun.
While some key figures of the 2022 Reichsbürger coup plot (such as Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss) were elderly, the members spanned various ages, including active and former military and police personnel in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Furthermore, German prosecutors revealed that the group had amassed a massive arsenal of weapons, including over 380 firearms, 350 blunt/edged weapons, and nearly 150,000 pieces of ammunition, including military-grade automatic weapons (machine guns) and firearms stolen from military/police stocks.
