Bjorn Höcke

Björn Höcke (2019)

Björn Höcke (born April 1, 1972 in Lünen ) is a right-wing extremist German politician ( AfD ). He is one of two spokesmen for the AfD Thuringia and since the state elections in Thuringia in 2014 he has been the parliamentary group chairman of the AfD in the Thuringian state parliament . Until he moved into the state parliament he was a civil servant high school teacher in Hesse . In the state elections in Thuringia in 2019 , in which he ran again as the top candidate of the AfD, the AfD became the second strongest force under his leadership.

With the " Erfurt Resolution " (March 2015) Höcke co-founded the right-wing extremist AfD current Der Flügel . In autumn 2015 he organized the Erfurt demonstrations . He represents concepts of the New Right and strives for an alliance of right-wing nationalist groups for the ethnic homogenization of Germany and Europe. The AfD federal executive board withdrew the impeachment proceedings against him in July 2015 and closed a party expulsion process in June 2018.

Social scientists and historians call Höcke right-wing extremists - like the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) - or state in his statements fascism , racism , historical revisionism , sometimes anti-Semitism and the adoption of the language and ideas of National Socialism .

Since the beginning of 2020, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been using intelligence services to monitor Höcke .

Family, education, job

Höcke was born in Lünen in Westphalia . Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Neuwied in Rhineland-Palatinate , and later to neighboring Anhausen . His paternal grandparents were expellees from East Prussia . His father was a special school teacher at the state school for the blind and visually impaired (Neuwied) , the mother a nurse and geriatric nurse . Höcke first attended the Braunsburg primary school in Anhausen, then the Rhein-Wied-Gymnasium Neuwied . After graduating from high school in 1991, he did basic military service in the Bundeswehr . From 1992 he studied law in Bonn for two semesters . From 1993 to 1998 he studied sports science and history at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen and Philipps University in Marburg for teaching at the grammar school . After his second state examination (2001), he completed a master’s degree in school management from 2003 to 2005 , which he completed with a Master of Arts . Until September 2014 he taught sport and history at the Rhenanus School in Bad Sooden-Allendorf , most recently as a senior teacher . Höcke is married, has four children and lives with his family in Bornhagen in the Eichsfeld district .

Political career

development

According to his own statements, Höcke was strongly influenced by his grandparents' stories about East Prussia. In 1986, at the age of fourteen, he joined the Junge Union because he admired the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl for his spiritual and moral turn . His national-conservative and anti-communist father saw the fall of the Wall in 1989 as the beginning of the “end of the German people”, despite the joy about it, because the multicultural West would now destroy the still intact community of trust in the East. That made a big impression on him. His father had subscribed to the anti-Semitic magazine Die Bauernschaft ( The Peasantry) of the convicted Holocaust denier Thies Christophersen and publicly expressed his solidarity with Martin Hohmann , whom the CDU had excluded because of statements that were considered anti-Semitic.

In 2006, Björn Höcke claimed in a letter to the editor published by the HNA that, unlike the German air raids on Coventry in 1940, the British air raids on Dresden in 1945 were a planned mass killing in violation of international law and aimed at an undefended city ​​overcrowded with refugees from the eastern German regions would have killed so many people in such a short time as never before and after. In doing so, he adopted theories of the history falsifier and Holocaust denier David Irving , which had already been refuted at the time. Höcke had to promise his school management that, as a teacher, he would never again express himself publicly in this way.

Höcke had been in contact with representatives of the New Right such as Dieter Stein and Heiner Hofsommer since 2007 . In 2008 he initiated a discussion in the magazine Junge Freiheit about a “third way” as an alternative to “interest-based global capitalism”. In 2011 he tried to found a "Patriotic German Society" with some like-minded people. When commemorate February 13, 1945 in Dresden he demonstrated in 2010 with neo-Nazis , stretched his right fist and shouted in unison "We want to march!" As Barbara Lubich documentary Come Together occupied.

Höcke was popular with his students and at times was a trust teacher . According to a former student, he repeatedly praised the main work of the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon Psychology of the Masses and was fascinated by it. He often talked about charisma and talked about a meeting between his grandfather and Adolf Hitler . His "incredibly blue eyes" were a central element of the Führer cult for Höcke . He had dealt with National Socialism much more briefly than other topics in German history. He also described himself as a follower of deism , who believed in the “natural spirit”, was enthusiastic about Nordic mythology and regularly wore a necklace with a Thor's hammer, which had been a symbol of the nationalist movement since around 1900 . High school graduates satirically described Höcke in 2013, even before joining the AfD , as "Family Minister for the AfD" because his views were known.

Pseudonym "Landolf Ladig"

Höcke has known or friends with the NPD representative Thorsten Heise , who lives six kilometers from Bornhagen , since around 2008 . Since 2013, Höcke has been using the same rare expressions and terms in his speeches as an author who wrote under the pseudonym “Landolf Ladig” and who, from 2011, had written articles for Heise's magazines “ People in Motion & Der Reichsbote ” and other NPD publications : including “organic Market economy "," Reconciliation between ecology and economy "," The power of a vision "," Values, morals and norms ". In addition, Ladig had described Höcke's house in detail in an article. The sociologist Andreas Kemper has been proving this since April 2015. In his articles, Ladig praised the ideas of the NPD and glorified the Nazi regime. The AfD federal board then demanded an affirmation in lieu of Höcke's oath that he had never written, contributed to or knowingly distributed texts under that pseudonym. Höcke refused, denied that he had ever written articles for NPD papers, and threatened legal action against anyone who claimed otherwise. Heise also denied Höcke's identity with Ladig and only confirmed subsequent occasional contacts with Höcke. In contrast, two Bornhagen citizens swore in 2018 that Heise had visited Höcke several times at home and helped him move.

In April 2017, the AfD federal board led by Frauke Petry requested Höcke's exclusion from the party with Kemp's evidence: In view of the “almost identical” choice of words, reasonable doubts about Höcke's identity with “Landolf Ladig” are no longer possible. Höcke openly admitted this identity to the former AfD district leader Heiko Bernardy. According to FAZ editor Justus Bender , however, another author claimed in June 2017 that he wrote the texts signed “Landolf Ladig” together with two people who have since died and that he had delivered the evidence to the AfD arbitration tribunal. However, this evidence did not emerge. Two days later, Heise Bender disagreed and introduced the right-wing extremist Rigolf Hennig as "Landolf Ladig". In an opinion on the AfD of January 15, 2019, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with reference to Kemp's evidence, ruled that Höcke's identity with “Landolf Ladig” was “almost indisputable” and “in view of the plausible density of facts, almost with certainty.” Höcke's choice of words, for example from allegedly threatening “death of the people”, recalling “linguistically and argumentatively of known patterns of interpretation” of the NPD.

Höcke rejected an affidavit of his non-identity with Landolf Ladig again in the summer of 2019 and instead claimed without evidence that the anti-fascist Junge Gemeinde Stadtmitte in Jena was behind the pseudonym. The Junge Gemeinde decided in October 2019 to sue Höcke over these allegations. He should not get away with “the strategy of throwing dirt”.

Rise and influence in the AfD

In April 2013, Höcke co-founded the AfD in Thuringia, and in August 2013 became its spokesman and Thuringian AfD candidate in second place on the list for the 2013 federal election . In November 2013 he co-founded a district association in Worbis and became the first chairman of the AfD district association Nordhausen- Eichsfeld- Mühlhausen . In August 2014, he was re-elected spokesman for AfD Thuringia alongside Stefan Möller .

In the state elections in Thuringia in 2014 , Höcke won a state parliament mandate as the top AfD candidate on the state list. In Bornhagen he received 38 percent of the first votes. On September 22, 2014, the AfD parliamentary group elected him as chairman. By resolution of the state parliament, he is a member of the board of trustees of the State Center for Civic Education Thuringia and of the assembly of the Thuringian State Media Authority . In March 2015 he published the "Erfurt Resolution" with André Poggenburg , spokesman for the AfD Saxony-Anhalt . The "wing" thus initiated the replacement of party leader Bernd Lucke and a shift to the right in the AfD. Höcke continuously describes the AfD as a “fundamentally oppositional movement party” to fundamentally change the German social order. According to right-wing extremism researcher Matthias Quent, he represents a “pseudo-conservatism” which, in defense of traditional values ​​and institutions, “consciously or unconsciously seeks to abolish them against more or less fictitious dangers” ( Theodor W. Adorno 1955).

From April 2015 Höcke took part in the second Thuringian NSU investigative committee for the AfD . Because of his contacts with NPD representatives such as Thorsten Heise and interviews with right-wing extremist magazines, Katharina König-Preuss (Die Linke) feared that Höcke could pass on internal and sensitive information from the committee to the neo-Nazi scene and that the committee would therefore not provide enough information.

At the beginning of May 2015, Höcke declared that large parts of the NPD, but not every single NPD member, could be classified as extremist . Bernd Lucke then asked him to resign and leave the party. In mid-May 2015, the AfD federal executive decided to initiate party proceedings with the aim of removing Höcke from his party positions and banning him for two years. Frauke Petry and Alexander Gauland voted against on the board. The new federal board under Frauke Petry and Jörg Meuthen discontinued it in September 2015. Petry and Meuthen distanced themselves from Höcke's controversial television appearance (October 18, 2015) and his speech at IfS (November 21, 2015). Meuthen described Höcke's statements as “content-related and political folly” that invited “misinterpretations”, but avoided reprimand. He also reprimanded Höcke's Dresden speech from January 2017, but again rejected his expulsion from the party. Frauke Petry, on the other hand, applied for Höcke's exclusion and promoted it with an internal email to all AfD members. He then described himself as a victim of intra-party power struggles and invoked diversity of opinion in the AfD.

In 2016, at a rally in Erfurt, Höcke called on police officers to “resist” the federal government. With reference to the refugee policy, he pointed out that officials had to refuse "unlawful instructions", otherwise they could be brought "to court" after a change of power. He asked people to stop following "this evil woman".

In January 2017, Höcke excluded his candidacy for the 2017 federal election and announced a candidacy for the office of Thuringian Prime Minister in the state election in Thuringia 2019 . In mid-February 2017, the AfD federal executive decided a new party exclusion process against him. Gauland continued to support Höcke's candidacy for the Bundestag. After the federal election and Petry's exit from the AfD (September 25, 2017), Höcke considered this in the case of new elections and a candidacy for the AfD federal executive board. To this end, he presented himself in interviews as a moderate politician with ties to his home country, who had learned from rhetorical mistakes without deviating from his positions. He took part in protests against the threat of plant closings in eastern federal states and suggested a “social patriotic” course (social justice for Germans) for the AfD there. The annual Kyffhäuser meetings, which were also attended by four AfD state chiefs as well as Gauland and Meuthen from the federal executive committee in 2017, increased the wing's influence on the AfD. To like-minded people, Höcke continued to emphasize that the AfD had to be and remain a "movement party".

At the AfD federal party conference in December 2017, Höcke sharply attacked Alice Weidel, the chairwoman of the AfD parliamentary group . He was not elected to the board, but the wing representative Andreas Kalbitz was . With almost half of all delegates, the right wing of the party was also decisive for the election of Gauland and Meuthen as AfD federal spokesman. Frauke Petry described Gauland as "another puppet" of Höcke, so that the moderate wing was no longer represented on the board. The party congress did not discuss Höcke's exclusion. In May 2018, the state arbitration court of the AfD Thuringia rejected the AfD federal board's application for exclusion, because Höcke did not violate the statutes or party principles. In June 2018, the federal executive unanimously waived an appeal against this ruling.

At the Kyffhäusertreffen at Burgscheidungen Castle in June 2018, Höcke declared that the venue had been chosen to “maximally provoke the establishment”. He called on around 1000 listeners, including Meuthen and Gauland, to be “courageous defenders” of German culture, otherwise “foreign nations in 50 years” would have swept them away and committed a “break in culture and civilization” never seen in Germany. So he claimed that immigration was destroying German culture and that this was worse than the historic rupture of civilization in the Holocaust . “Decadence” is keeping “Western Europe firmly under control”. The Germans were subject to a " guilt neurosis " whose "psychotic quality" had led to a "collective autoaggressivity". The AfD had to set up “remigration programs, which of course include de-Islamization programs”. You could "hunt their crown jewel now" from the left with credible offers on the "social question". He concluded: “The old and rotten are falling apart before our eyes. The mantle of history blows past us. Let's take him. ”With this he was referring to Philipp Scheidemann's proclamation of a republic in Germany on November 9, 1918, that is, to a social revolution .

At the AfD state party conference on 13./14. In October 2018, Höcke called on internal party opponents around the Alternative Center (AM), who criticized a personality cult around him, and a district association representative who had shared an NPD entry on social media in 2016 to quit the party. About 20 AfD members protested, while those present supported Gauland Höcke. The AfD Thuringia re-elected Höcke as the top candidate for the 2019 state elections. The following day, the AM publicly referred to Höcke as a “megalomaniac”, who believed that “there is now enough fertile soil in Germany for a right-wing extremist party and the AfD is already much too big to be able to get it down again. [...] A Höcke-AfD would be a right-wing extremist party. "

On October 17, 2018, photographs of a trip by an AfD group to Hitler's life in 2015, which the AM representative and former Thuringian AfD boss Matthias Wohlfarth had transmitted to the AfD board, became known. One of the three members of the AfD arbitration court in Thuringia had lit a candle in front of the Adolf Hitler birth house in Braunau am Inn , with a portrait photograph of Hitler in his hands and in front of a table covered with a swastika flag and SS badge . Some AfD officials called for a new exclusion process against Höcke. The AfD Thuringia rejected this as "inadmissible". Höcke was "the greatest victim" of the actions of that referee. A new trial is legally hopeless and politically unjustifiable. Höcke had learned of the photographs weeks earlier and urged the referee to withdraw from the party immediately.

At the beginning of November 2018, Höcke described the recommendations of an AfD working group to avoid observation of the AfD by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as “political bedwetting ”. Gauland rejected this opinion as "wrong and in no way expedient". At the end of November, the AfD board considered disbanding the Junge Alternative für Deutschland (JA) , which was observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, because of its contacts with right-wing extremists. Höcke defended the JA: The judgments of some AfD functionaries were disproportionate, a general suspicion against the JA was "completely unacceptable". Because the “young comrades-in-arms” risked “their career opportunities and sometimes even their physical integrity”, the board of directors is obliged “to stand by them without tolerating undesirable developments”.

In the local elections in May 2019 in Thuringia, Höcke won the second-most votes of the individual candidates in the Eichsfeld district and moved into the Eichsfeld district council for the first time as one of six AfD members. In this role, he caused a scandal at the end of June 2019 when District Administrator Werner Henning (CDU) asked the two bodyguards Höckes to leave the room for the non-public part of the meeting (the topic was the tendering of fire engines). Höcke protested and, after Henning had insisted, left the meeting room with the AfD parliamentary group. Höcke spoke of an "absurd interpretation of the statutes of the district administrator" and announced a legal review. The SPD state chairman Wolfgang Tiefensee accused Höcke, on the other hand, of using the LKA bodyguards "for his personal staging". Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD) made a similar statement .

At the Kyffhäusertreffen 2019, Höcke moved into the hall with heroic music and waving flags and awarded particularly loyal supporters the silver wing badge. One of them said: "You are our leader, whom we are happy to follow." Höcke announced that he would "dedicate himself to the election of the federal executive with great passion". The current party leadership will no longer exist at the end of the year. As a result, more than 100 AfD politicians criticized in an appeal “for a united and strong AfD” that Höcke had “violated solidarity within the party” and accused him of a personality cult . They did not criticize Höcke's political positions. According to Matthias Kamann ( Die Welt ), the critics are only concerned with Höcke as a person; In terms of content, they largely agreed with the right wing national wing . The sentence of her appeal “We stand for a bourgeois, liberal and patriotic AfD that sees itself as the last chance to preserve our fatherland” resembles Höcke's statements that the AfD was “the last evolutionary chance for our fatherland”. With this turn, opponents like Höcke's supporters linked the “fate of the party and the country in a highly dubious way from a democratic theory perspective”. The political scientist Steffen Kailitz also pointed out that the opponents of Höcke "were in some cases not so much his ideological positions as the 'cult of the leader' around him". It is therefore not a matter of "a dispute between right-wing extremists and 'moderates', but right-wing extremists of various shades".

After his appearance in Kyffhäuser, some AfD country leaders and deputy federal chairmen asked Höcke to run for the federal executive committee at the AfD federal party conference in November 2019: Anyone who, like Höcke, thinks they can do better, must have the courage to stand up and be allowed don't just apply for a subordinate position.

In the election campaign for the state election in Thuringia 2019 , Höcke indicated the possibility of large-scale election fraud. According to Höcke, there are indications that “we do significantly worse in postal votes ” than in votes in the election office. Therefore one should “not take any risks” and it is better to vote at the polling station.

In the state elections in Thuringia in 2019 , Höcke ran as the top candidate. With him, the AfD achieved 23.4 (+12.8) percent of the vote. He initially left it open whether he would run for the AfD's federal board at the AfD federal party conference in November 2019. Gauland claimed that Höcke was not moving the AfD to the right, but was "the center of the party". The wing won so similar electoral successes by Andreas Kalbitz (Brandenburg) and Jörg Urban (Saxony) continues to influence in the federal party. Höcke himself was defeated in the struggle for the direct mandate in the Eichsfeld I constituency to the CDU politician Thadäus König , for whom 49 percent of the voters voted; 21.4 percent gave Höcke their vote.

At the 10th federal party conference of the AfD at the end of November 2019, the critics were punished, according to observers, for their statements about Höcke; For example, the former Rhineland-Palatinate state chairman Uwe Junge was defeated by a Höcke supporter in the elections for the federal executive board and was booed by the delegates.

Relationship to other right-wing groups

In 2014, Höcke gave more interviews in right-wing or extreme right-wing magazines such as Sezession , Junge Freiheit , First! and Compact . When criticized, he replied that he talked to everyone. His central motive for going into politics is the “fight for freedom of expression”. At the end of 2014, Höcke demanded in an internal party e-mail that Paragraphs 86 and 130 of the Criminal Code be abolished, i.e. the dissemination of propaganda material by unconstitutional organizations and incitement to hatred, including Holocaust denial . “Ethically unacceptable opinions” cannot be “avoided by penal norms”. He took over a demand of the NPD.

Höcke is associated with the new right-wing ideologist Götz Kubitschek and is considered to be his “student”, who rhetorically and ideologically coordinates with him in the power struggle in the AfD. In December 2014, the AfD Thuringia met in Kubitschek's Institute for State Policy (IfS); According to the minutes of the meeting, “possibilities for cooperation” were discussed. Höcke claims to draw his views from publications that appear in Kubitschek's publishing house Antaios . According to the new right strategy of “cultural hegemony”, he demands that whoever wants to end the “future prevention policy of the old parties” must “end their conceptual rule”. In May 2016, Höcke arranged a meeting between Gauland and the AfD philosopher Marc Jongen with Kubitschek and Ellen Kositza in order to initiate their acceptance into the AfD. The former AfD board had rejected this. In July 2019 Alice Weidel and Höcke decided, after being mediated by Kubitschek, not to attack each other in public anymore.

Dieter Stein , the editor-in-chief of the new right Junge Freiheit , described Höcke after his participation in the Kyffhäuser meeting in 2019 as a “splitter” and “political will-o'-the-wisp”. Kubitschek then offered Höcke a platform during the secession to advertise his position and to attack Stein, the JF and his opponents within the AfD.

Höcke sees the racist, refugee, xenophobic and Islamophobic Pegida alliance as a trailblazer for AfD electoral success and “parliamentary run-up organization”, which he thanked at the Thuringian AfD party conference in April 2016. He advocates a “blue alliance” with Pegida, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the Front National (FN) in France “against EU totalitarianism”. Unlike the AfD federal executive board, it does not distinguish itself from the right-wing extremist identity movement and has been using key terms similar to these since 2014. In the new right online magazine Blaue Narzisse , he called the AfD an "identity force".

Already at the end of 2014, in the early phase of Pegida, Höcke praised the movement's demands in an interview with the Secession , but criticized the lack of Pagan traditions: “If Pegida is 'committed to the preservation and protection of our Christian-Jewish West', then I am pleased on the one hand, on the other hand I notice the lack of ancient and Germanic roots. "

On May 29, 2016, Höcke appeared at the "Herkules-Kreis" in Friedlos , which some right-wing AfD members had founded three months earlier in Kassel . AfD members such as Andreas Lichert work together with right-wing extremists, former “Reich citizens” and identities, the “Alliance of German Patriots” and the One Percent for Our Country campaign initiated by Kubitschek and Jürgen Elsässer against the admission of refugees . According to its own statements, the circle is open to “politically interested people from the liberal-conservative milieu” and, according to Höcke, is intended to “create a forum for intellectual freedom”. According to media reports, he is supposed to form alliances between local and regional right-wing extremist groups without barriers by “shackling the party season” and strengthening Höcke's role as the figurehead of the right-wing AfD wing. On the occasion of a joint appearance with the Pegida functionary Siegfried Däbritz in Erfurt, Höcke announced that his enemy was not Islam, but that “our greatest enemy” was “ decadence ”.

In November 2016, Höcke publicly defended the eight times convicted Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck and downplayed her seditious crimes as “so-called opinion crimes”. He concealed the fact that the last judgment against Haverbeck was not yet final, and claimed without evidence that offenders with the “right origin” would get away with suspended sentences for much more serious crimes in Germany. At Christmas 2016, Höcke published a stanza of a song on his Facebook page that Herbert Napiersky , a songwriter of the Hitler Youth , had composed in 1940.

In the autumn of 2017, Höcke took part in a Compact Conference of Elsässers, along with the head of Austrian Identities Martin Sellner and Pegida boss Lutz Bachmann , which, according to Antonie Rietzschel, served to network the New Right. After the AfD federal board had lifted the previous ban on cooperation with Pegida, Höcke appeared as a speaker at Pegida for the first time on May 14, 2018. In front of around 1,000 listeners, he described Dresden as the “capital of legitimate resistance” against an allegedly imposed New World Order . Among the “old parties” Germany has become a “despotic banana republic”. That is why one should no longer ask “left or right”, but rather: “Are you for Germany or are you against Germany?” He threatened that Chancellor Angela Merkel would one day have to answer criminally after the “turnaround in this country”. Because she denies "against the letter of the Basic Law that something like the German people would even exist". He claimed a migration policy controlled by dark backers of transatlantic elites with the aim of exchanging people . These forces would have caused wars and genocides. “The people” must not allow themselves to be determined by others, but must decide for themselves.

On September 1, 2018, Höcke called for a "silent march" in Chemnitz . Although he had previously emphasized that “extremists and violent criminals” were not welcome, he stood there next to Lutz Bachmann, Martin Sellner and representatives of banned right-wing extremist organizations. According to extremism researcher Steffen Kailitz , Höcke's wing dominates the AfD in the eastern federal states, forms a bridge to right-wing extremists and has radicalized the AfD into a reservoir for them, so that the NPD has abandoned its initial rejection of the AfD. Höcke's calls for "resistance" and for breaking the law such as the unauthorized protection of the German state borders would probably be understood in parts of the right-wing spectrum as an indirect call for violence and contribute to the belief of many of his supporters that they are on the verge of "overturning the system".

In October 2019, Höcke published a photo on Twitter and Facebook in which Pegida front man Lutz Bachmann , AfD politician Andreas Kalbitz and himself can be seen, along with the slogan: “Five years of Pegida - thank you for five years of peaceful civil protest the street!"

On February 18, 2020, Höcke gave a speech at the 200th Pegida rally in which he accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of a coup because of her statements regarding the events surrounding the prime ministerial election in Thuringia, and accused politicians of "used up parties" of a "mental disturbance" Germany called a “very special madhouse” where patients thought they were the doctors. You have to put Germany "back on its feet" and "put the bottom down again". The “so-called civil society that feeds on tax money” will “unfortunately have to be drained” after power has been taken over. The Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office initiated an investigation on the basis of a complaint for sedition.

In August 2020, in an interview with the MDR , Höcke declared the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany to be over (" Corona is over. And it will not come back!") And spoke positively about the demonstrations by the "lateral thinkers" because they People only exercise their "basic civil rights". Since Höcke had called for participants to take part in a large-scale anti-infection protection demonstration in Berlin at the end of August , the interviewer Lars Sänger pointed out that those who march there do so in company and when requested by organizations that can be clearly assigned to the right-wing camp . Höcke let the opportunities to distance himself from the NPD slip by and instead spoke of the “maximum openness” of the street.

Positions

Family, gender and education policy

In the 2014 state election campaign, Höcke demanded that the “classic family” should be “raised again to a model.” Children should “be raised more in the family”; the gender mainstreaming was to end as an example of "expensive, tax-financed social experiments that serve to abolish the natural gender order" immediately. From Höcke comes the AfD demand for a " three-child family " as a political model. He also wanted to increase the childcare allowance . He claimed that inclusive education for disabled and non-disabled children could not work. There is an unnatural " synchronization " of all genders and " early sexualization of students" with the aim of "dissolving the natural polarity of human beings into two sexes", on which the "higher development of humanity" is based. Instead, he called for targeted elite selection in education. The “polarity of the sexes” should be “cultivated”, among other things for men the “defensiveness, wisdom and leadership” and for women the “intuition, gentleness and devotion”. According to Kemper, Höcke and his current in the AfD represent "a folkish, masculinist , population-political family policy".

In October 2016, Höcke claimed in a Facebook post that Thuringia's state government was promoting an “anal sex workshop” as “training for homosexual men” from funds for school education and was cutting money for school trips. The intended annual meeting of the Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation is funded to a small extent from state budgets, but not from educational funds. The extracurricular workshop was not intended for schoolchildren, but served to provide sex education for adults regardless of their sexual orientation. The Thuringian Ministry of Education cut the budget for school trips at the time because many schools had not previously exhausted it. The foundation and the state government rejected Höcke's misrepresentation as a provocation out of homophobia . They pointed out that the NSDAP had hounded against the sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1920s and drove him into exile. Höcke's defamation continues this tradition.

After the Federal Constitutional Court demanded the option of choosing a third gender in the birth register or the waiver of gender information on November 8, 2017, Höcke compared intersexuality with schizophrenia . The equal treatment of gays and lesbians in marriage law is used “in order to torpedo the traditional family (father, mother and their children) and to install relativism in family politics - for example through the implementation of a ' marriage for all ' or the right of adoption for homosexuals Couples ”. In May 2018, Höcke claimed in the Thuringian state parliament that homosexuality is nowadays not only suggested in German schools as tolerable, but also as exclusive and worth striving for. Although it is to be tolerated, it is "not to be accepted on the basis of our legal norms", as this implies a positive attribution and approval.

Nationalism and Nazi language

At the Erfurt demonstrations in autumn 2015, Höcke called the then SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel a “traitor” and political opponent “rascal”. He called for “Germany not only a thousand years past”, but “also a thousand years future.” The time of the German Empire between 1871 and 1914 was “a wedding of our people”. Such statements are classified as nationalistic exaggeration of the imperial era and deliberate breaking of taboos with recourse to the language of National Socialism . The historian Maik Tellers sees them as a rhetorical tool to make polluted vocabulary acceptable again and to provoke public attention. Höcke avoided clear parallels and chose his formulations in such a way that he could reject the proximity to Nazi language and Nazi ideas as an insinuation. In fact, he deliberately played with associations, for example with Hitler's well-known statement that the “ Third Reich ” led by him would last for 1000 years, and with the National Socialist criminal offense of “ treason ”.

On October 14, 2015 in front of Magdeburg Cathedral , Höcke shouted “Otto, I greet you!” With a view of Otto the Great who was buried there and remembered his victorious battle on the Lechfeld . In 955 this “great king” succeeded in destroying the Hungarians with an army “from all German tribes ... and averting the danger from the West. Germany and Europe were saved. Today it is the Hungarians who defend Europe. ”He also compared an alleged short-term evacuation of a school for refugees to“ fleeing after the war ”. According to Tellers, Höcke knows exactly the historical context of his statements. His “perfidious argument” portrays people who are fleeing war and terror today as a comparable threat to Europe and thus legitimizes a violent defense and longing for an authoritarian leadership figure. As is customary in the extreme right-wing spectrum, it separates the flight and expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe 1945–1950 from National Socialist warfare and tyranny and thus declares Germany to be an innocent victim, today from “rushing masses of refugees”.

On October 18, 2015, one day after the extreme right-wing assassination attempt on Cologne's Mayoress Henriette Reker , Höcke was invited to Günther Jauch's talk show on the subject of "Mob, hate, threaten - is hate socially acceptable?" At the beginning he held up a German flag and declared that this should show "that the AfD speaks the voice of the people against - I have to say this very clearly - old party politics that have gone mad." Then Jauch had Höckes' speech excerpts from Erfurt:

“I see a community! I see a people who want a future! We are the people! ”“ Erfurt, dear friends, is not stuffy, Erfurt is beautiful! Erfurt is beautifully German! And Erfurt should stay beautifully German! [...] The few Turkish children left in Erfurt, they speak Erfurt. But the few German children in Berlin who speak the Kanak language , dear friends. ”“ Let's never forget: The Syrian who comes to us still has his Syria. The Afghan who comes to us still has his Afghanistan, and the Senegalese who comes to us still has his Senegal. If we have lost our Germany, then we no longer have a home. ”“ Thuringians! German! Three thousand years of Europe! A thousand years of Germany! I will not give you up and I know you will not give them up either. ”“ The dreams of fear are growing in our country. Unfortunately, especially for blonde women, they are getting bigger and bigger. And that in your own country, dear friends! This is unbearable!"

The social scientist Felix Knappertsbusch finds in it “typical motifs of ethnocentric rhetoric. With the help of homogenizing collective singulars, migrants are contrasted with an equally homogeneously constructed German 'community'. Immigration appears primarily as a threat to national identity and security ”from“ foreigners ”, who allegedly replace the German language and practice sexual violence against“ blonde ”(as a code for white / German and substitute word for“ race ”) women. "The 'home' to be protected is placed on a quasi-essential basis by referring to '3000 years of Europe' and '1000 years of Germany'." In this way, Höcke depicts being German as a quasi-natural community of descent, which is also ethnically nationally identifiable outgroups are in a self-defense situation . In this way, he consolidates rigid social categorizations and patterns of perception and suggests appropriate defensive reactions. Thus this rhetoric could provoke and intensify discriminatory violence. During the whole conversation, despite sharp criticism, Höcke managed to present his ethnocentric rhetoric as compatible with democratic and egalitarian norms. His initial commitment to the German flag served this purpose.

In the talk show, Höcke affirmed that he wanted to defend a “millennial Germany” and “keep the tried and tested”. Germany imports “social explosives” with the refugees. The risk of rape for blonde German women has increased. There were no inquiries about evidence of this; only the journalist Anja Reschke rejected some things. The appearance was widely seen as an affirmation of the initial question, success for Höcke's demagoguery and failure of the moderator. The talk show guest Justice Minister Heiko Maas failed to point out the republican origin of the German colors black-red-gold and their anti-fascist use by the social democrats in the Weimar Republic .

TV presenter Georg Restle spoke of a “Goebbels tremolo” in Höcke's rhetoric, thus comparing it with the National Socialist Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . The WDR magazine Monitor confirmed this with a video that showed excerpts from Goebbels' Sportpalast speech in addition to statements by Höcke. Other authors published comparisons of quotations. After Höcke's Dresden speech in January 2017, similar media comparisons followed. According to second-hand information from AfD dropout Franziska Schreiber , Höcke is said to have analyzed Goebbels' speeches with Kubitschek and adopted set pieces from them in a modified form. He and other right-wing AfD representatives had studied books, speeches and teaching materials from National Socialism "because they were looking for the formula that led to success in the 1930s".

At the Kyffhäuser meeting in 2018, Höcke described the AfD in front of around 1,000 listeners as the “only relevant people 's party in Germany” and, with reference to a rhetorical question from Bernhard von Bülow in 1899, explained whether the Germans would rather be “hammer or anvil”: Today loud the question “sheep or wolf. And I, dear friends, mean here that we will decide on this question: wolf. ”The“ time of the wolf ”has now come. If opponents obstructed an AfD demonstration, the police would henceforth be given five minutes and then appear with 1000 "patriots" behind the counter-demonstration. He had previously asked the Federal Police not to follow their superiors any more, otherwise they would be called to account after “the people” came to power. The animal comparison probably alludes to Goebbels' statement about the course of the NSDAP from 1927 in the magazine Der Attack : “We don't come as friends, not even as neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf breaks into the flock of sheep, that's how we come! ”According to the journalist Marc Röhlig, Höcke deliberately avoided a direct quotation that could be attacked and chose a metaphor for the AfD's attack course whose origins and meaning are understood by nationalists. In front of the police present, those who listened to the speech then physically attacked journalists.

In September 2019, Höcke said in a ZDF interview that he did not believe "that there is a generally applicable definition of what a Nazi diction and what Nazi language is". Corresponding terms existed before and after the Nazi era. Meanwhile, all were " fighting words " that a "political and media establishment defined" would and "are removed from the language" so you should order "to achieve a political objective." Höcke spoke of a tendency in Germany to “narrow the linguistic and opinion corridors ever further”. Critics who accuse him of being linguistically close to National Socialism are "job markers" who "want to contaminate what is supposedly no longer sayable". After around 15 minutes, Höcke broke off the conversation, spoke of “massive consequences” and stated: “We don't know what's coming.” When asked what he meant by that, Höcke replied: “Maybe I'll be one interesting personal, political person in this country. Could be. "Previously, Höcke's spokesman Günther Lachmann had intervened, accused ZDF of" emotionalized questions "and demanded that they" simply repeat ". The interviewing ZDF journalist David Gebhard , on the other hand, had stated that one would come into the sensitive area of freedom of the press if one should ask the questions so often until Höcke was satisfied with the answers. The editor-in-chief of ZDF Peter Frey also emphasized that one had to report if the party crossed red lines. It was an "exemplary interview". The federal chairman of the German Association of Journalists Frank Überall commented that it was right not to “soften” the interview in Höcke's sense; Höcke had "opened another dark chapter in the AfD's disturbed handling of press freedom in general and critical journalists in particular". At the time , Jens Jessen criticized the interviewer's approach as unfair: Höcke was confronted "like a raid" with "apparent pieces of evidence [...] that were also obtained in a way that was more worthy of cabaret than journalistically serious". Sociologist Frances Schutzbach holding it in the mirror , however, for "wise to refuse someone like Höcke his usual playing fields to enter" "to deconstruct the ideological dimensions of his actions" and. Höcke is "not about daily politics, but about change in society as a whole". With the demolition and his threats, Höcke “showed his authoritarian core”. According to Schutzbach, however, Höcke was able to stage himself again as a "victim of the media and brave taboo breaker" with the interview. In October 2019, Höcke canceled a planned interview with the Thüringer Allgemeine . The newspaper left the space where the interview should have appeared. A spokesman announced that Höcke did not want to give any more interviews until the state elections at the end of October. Höcke also canceled an interview with the broadcaster MDR Aktuell. The AfD country spokesman Stefan Möller , who was interviewed instead, referred to “bad experiences” and also mentioned the ZDF interview.

racism

At the invitation of Götz Kubitschek, Höcke spoke on November 21, 2015 at the IfS about German refugee policy. He claimed that evolution had genetically produced a different reproductive strategy in Africans than in Europeans. The " r-strategy " of the Africans aims at the highest possible birth rates, the "K-strategy" of the Europeans on the other hand, to make optimal use of the available living space. Currently, the "life-affirming African spread type meets the self-negating European placeholder type". As long as Europe is ready to absorb Africa's high population surplus, this will radically change the indigenous population structure and inevitably lead to a “state collapse”. Therefore a complete closure of the borders of Europe for migrants from Africa is absolutely necessary.

The speech was released as a sound recording on December 10, 2015 and was widely criticized as racism . The theorem of the two reproductive strategies comes from essays by Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson on insular biogeography (1963; 1967). The Canadian racist John Philippe Rushton transferred this theory to humans in his book "Race, Evolution and Behavior" (2005) and claimed that genital and hormonal differences between "Negrids" (black Africans), "Mongolids" (Asians) and "Europids" ( light-skinned Europeans) would have genetically created a preference for their own group and rejection of “foreign races”. Andreas Vonderach reviewed the book in 2006 in the IfS organ “Sezession” and alleged, contrary to the facts, that Rushton's theses had not been refuted and were increasingly accepted by biologists. Since Höcke cited secession as the source of his theory, Rushton is considered to be his source of ideas.

The cultural scientist Jobst Paul analyzed Höcke's speech as “racist demagogy ” and pseudoscientific biologism , which transfers laws from the plant and animal world to humans. Höcke's statements implied a purely instinctual sexual behavior on the part of Africans, excluded socio-economic factors for birth rates and suggested that Europeans, for the sake of self-preservation, must abolish the human rights of migrants and let them die in Africa or on Europe's borders. Höcke thus falls back on the dehumanizing argumentation patterns of social Darwinism known from the 19th century . For Robert Lüdecke ( Amadeu Antonio Foundation ), Höcke's speech is “in line with the racial theory of National Socialism ” and is reminiscent of “the theory of a master race ”, since the European is portrayed as a better person and the African as an invader. The foundation therefore had the speech checked for relevance under criminal law. The extremism researcher Hajo Funke criticized that Höcke saw, like National Socialism, “a race war between the African race and the European race”. Funke demanded that the AfD must draw conclusions. The political scientist Werner J. Patzelt also attested Höcke “clear racism” in an opinion on the AfD. The physician Andreas Heinz emphasized that Höcke's theory, which came from Rushton, was only more primitive than the National Socialist race theory, no less misanthropic.

The evolutionary biologist Andreas Beyer refuted Höcke's theory:

• Because the differences between the genomes of the species Homo sapiens sapiens are only 0.1%, the assumption that different sexual behavior of different groups of this species is genetically determined is "completely absurd".
• Since this species only lived in Africa for around 190,000 years, genetic and cultural diversity is greatest there. To see Africans as a homogeneous group with a common reproductive strategy is "naive" and not verifiable.
• The birth rates are very uneven across Africa and Europe. High rates were also common in the industrialized nations to the point of the pill break . Their decline can only be explained historically and socio-economically, for example through the development of a welfare state and an educational society.
• Höcke's ascription that one type is “life-affirming” and the other “self-denying” is unfounded and mixes hereditary behavior patterns with worldview and attitude to life. Many children also have nothing to do psychologically with “zest for life”, few have nothing to do with “self-denial” of their parents.

Höcke's ideas are therefore completely untenable and factual. He mixes and twisted facts that he ought to know with half-truths and false statements: this is what characterizes every pseudo-scientific argument. However, because of the well-known genocidal effect of biological images of man, politicians must be required to be appropriately sensitive to language and content.

Without commenting on the content, Höcke reported that he decidedly reject the “completely absurd racial theory of National Socialism”. It contradicts his Christian image of man. At the presentation of the AfD position paper on leading culture , identity, patriotism in May 2018, he accused German politicians of “ dissolving identity and destroying homes” and spoke of “ multicultural extremists”, whose demand for “colorful diversity” involved the “mixing of the population Groups of people of different skin color ”. The system of morals, values ​​and norms is destroyed by the "mass import" of people from foreign cultures. In an interview he spoke out against the integration of refugees and in favor of maintaining their “ability to return”. The right of asylum is only a temporary guest right. His goal is to "get rid of" 99 percent of immigrants who are not entitled to political asylum, and recognized refugees also have to leave the country again. At the “Kyffhäusertreffen” in July 2019, Höcke equated migration and its alleged effects on the local population with war by saying that “the policy of open borders that has been practiced for decades [...] is the responsibility of the old parties irrational immigration policy made us bleed financially as if we had lost another war ”. The killing offense at Frankfurt Central Station in 2019 , in which a presumably mentally ill Eritrean (who has been living in Switzerland since 2006) pushed an 8-year-old boy with fatal consequences in front of an incoming ICE, assessed Höcke (who denies the meteorological man-made climate change ) as the result of one "Human-made [...] social climate change in this country", the beginning of which he locates in September 2015, when the borders to Germany were opened for refugees.

History revisionism

On the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust (January 27th) 2015, Höcke and the AfD Thuringia wanted to lay a wreath in the former Buchenwald concentration camp . Its inscription “We commemorate all victims of the Buchenwald concentration and special camp” equated Nazi victims with victims of Stalinism and thus attacked the Holocaust remembrance of the concentration camp survivors. Höcke claimed “a certain asymmetry in the current culture of remembrance ”. After intervention by the memorial site management under Volkhard Knigge and protests from former concentration camp inmates , the AfD changed the inscription. The social scientist Samuel Salzborn classified the action as a targeted provocation of a debate about the reinterpretation of history and the use of terms in the sense of the new right word-apprehension strategy.

At the “Kyffhäuser” meeting on June 4, 2016, Höcke declared that the AfD was “the last evolutionary chance of our dear fatherland”. The wing guarantees that she will act accordingly. The "over 1000-year history" is "to be appropriated again". Myths like the Kyffhauser saga help in the current "turning point" to "open up a new myth for our people" and to enforce it with the AfD. "The permanent disgrace and ridicule of our history has made us rootless. ... Coming to terms with the past as a permanent task for society as a whole paralyzes a people." That is why the Germans are "defenseless against foreign cultures and ideologies", "German students are bullied", "women are immorally touched" and "our young men were beaten in their own country and sometimes even killed for no reason." That is why memories of the Nazi era should be replaced: "We have been building memorials for 70 years, it is high time we finally erecting monuments again!" In addition, the " Thymos tension", the furor teutonicus , the "lost masculinity" of the German people should be regained. The "old parties" have frozen and "degenerated" in terms of content. He enjoyed her crash, wanted to see her “on the ground” and agreed with the critics: “Yes, I want a different Germany!” - For journalist and author Mely Kiyak , this speech documents Höcke's program: He and the wing wanted a complete departure from the Since 1945 there has been a social consensus to learn from the Nazi era in order to make its return impossible. In order to make the Holocaust forget and to regain “the purity and bravery of the 'dear' German people”, Höcke used constant allusions, quotes and images from the language of National Socialism .

On January 17, 2017, Höcke performed for the JA in the Ballhaus Watzke in Dresden (according to the invitation "Capital of Resistance"). Pegida stewards provided the hall protection; the weekly Pegida demonstration was canceled. Höcke appeared with Kubitschek ; Jürgen Elsässer's right-wing magazine Compact broadcast his speech on YouTube , while other journalists were denied entry. Höcke said of the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe : "... we Germans, our people, are the only people in the world who have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital." The culture of remembrance since 1945 is a " stupid coping policy ”. Germany must implement a "180 degree change in the politics of memory". He compared the Allied air raids on Dresden with the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The bombing of German cities should have “robbed us of our collective identity”, “destroyed us stump and stump” and “cleared our roots”. “With the re-education that began after 1945 ”, that was almost achieved. The German state of mind is still that of “a brutally defeated people”. Instead of bringing the young generation in the educational institutions into contact with the many German “great benefactors, the well-known, world-shaking philosophers, musicians, brilliant discoverers and inventors”, German history is made “lousy and ridiculous”. Richard von Weizsäcker's speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the National Socialist tyranny (1985) was directed “against one's own people”. Germany is threatened by the "import of foreign peoples". There is “no moral obligation to dissolve yourself”, but rather to pass on German culture, prosperity and “still existing state welfare” to the next generation. The AfD must form a “substantive fundamental opposition” against “Luckists” within it and together with befriended social movements. It is "the last evolutionary and the last peaceful chance for our fatherland". It needs their "complete victory". At best, it may enter into a coalition as a stronger “senior partner”, but must aim for 51% of the mandates.

The speech received a lot of attention and criticism in the German media. According to extremism researcher Armin Pfahl-Traughber , Höcke wanted to initiate a nationalist revision of history and legitimize political steps "away from the norms of the democratic constitutional state". Historian Martin Sabrow saw a “cultural memory taboo breach”: Höcke brought “the language of fascism back into the present” and questioned the historical enlightenment . Justus Bender, Matthias Meisner and others saw Höcke's appearance as a “targeted breach of taboo” in accordance with the AfD strategy of “carefully planned provocations”. The speech hardly differed from speeches of the 1930s from the “ capital of the movement ” Munich .

On the same day, Höcke claimed that he had called the Holocaust rather than the memory of the Holocaust "shame" and used an expression that was already established. Linguists, on the other hand, refer to the context: “To plant oneself” means “to spread inappropriately”. In addition Höcke had the former CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss quoted as a final stroke had pleaded with the supposedly crippling "overcoming the past", and surpassed him by demanding a reminder political U-turn. Höcke clearly felt the Holocaust memorial as a disgrace for the German people. For the political scientist Jürgen W. Falter , Höcke unmasked himself with the speech "as a real right-wing radical". For the linguist Peter Schlobinski , the context of speech shows Höcke's right-wing extremist sentiments. As the German scholar Heinrich Detering pointed out, in his speech immediately after describing the alleged war aims of the Allies - according to Höcke, a campaign of extermination against the physical existence of the German people, including an identity-robbing "re-education" - the "monument of shame" was mentioned. Therefore the “shame” for Höcke is not the event remembered by the memorial, as he subsequently claimed, but the memorial itself, as an expression for the “state of mind [...] of a totally defeated people”. In Höcke's sentences “... I don't want to make it easy for you. I will show you a long and hard way. ”Detering recognized“ the Führer principle , renewed in Dresden 2017 and congealed into an authoritarian syntax . ” Josef Schuster ( Central Council of Jews in Germany ) criticized the speech as an expression of an anti-Semitic and misanthropic character of the AfD:“ I would not have dared to believe that 70 years after the Shoah such statements by a politician in Germany would be possible. ”Federal and state politicians and foreign media also criticized Höcke's speech. While AfD deputy Alexander Gauland expressed solidarity with Höcke, party leader Frauke Petry said in the new right-wing Junge Freiheit that Höcke had "become a burden for the party with his solo efforts and constant cross-shots".

On January 26, 2017, the President of the State Parliament, Christian Carius Höcke , excluded the Thuringian State Parliament from organizing the international Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation refused Höcke's participation in the memorial service in the Buchenwald concentration camp because he had defamed the public remembrance of the extermination of the Jews. When Höcke arrived anyway, the director of the memorial had his house ban enforced by the police.

In an interview in March 2017, Höcke called it a big problem that Hitler was portrayed as "absolutely evil". There is no black and white in history. Even the worst felon may have something good. When asked what was good about Hitler, he explained that he had not said that there was anything good [about him], but it was logically impossible that a person “is only dark”. After criticism, Höcke claimed that the statement had been torn from the purely philosophical context. Gauland defended him: Höcke had meant that Hitler could not be taken out of history and had to be viewed historically. The fact that he came to power through elections and was promoted is excluded by the term 'absolutely evil'. According to Ronald Lauder ( Die Welt ), however, Höcke sounded “like an advocate for Hitler”. Melanie Amann (Spiegel) asked what the undisputed self-evident fact that Hitler was only human in all crimes contributes to the historical discourse, "if not distraction, relativization, trivialization".

In his conversation volume Never twice in the same river (June 2018), Höcke reinterprets European and German colonialism as a success story: One should not “look at“ colonization ”in an exclusively negative way. From 1850 to 1918 there was a “build-up of prosperity” in the colonies “from the spirit and practical ability of the Germans”. With this, the AfD started a campaign in the summer of 2018 against the return of works of art stolen during the colonial era.

anti-Semitism

In a lecture for the “Junge Alternative” in 2015, Höcke said: “ Christianity and Judaism represent an antagonism . That is why I cannot do anything with the term Christian-Jewish West.” Höcke confirmed the statement in response to media inquiries. However, he did not associate any criticism of Judaism with it. This is "a great religion". The meeting philosophy of the Jewish religious philosopher Martin Buber had a strong influence on him.

On December 7th, 2015 Höcke praised on Facebook the revanchist and anti-Semitic book foundations of a new policy by Wolfgang Gedeon as an independent but “aligned search movement” in the AfD, wrote that the author “on the existential threat to the European peoples and their cultures ”as well as in“ necessary clarity [...] name the enemy of our freedom in diversity ”, and recommended it to all AfD supporters. Gedeon was supposed to be excluded from the AfD at the time because of anti-Semitic statements and, in turn, had resigned from the state parliament of the AfD Baden-Württemberg . In the work praised by Höcke, he declared that "Americanism" was the "old Jewish belief in the new earthly Jerusalem", which was opposed to the Christian belief in the kingdom of God on the other side . The USA is concerned with the gradual annexation of the western world, among other things through "population exchange" and "systematic Islamization of Christian states". To do this, they intervened in World War II , not to fight fascism. Höcke judged this conspiracy theory positively: in his opinion, "the great conformity in the form of human rights and religious extremism" is the "enemy of our freedom". Later, Höcke showed solidarity with Gedeon's opponent Jörg Meuthen against Frauke Petry for reasons of tactical power.

With reference to these and similar statements from Höcke, the political scientists Marc Grimm and Bodo Kahmann call him an "ideologically stable anti-Semite". The "anti-Semitic enemy image construction" is his "ethnic agitation [...] inherent". Höcke's anti-Americanism would also "convey anti-Semitic meaning [...] and establish a connection to anti-Semitic discourses".

According to the historian and right-wing extremism researcher Helmut Kellershohn , Höcke uses a “classic anti-Semitic image” with his statement of an “international money power complex with its uncanny power structure ”. Matthias Kamann ( Die Welt ) expressed himself in a similar way : In speeches and interviews, Höcke “gathered all elements of anti-Semitic stereotypes apart from the word 'Jew'”, such as “a small money power elite”, namely “a few dark men in the background” "Spirit of dissolution between peoples" would steer towards a "totalitarian rule of a new type". Henry Bernhard ( Deutschlandfunk ) commented on these statements with the words that Höcke does not warn against “ World Jewry ”, but “whoever wants to understand understands”. Compared to open anti-Semites like Wolfgang Gedeon , Höcke is "rhetorically more skilful".

After the attack in Halle (Saale) in 2019 , the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) accused Höcke of being “one of these intellectual arsonists” “when it comes to spreading more anti-Semitism in our country again.”

According to the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Höcke used antisemitic rhetoric and subliminally used anti-Semitic ideas in a speech on the occasion of the "South German Wing Meeting" in early May 2019. He described the EU as a " neo-liberal globalization agency that executes the destructive and perverse demon of George Soros ". With reference to Soros, a US-Hungarian billionaire of the Jewish faith who promotes civil society actors in several countries, according to the Constitutional Protection report, "an individual is assumed to secretly control the fate of entire states and in doing so deliberately cause mischief." in this accusation “the expression of the imagination of Jewish power as a simplified explanation for complex social contexts is characteristic of anti-Semitic propaganda”. In the same context, Höcke's statements should be placed in which he referred to the Chancellor as a “Soros customer” and thus assumed the “cartel party politicians” to be dependent on “a closed transatlantic elite”.

"Never twice in the same river"

In a conversation with Sebastian Hennig published as a book ( Never twice in the same river , June 2018), Höcke unfolds his political views and goals. Separate chapters deal with a “popular opposition” and a “renovation” of Germany and Europe. Following Niccolò Machiavelli's treatise The Prince of 1513, Höcke claims a power energy ( “virtù” ) of the people, which is particularly evident in individual leaders ( “uomo virtuoso” ). According to the ancient constitutional cycle , he depicts history as a sequence of forms of rule and their decline. Currently, democracy is "in the last stage of degeneration " of ochlocracy . The "national self-hatred" and the "denial of one's own" have increased to a "delusion of self-extinguishing". The “international financial sharks”, “modern casino capitalism” and the “political-media establishment” pushed, according to Höcke, a “global capitalist devastation” with the “ neoliberal migration dogma ” in order to, among other things, favor the German people in favor of an “economic to abolish useful species ”. Leading “ green or left-wing politicians and some media people” would cheer “about our imminent death by the population exchange ”. The inclusion of “eleven million foreign immigrants” as “part of the demographic strategy of the federal government” takes place “with the express acceptance of the inevitably associated social tensions”. Only a leader could "put a broken community back in order as the sole holder of state power". The current “ New World Order ” must be replaced by a division of culturally and ethnically homogeneous large areas. The “Intervention prohibition of foreign powers” ​​demanded by Carl Schmitt in 1939 should be supplemented by the “Investment prohibition of foreign capital” and the “Migration prohibition of foreign populations”. In the European metropolitan area, Germany has the main task of pushing Islam back to "its" area as far as the Bosporus , and then, like the German Empire and the Nazi regime, could work with Islam, because if one had "not had the masses of Orientals and Muslims in Europe" , one would have "no elementary problem with Islam either". This “large-scale remigration project” will take generations and can only be realized “through the most violent procedures”. In the “hoped-for turning phase”, “hard times lie ahead, because the longer a patient refuses to undergo the urgent operation, the harder the necessary cuts will inevitably become”. This “well-tempered cruelty” (quote from Peter Sloterdijk ) is necessary in a “state in which poison and assassination have become common weapons” (quote from Hegel ): “Existential crises require extraordinary action. The responsibility for this is then borne by those who have brought about the necessity of these measures with their unspeakable politics. "Völker describes Höcke as" body and soul units ", then" the body cannot simply be separated from the soul and bodies just have certain manifestations ".

According to Höcke, the AfD in parliaments, a “protesting civic base” and a “further front from the frustrated parts of the state and security apparatus” should resist “the fortress of the established”, which must be “put under pressure”, because they would have to pay for the “insane policy of the rulers”. State officials should use their right of remonstration against official orders. The future also depends on “male honor and dignity”. These virtues are also in demand "if we unfortunately lose a few sections of the people who are too weak or unwilling to oppose the advancing Africanization, orientalization and Islamization ". Nevertheless, according to Höcke, “in the end there would still be enough members of our people [...] with whom we can open a new chapter in our history”. In a comparison with the “brave and cheerful Gauls”, Höcke illustrates the “national community” he locates in the countryside: “If all else fails”, one would retreat to rural refuges, and “the new Romans who live in the neglected cities reside ”, could“ bite their teeth against the Teutonic asterixes and obelixes ”. One day, “a reconquest” will begin from these Gallic villages.

According to Kailitz, Höcke is more open than the NPD in advocating a comprehensive “repatriation” of migrants from Germany; Kailitz sees Höcke's definition of peoples “completely anchored in an ethnic-racist worldview”. In Höcke's words, Kemper recognizes a repetition of the demands made by the “Hercules Circle” from the neo-Nazi scene in 2016: He continuously advocates a “fascist agenda” and a “völkisch Machiavellian ”, which, among other things, follows Benito Mussolini's Machiavelli reception. In the words of Marcel Tschekow, Höcke's ideas can only be realized through a “right-wing radical revolution”, which he describes as “renovation” to an absolute monarchy. In the “third front” of his “popular opposition”, he takes into account the strong presence of police officers, Bundeswehr soldiers and judicial officers in the AfD, relies on a split and, in the long term, on the disempowerment of the executive through a coup or coup. According to Raoul Löbbert, Höcke cultivates his "hatred of Islam and parliamentarism as an ecstasy of devotion to the great", romanticizes politics and elevates it to a "substitute for religion" inaccessible to arguments and facts. According to Hajo Funke, Höcke is pursuing “a strategy of unleashing and instilling resentment and violence” with the aim of civil war. He represents a fascism as a "mythical understanding of the nation that wants to enforce a mass movement by all means - including those of violence and thus beyond democratic procedures based on the rule of law - and to this end on an authoritarian or totalitarian political strategy (Führer principle)."

"Social patriotism"

Höcke's economic model is an “organic market economy”, which he opposes immigration, integration and “global interest capital ”. He stands in the tradition of fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, which with the anatomical image of a “healthy national body” at the same time excluded the foreign, the other than the sick. Höcke regards “material liberalism ” as the ideological opponent of the desired “nationally organic” economy , which has led to the “cultural harmonization of this country”. In 2019 he spoke of “EU apparatchiks and their willing executors in the old German parties”, who “only dream of Europe as an economic-technocratic settlement and exploitation area for all people in the world, cleared of the annoying autochthons, that is, indigenous peoples and their national cultures, that is, of us, those who have been living here for some time ”. According to the neo-right ethnopluralism , it places homogeneous ethnic groups against an allegedly threatening “ globalization totalitarianism ”, “order against dissolution and differentiation against conformity”.

In order to make the AfD the strongest party in future state elections in the east and to win disappointed voters from the SPD and Die Linke , he is increasingly adopting tones critical of capitalism : since May 2017, he has only been calling for “solidary patriotism” and a “citizens' pension” financed by taxes for Germans. He attributes reduced social benefits to the reception of refugees by the “old parties”. Their “ neoliberal ideology ” betrayed their own people, “turned states into the appendages of globally operating corporations”, led to a decline in investments, wages, pensions and the decline of the people's parties, especially the SPD. Höckes social-populist rhetoric is supported by Gauland against the economically liberal AfD wing and is similar to that of the Front National in France, for example his slogan of ethnic “identity and solidarity”. Before the AfD federal party congress in 2018, he said that “the little people” would be “more involved and the social achievements of 150 years of the labor movement would be defended against the destructive forces of predatory capitalism”. In doing so, Höcke joins the campaigns by Götz Kubitschek and Oliver Hilburger for the election of right-wing works councils , which rely on the considerable approval of AfD positions among unionized workers.

Against values ​​and democracy education

In his detailed "interview" with Sebastian Hennig, Höcke expressed his contempt for the "do-gooders" who had grown up in "leaden and deadly care" and should never have "plunged their knees bloody", as well as the "mediocre piggy- Smart figures of party democracy ”and generally the“ inflated foam of values ​​”of Western society. He describes the commitment to universal human rights as “a very special kind of ethnic cleansing”. In addition, he claims to have perceived a “pogrom-like atmosphere against the right” and even claims that “especially the AfD politicians and their supporters [...] have to suffer from the political brutalisation”.

Like the AfD associations in other federal states, Höcke and AfD Thuringia run a campaign against democracy and education projects in schools, such as class trips to concentration camp memorials and lessons with witnesses of the Nazi era. In an open letter to all Thuringian schools (October 2018), Höcke and Wiebke Muhsal alleged violations of the school's duty of neutrality and "one-sided political indoctrination and influence" by teachers, which worked towards "exclusion and discrimination of certain views". In addition, the AfD is demanding clarification of complaints from students or parents about politically non-neutral teachers with parliamentary inquiries and letters to individual schools. The Ministry of Education said that the AfD letter was legally unassailable. However, teachers should “not be intimidated by right-wing machinations like the teacher registration portal”. Teachers can get support from the ministry at any time. Headmasters could decide for themselves how to deal with “general and unrelated Infopost”. The Thuringian Teachers' Association stated that the AfD was creating moods and indirectly trying to dictate their behavior to the schools. Diversity of opinion must be preserved and opposing points of view must be discussed with the students. But teachers should be able to express their own political opinion. The teachers felt “annoyed” that the AfD was constantly generating attention with “provocative statements without any real content”. Instead, in accordance with its democratic duties, it should constructively participate in improving the "undoubtedly problematic educational situation" in Thuringia. The Thuringian School Directors Association sharply criticized the AfD letters. Teachers are not neutral, but are obliged to follow the Basic Law and educate students to democracy.

Reference to the peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1989

In 2019, Höcke drew parallels between the peaceful revolution in the GDR of 1989 and the current situation:

“Yes, dear friends, it feels like it did in the GDR again . But that is what we promise each other here today: We will never allow ourselves to be led into a new GDR again, we will not bow down. [...] The East is rising! Let's get our country back. "

According to the sociologist Greta Hartmann and the cultural scientist Alexander Leistner, the narrative of the resistance against the elites, who allegedly no longer implemented the will of the people, shaped the AfD election campaign, especially in the East German state elections in 2019. According to the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, Höcke played down this not only the GDR dictatorship, but aims to "destroy [...] what the revolution of 1989 and the civil rights activists of 1989 stood for and stood for: the establishment of an open society ".

On October 3, 2019, the day of German unity, Höcke said that in 2019 the Federal Republic was “not yet a new GDR that was pure totalitarianism”; he would describe it “as a democratically constituted state”.

reception

scientist

According to social scientist Alexander Häusler , Höcke showed sympathy for the “ Islamophobic positions” of Thilo Sarrazin and “no fear of contact with the right wing”. Höcke belongs to a camp in the AfD oriented towards the New Right, which sounds “often folk-nationalistic” and whose positions could be understood as a “direct declaration of war” to the then party spokesman Bernd Lucke. Höcke and Poggenburg had bundled the anti-Lucke course in the AfD with the Erfurt resolution. With this, their nationalist nationalist forces initiated Lucke's replacement as party chairman (“the first fundamental turn in power”). In the late summer of 2015, the AfD's Höcke wing mobilized right-wing marches together with Pegida supporters, hooligans and neo-Nazis in front of the Erfurt Cathedral against the admission of refugees, thus initiating an active "movement phase" of the AfD with partially fascist moves. Because of Höcke's speeches at the “Institute for State Policy” (IfS) in November 2015, in the Dresdner Brauhaus (January 2017) and against the construction of a mosque in Erfurt (January 28, 2018), the political scientists Gero Neugebauer and Karl-Rudolf Korte also refer to Höcke as "Clearly right-wing extremist" or "right-wing extremist völkisch". According to Gero Neugebauer, it is evident that Höcke wants to bring the AfD on the path of the NPD and thus make it compete with the NPD and other right-wing extremist small parties and endanger its previous profile as a “right-wing populist national-conservative party legitimized by elections”.

As early as 2015, Andreas Kemper counted Höcke to the “fundamentalist wing” of a split New Right and attested him at least “right-wing extremist ideology fragments”. Like Roger Griffin in Höcke, one could speak of a " palingenetic ultra-nationalism and thus of a fascist ideology". In Höcke's 2015 election campaign speeches, David Bebnowski from the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research noted a "style typical of right-wing extremists" with "national-chauvinistic tones", for example his statement that minarets in Europe are "symbols of land grabbing" that are of "a continent dominated by Islam" would announce. Helmut Kellershohn (2016) counts Höcke to the "new right wing in the AfD". A study by the “Competence Center for Right-Wing Extremism” at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in January 2016 attests that Höcke is close to the ideology of the NPD.

The right-wing extremism expert Hajo Funke sees Höcke's rhetoric as an example of “brutalizing the language” and describes him, like a large part of the AfD party leadership, as “right-wing radical”. Höcke dominated a "fascist agitation ", visible for example in Günther Jauch and the Erfurt demonstrations. Basically he said: “The Syrians who come to us still have Syria . If we - through the Syrians - have lost our Germany, then we no longer have a home. ”Something more infamous can hardly be imagined. The same applies to the allegation that blonde women are raped. Höcke's statements were unleashed in their racist, folk resentment; he argues biologically-racist. Höcke is "an authoritarian agitator for an extremely right-wing political and social concept" who cultivates a "dark language that conjures up a deadly dangerous enemy"; it is a question of folk-nationalistic " extremism ".

For the political scientist Markus Linden , Höcke gave “ethnic speeches” at the demonstrations in East Germany. The historian Norbert Frei sometimes sees Höcke's terminology as "borrowing from the Nazi movement of the Weimar period". For the political scientist Richard Stöss , Höcke has “good contacts with representatives of moderate right-wing extremism”; he “probably does not fundamentally reject an opening of the AfD in this direction”.

The right-wing extremism researcher Armin Pfahl-Traughber bases his assessment of the AfD as a right-wing extremist party essentially on Höcke's statements: his racist speech passage at IfS (2015), statements in Dresden (2017), where he compared Angela Merkel with the GDR regent Erich Honecker , the The federal government as the “regime” and the AfD as the “last evolutionary [...] peaceful chance”, and his statements in the interview book (“A few corrections and reforms will not be enough. But German unconditionality will guarantee that we will Approach the matter thoroughly and fundamentally. Once the turning point has come, we Germans don't do things by halves ”). Höcke announced an escalation of violence as an option for action and a system change. His requested “180 degree turn in the politics of memory” should subordinate a scientific historical image and criticism of National Socialism to one's own political interests and turn it into its opposite, a “rather positive image”. In the application for a party exclusion procedure, Frauke Petry Höcke compared speeches directed “directly against the constitutional order” with those of Hitler in 1932 and thus even classified him as a National Socialist and not just a right-wing extremist. Because Höcke remained an AfD member, the AfD had to be attributed his opinions.

For the historian and anti-Semitism researcher Wolfgang Benz , Höcke is “an avowed ethnic racist” whose attitude resembles that of Hitler in 1919/20. "The accident began back then with populism, provocation and the principle of lying": That is why one could not turn the danger of Höcke and the AfD off. Their success in a few years is cause for real concern.

At a memorial service for the victims of National Socialism in the Thuringian state parliament (January 25, 2019), the Holocaust researcher Götz Aly Höcke, who was present, named a “right-wing extremist ideologist”. Höcke's statements showed clear parallels to the Nazi ideology: He claimed, for example, a “brutal displacement of the Germans from their traditional settlement area”, which was “part of the demographic strategy of the federal government”. Just as Hitler agitated for the struggle against “international, Jewish-dominated capital”, so Höcke spoke of “structures of the global money power complex”. For him, national socialism and the national community become "solidarity patriotism". There is a risk that many German families will gloss over the involvement of their own ancestors in Nazi crimes. To attribute responsibility for these acts to only a few Germans and to exclude the Holocaust perpetrators from German history is historically wrong.

According to Helmut Kellershohn (2019), Höcke shows through the targeted and updated use of ethnic terms that he “has an intellectual fascist potential”. As a " plagiarist ", he used certain terms and aggressively tried as a "mood-maker [...] to mobilize masses, including from the neo-Nazi camp". The leader ideology, a fascist element, served Höcke strongly and offered himself as a “savior”.

The political scientist Matthias Quent described Höcke as "pre-fascists", in the tradition of those who wanted a " conservative revolution " and who paved the way for National Socialism before 1933 by destroying trust in liberal democracy. Höcke act, write and speak fascistically. Based on the MDR interview in August 2020, Quent pointed out the ambivalence of such an interview and the fundamental problem of offering right-wing extremists this form of presentation. It is a "situation in which you can only go wrong" less. Höcke always responded to very specific questions with threat scenarios, global threats and stories of doom. According to Quent, Höcke “could have been introduced and introduced as one of the most important right-wing extremist hate preachers in Germany. That still would not have solved the fundamental dilemma of whether one must give the intolerant the space to abolish tolerance or at least work towards it ”.

The historian Hannes Heer sees Höcke as the one “who designed the program for the fascist part of the AfD”. He was not interested in local issues, but instead dared to “take the big hit” and tried to “dig up the entire politics of remembrance and address the issue of migration”. As a history teacher, he takes "images and gestures from this world" during his appearances.

dishes

On July 3, 2015, the Justice Committee of the Thuringian State Parliament lifted Höcke's parliamentary immunity at the request of the Erfurt Public Prosecutor's Office in order to enable investigations into fraud allegations . Höcke should have settled bogus salaries for a constituency employee. The investigation was closed in August 2016 due to a lack of suspicion.

After his appearance at Günther Jauch and again after his speech at the IfS in October 2015, Höcke was charged with sedition. The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Hesse , which was responsible for him, stated at the time that under the Hessian and Thuringian law on deputies, civil servants who are not on duty had no political neutrality and moderation obligations. Their rights and duties were suspended with officials elected to parliaments. In December 2015, Höcke was charged with sedition. Thereupon Josef Kraus , President of the German Teachers' Association , publicly questioned whether he could return to school. When the charges were dropped in January 2016, Hesse's Minister of Education, Ralph Alexander Lorz (CDU), declared that he would do everything legally possible to prevent Höcke's return if necessary. The lawyer specializing in civil service law Gerd Tersteegen said that civil servants on leave could also violate their official duties. Certain statements by Höcke are “quite suitable to initiate disciplinary proceedings because of the damage to the employer’s reputation”, even without criminal investigations. He advised the Ministry to do so.

After Höcke's Dresden speech, the Dresden public prosecutor's office investigated him, but closed the investigation on March 1, 2017: Höcke objectively criticized the way he came to terms with the past. There was no evidence of hatred of the people. Since he did not address Nazi victims directly, there is no criminal denigration of the memory of the deceased .

In May 2017, a photo montage on Höcke's Facebook page falsified the subtitle of the book by Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas Stand up instead of ducking away. A strategy against the law to “A strategy against the law”. The Piper Verlag , which published the book, then sued Höcke and the AfD to cease and desist because the original title was not recognizable and its alienation violated the company's personal rights as a legal person. In October 2018, the Munich Regional Court overturned an injunction against Höcke and dismissed the lawsuit because the photomontage did not show the publisher's name and did not claim that Maas had written the subtitle “Strategies against the Law”. This is immediately understandable as satire and thus covered by freedom of expression.

In September 2018, the relatives of a murdered refugee worker reported Höcke because he had published a wanted photograph of the murder victim on his Facebook page without her consent, which had previously been shown in large format during the “funeral march” in Chemnitz. According to the relatives, he thus illegally “exploited the picture for his own convictions”; it was also used during the funeral march to raise the mood against refugees. On December 14th, the Justice Committee of the Thuringian state parliament approved a police investigation into the case. Höcke rejected the allegations: he had documented a public rally in which he had participated. At the beginning of February 2019, the Chemnitz public prosecutor closed the preliminary investigation against Höcke because, in their opinion, the photo shown at the demonstration had violated “no legitimate interests” of the killed Sophia L. or her relatives. The public prosecutor's office also saw no criminal liability for using the picture on Höcke's Facebook page, as the rally depicted was "undoubtedly a picture from contemporary history" and the photo of the woman had already been searched in the media beforehand after the missing person was used.

Court order to designate a fascist

The Administrative Court Meiningen lifted on 26 September 2019 an emergency procedure to ban the city Eisenach, Höcke at a demonstration under the motto "protest against the racist AFD, particularly the fascists Höcke" publicly as fascist to describe. The city administration of Eisenach had previously tried to have the motto banned because they saw public safety and Höcke's personal rights threatened. However, the applicants, including the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), had "sufficiently credible in the time remaining for the scope of the examination in the urgent procedure and in view of the shortness of the time for the court's decision that their value judgment was not out of thin air , but based on a verifiable factual basis "and above all" the dispute in the matter, and not - even with polemical and exaggerated criticism - defamation of the person in the foreground ". Therefore, in this case, freedom of expression is not restricted by personal rights; public safety was not endangered either. The cited evidence came from Höcke's book “Never twice in the same river” and press reports, according to which Höcke had spoken of a new leader, the alleged “death of the people through population exchange” and a “cleansing” of Germany from political opponents and relativized Hitler's fascism.

In March 2020, the Hamburg Regional Court issued an injunction prohibiting the Berlin FDP parliamentary group leader Sebastian Czaja from spreading that Höcke had been declared a fascist by a court , threatening a fine of 250,000 euros. It found that the Meiningen Administrative Court had only decided "on the admissibility of a specific expression of opinion in a specific context", but did not positively determine that Höcke was a fascist.

Constitutional Protection Authorities

On September 6, 2018, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia declared the country's AfD to be a test case to determine whether it must be permanently monitored. Decisive for this were Höcke's statements about the “time of the wolf” as well as his call to refuse obedience to federal police officers and threats against them at the “Kyffhäusertreffen” 2018, his participation with neo-Nazis in the so-called funeral march in Chemnitz and the thesis of his book that he was only “the sole holder of state power "Could replace the" democracy in the last stage of degeneration "and" bring it back to order ". The office also referred to the “closeness to National Socialism” that the federal AfD Höcke had certified, as well as the fact that the state AfD had rejected Höcke's exclusion and thus adopted his positions. Thuringia's head of the protection of the constitution, Stephan J. Kramer , declared further statements by Höcke to be unconstitutional: The AfD was "the last revolutionary, [...] the last peaceful chance for our fatherland"; sometimes you have to "take the law into your own hands"; commemorating the Nazi era is a “compulsion to remember” that is intended to undermine “our national self-esteem”. For Kramer, statements of this kind show a “völkisch” and anti-democratic understanding of politics by Höcke.

As announced by Höcke, the Thuringian AfD filed a lawsuit on December 11, 2018 against possible observation by the constitution protection. Stephan Kramer and State Minister of the Interior Georg Maier had alleged false facts, assuming that the AfD worked with extremists, and thus violated their duty of neutrality and the parties' right to equal opportunities.

The 400-page report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the AfD of January 15, 2019 cited Höcke several hundred times and classified the AfD's "wing" as a "suspected case" against which intelligence agents could be used, mainly because of Höcke's statements. The basis of the report are internet statements, speeches recorded on videos outside of parliaments, at Höcke also statements under the pseudonym Landolf Ladig before his AfD membership, and from his book “Never twice in the same river”. In these documents, the experts found “strongly condensed clues” for an “extremist endeavor” incompatible with human dignity . His “immediate agenda” is based on a “natural diversity of peoples” that makes any integration impossible. Höcke's statements about “multi-criminal” societies and mosques as symbols of “land grabbing” are “clearly xenophobic”. His "wing" defamed people of Muslim faith, including those with German citizenship, as "inferior" and also shared the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of "world domination over a decultured humanity". His “ethno-cultural approach” strives to “dispose of rights” for foreigners, Muslims and those who think differently. Höcke formulated in "all clarity" how much he hated the whole system and the competing parties and how obviously Merkel's image of the enemy was merely a code for the contempt for the Federal Republic as a whole ". Because of this orientation, classified as anti-constitutional, the BfV wants to systematically monitor the wing from now on.

Since the beginning of 2020, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been using intelligence services to monitor Höcke. The observation only relates to extra-parliamentary activities, not to work in parliament.

Satire and art

Replica of the Berlin Holocaust memorial in Bornhagen

In response to Höcke's Dresden speech, the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) rented a piece of land next to Höcke's house in Bornhagen in April 2017, on which the ZPS action artists unveiled a scaled-down replica of the Berlin Holocaust memorial with 24 steles on November 22, 2017. They asked him to fall on his knees , analogous to Willy Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw in 1970, and to sincerely ask for forgiveness for the German crimes in World War II. Artists, artwork, visitors and journalists were attacked several times. Investigations on suspicion of attempted coercion were discontinued in November 2018 because the action was not suitable and also not aimed at getting Höcke to the required knee-fall. Rather, the artists wanted to take a stand against his statements and shake up society. On November 29, 2017, the right-wing public prosecutor Martin Zschächner initiated an investigation into the " formation of a criminal association " against the ZPS, shortly after Höcke had referred to the action artists as "terrorists" and "criminal association" at a conference of the Compact magazine. The proceedings were discontinued in April 2019 after strong public criticism. The ZPS received enough donations to finance the preservation of the work of art for at least seven years (as of February 2018).

In October 2018, Höcke presented his book Never twice in the same river at the Frankfurt Book Fair under police protection . The satirist and MEP Martin Sonneborn , disguised as Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , tried to leave a briefcase near Höcke to commemorate the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 . However, Sonneborn was not allowed in.

"Bernd Höcke"

In March 2015 the Thuringian general gave Björn Höcke's first name by mistake as "Bernd". After Höcke had also outraged public, used Oliver Welke in the today-show intentionally false name. Other satirists followed suit. Later, spokesmen for the Tagesschau , das heute-journal , BZ , DWDL.de , FAZ , Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , Nordwest-Zeitung , Spiegel TV , Hamburger Morgenpost , Huffpost , Münchner Merkur , Südwestrundfunk and others accidentally used the wrong first name, causing general uncertainty consists of the first name. The FDP politician Hans-Ulrich Rülke also mentioned the wrong first name several times in a state parliament speech in October 2017 and confirmed when asked: “The man's name is Bernd. I definitely know from the show today. ”On January 25, 2018, the name“ Bernd Höcke ”even appeared in a press release from the Bundestag , which was corrected on the same day. Oliver Welke celebrated this in today's show as the ultimate success of his running gag .

Additional information

publication

• Sebastian Hennig (Ed.): Never twice in the same river: Björn Höcke in conversation with Sebastian Hennig. (With foreword by Frank Böckelmann .) 2nd improved edition, Manuscriptum, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-944872-72-8 .

Reviews:

• Anna-Maria Schielicke: Essentially nothing new. Sehnsuchtsort.de, November 30, 2018.
• Meinhardt Creydt: Björn Höcke threatens "Dark Germany". Telepolis, October 12, 2018.
• Robert Habeck : " Halle and Höcke - Right-wing Terrorism in Germany " (Review of Höckes "Never twice in the same river")

literature

• Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: “Erfurt is beautifully German - and Erfurt should remain beautifully German!” The political image of the party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) in Thuringia. Friedrich Ebert Foundation , Thuringia Regional Office, Erfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-95861-322-5 , pp. 23-30 (PDF).
• Andreas Kemper: "... overcome the neurotic phase in which we have been for seventy years". The difference between conservatism and fascism using the example of the “historical mission” Björn Höckes (AfD). Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Thuringia, Jena 2016 (PDF)
• Jürgen P. Lang : Biographical portrait: Björn Höcke. In: Yearbook Extremism & Democracy 30, Baden-Baden 2018, ISBN 978-3-8487-5542-4 .
• Jobst Paul: The decline - the overthrow - the nothing. Racist demagogy and suicidal perspective in Björn Höcke's Schnellrodaer IfS speech. In: Helmut Kellershohn, Wolfgang Kastrup (Hrsg.): Kulturkampf von rechts. AfD, Pegida and the New Right. Unrast, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-89771-767-1 , pp. 122-146.

Web links

Commons : Björn Höcke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Björn Höcke in the Munzinger archive , accessed on August 13, 2020 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Björn Höcke's official website
• Short biography . Thuringian Parliament.
• Friederike Haupt: Björn Höcke: Spreaders and placeholders. FAZ, December 22, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Karsten Polke-Majewski : My classmate, the right agitator. Die Zeit , February 18, 2016. Archived from the original on November 27, 2019.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Björn Höcke elected chairman of the AfD parliamentary group. Thuringian General, September 22, 2014
3. ↑ Martin Debes: Thuringian AfD boss: The AfD is on the move, certain turbulence is normal. Thuringian General, March 22, 2014.
4. ↑ AfD right wing portrait Björn Höcke (AfD) achieves record results in Thuringia - woman, children, scandal statements , Münchner Merkur October 29, 2019
5. ↑ The euro opponent. Thuringian General, 23 August 2014.
6. ^ Probably the most hated politician in Germany , Neue Zürcher Zeitung. November 3, 2017. Archived from the original on April 26, 2019. Retrieved February 18, 2020. 
7. ↑ Volker Weiß : The authoritarian revolt: The New Right and the Fall of the Occident. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-608-10861-3 , p. 174
8. ^ Letter to the editor from 2006: This is how Björn Höcke ticked as a teacher. Mercury, January 23, 2017
9. ^ The right wing of the AfD: Björn Höcke in portrait. Südkurier, February 13, 2017
10. ↑ Hessian Ministry of Culture examines Höcke's role in the neo-Nazi march. Thuringian regional newspaper , February 22, 2017
11. ↑ Jonas Fedders: We talked to one of his former students about Björn Höcke. Vice.com, January 22, 2016
12. ^ Rainer Roeser: Haifischbecken AfD. Look to the right , April 27, 2015 (fee required)
13. ↑ Andreas Speit : Thuringian AfD functionary and the NPD: What the language betrays. taz, June 17, 2015.
14. ↑ Severin Weiland, Christina Hebel: Alleged contact with the NPD: AfD country chief Höcke rejects an affidavit. Spiegel, April 29, 2015
15. ^ Hannes Vogel: Old comrades. Zeit Online, September 13, 2018
16. ^ Maria Fiedler, Matthias Meisner: Petry: Höcke praised the NPD under a pseudonym. Tagesspiegel, April 12, 2017
17. ↑ Justus Bender: Randolf, Landolf and the dead SS man. FAZ, June 10, 2017 (chargeable)
18. ↑ Martin Debes: Confusion about alleged Höcke texts. Ostthüringer Zeitung, June 12, 2017 (fee required)
19. ^ AfD report: Protection for human dignity and democracy. Tagesschau.de, January 21, 2019
20. ↑ ^{a b} Melanie Amann, Jörg Diehl, Martin Knobbe, Andreas Ulrich: "Aggressive xenophobic rhetoric": What the constitution protection reproaches the AfD leaders. Spiegel, January 18, 2019
21. ↑ ^{a b} MDR Thuringia summer interview: Thuringia's AfD boss Höcke does not want to integrate refugees. MDR, August 16, 2018
22. ^ Olaf Nenninger: Landolf Ladig: Young community in Jena wants to sue Björn Höcke. MDR, October 15, 2019
23. ↑ AfD candidate Höcke in an interview: Three-child family is a political model. Thuringian newspaper, July 21, 2014.
24. ↑ Fabian Klaus: They are by no means a one-topic party. Thuringian newspaper, August 24, 2013.
25. ↑ Kristin Müller: 40 North Thuringian AfD members found a district association. Thuringian General, November 16, 2013.
26. ↑ Mechthild Küpper, Claus Peter Müller: Alternative for Germany: Wages for all the learning processes? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), September 1, 2014.
27. ↑ State elections 2014: Which coalitions are possible in Thuringia? Thuringian newspaper, July 16, 2014.
28. ^ Thuringian Landtag: Björn Hoecke
29. ^ Helmut Kellershohn: The Institute for State Policy and the Young Conservative Hegemony Project. In: Stephan Braun, Alexander Geisler, Martin Gerster (eds.): Strategies of the extreme right: Backgrounds - Analyzes - Answers. 2nd updated and expanded edition, Springer, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-01983-9 , pp. 439–467, here p. 463.
30. ↑ Tobias Dirr: Right-wing populism: New paint for right-wing thinking. SZ, June 22, 2016
31. ↑ Matthias Quent: Right-wing populism or popular right-wing extremism? In: Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (Ed.): Knowledge creates democracy, Volume 1. Amadeu Antonio Foundation, Berlin 2017, ISBN 3-940878-90-1 , S: 198–209, quotation p. 206
32. ^ NSU committee in Thuringia: Direct line to the right-wing scene? taz, April 23, 2015
33. ↑ Michael Backfisch: Thuringian AfD boss Höcke does not distance himself from the NPD. Thuringian General, May 6, 2015
34. ↑ Alternative for Germany: AfD federal chief Lucke calls on Höcke to quit the party. Focus, May 8, 2015
35. ↑ Severin Weiland: Comments on the NPD: AfD board wants Höcke's removal from office. Spiegel Online, May 12, 2015
36. ↑ Internal party proceedings against AfD country chief Björn Höcke from the table. dpa / Thüringer Allgemeine, September 13, 2015
37. ↑ Bülend Ürük: After appearing on "Günther Jauch": AfD leaders distance themselves from Björn Höcke. Kress, October 21, 2015
38. ↑ Justus Bender: According to statements about Africans: AfD top denies alleged reprimand for Höcke. FAZ, December 14, 2015
39. ^ AfD politician Höcke calls the Holocaust memorial a "shame". FAZ / epd, January 18, 2017
40. ↑ Justus Bender: Controversial speech. Petry criticizes Höcke in circulars to AfD members. FAZ, January 27, 2017
41. ↑ AfD tip: Höcke insists on diversity of opinion. Tagesschau.de, January 23, 2017.
42. ↑ Christian Jakob, Konrad Litschko: “'Join us!' The right-wing extremist scene calls on civil servants to resist. ”In: Matthias Meisner , Heike Kleffner (ed.): Extreme security. Right-wing extremists in the police, the protection of the constitution, the armed forces and the judiciary. Herder, Freiburg 2019, p. 59
43. ↑ Fabian Klaus: Höcke in an interview: AfD wants to end the red-red-green “experiment” in 2019. Thuringian newspaper, January 14, 2017
44. ↑ AfD board wants to exclude Höcke. FAZ.net, February 13, 2017.
45. ^ AfD power struggle - Gauland proposes Höcke for the Bundestag. Reuters, February 14, 2017
46. ↑ Maria Fiedler: AfD politician: Björn Höcke is looking for his way out of cover. Tagesspiegel, November 29, 2017
47. ↑ AfD party conference: "Kingmakers" come from the right wing. Tagesschau.de, December 3, 2017
48. ↑ Time Alice Weidel elected as an assessor in the AfD board. Zeit Online, December 3, 2018
49. ^ Tilman Steffen: AfD Thuringia: Björn Höcke is allowed to stay in the AfD. Zeit Online, May 9, 2018
50. ↑ Matthias Meisner: Thuringian party leader: AfD leadership wants to stop exclusion proceedings against Höcke. Tagesspiegel, June 5, 2018
51. ↑ Liane Bednarz: AfD hardliner meetings show how radical the party really is. Huffpost, Aug. 7, 2018
52. ↑ Kai Budler: AfD top candidate Höcke. BNR, October 15, 2018 (chargeable)
53. ↑ ^{a b} Anne-Beatrice Clasmann: Moderates against Höcke: dispute over direction in the AfD flared up again. Saarbrücker Zeitung / dpa, October 17, 2018
54. ↑ New exclusion proceedings against Höcke? Exonerating judge posed with Nazi symbols. Thuringian General, October 17, 2018
55. ↑ Höcke on Nazi allegations: behavior of former party member "unacceptable". Thuringian General, October 17, 2018
56. ↑ Dietmar Neuerer: Domestic secret service: AfD argues about threatened observation - Gauland rebukes Höcke. Handelsblatt , November 5, 2018.
57. ↑ Sabine am Orde: Party rights support AfD youth. taz, November 27, 2018
58. ↑ CDU loses an absolute majority in the Eichsfeld district. Göttinger Tageblatt, May 28, 2019
59. ↑ Björn Höcke causes a scandal in the Eichsfeld district council. www.mdr.de, June 27, 2019
60. ↑ Maria Fiedler: “Excessively on display personality cult”: Why parts of the AfD are now distancing themselves from Björn Höcke. Tagesspiegel, July 10, 2019; Matthias Kamann: Höcke's critics have to pay a high price. Welt online, July 14, 2019
61. ↑ Matthias Kamann: What is behind the attack on Björn Höcke. Welt online, July 10, 2019
62. ↑ Steffen Kailitz: "Saxony - a stronghold of the AfD? Development, perspectives and classification of the federal party and the Saxon state association. ”In: Uwe Backes / Steffen Kailitz: Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, p. 198
63. ↑ Leading AfD politicians challenge Björn Höcke. Zeit Online , July 14, 2019
64. ↑ ^{a b} Landtag election in Thuringia: And then Björn Höcke gives the humble. www.welt.de, October 27, 2019
65. ↑ Severin Weiland: Thuringia election: What role does Höcke want to play in the future? Spiegel online, October 28, 2019
66. ↑ Kim Björn Becker, Stefan Locke: After the election in Thuringia: A disturbed country. www.faz.net, October 28, 2019
67. ↑ Frederik Merx: Boy gambled away. In: SWR . November 30, 2019, accessed March 15, 2020 . 
68. ↑ Ann-Katrin Müller: Armies on the front line. In: Der Spiegel . December 1, 2019, accessed March 15, 2020 . 
69. ↑ ^{a b} Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: The "Alternative for Germany" - an answer to the right-wing populist loophole? In: Stephan Braun , Alexander Geisler, Martin Gerster (eds.): Strategies of the extreme right: Backgrounds - Analyzes - Answers. 2nd updated and expanded edition, Springer, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-01983-9 , pp. 101–128, here p. 123.
70. ↑ Andreas Speit: Right? Not a bad term. taz, September 26, 2014; Patrick Gensing : New "individual cases" in the AfD. publikative.org , October 15, 2014; Florian Röpke: The AfD as the savior of the West? publikative.org, October 16, 2014; Rainer Roeser: Door opener to the right. Look to the right , October 16, 2014.
71. ↑ Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: “Erfurt is beautifully German - and Erfurt should remain beautifully German!” The political appearance of the party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) in Thuringia. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Landesbüro Thuringia (Ed.), Erfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-95861-322-5 , p. 29 f.
72. ↑ Gerlinde Sommer: AfD boss gives interview in “Young Freedom” - Höcke: “Talk to everyone”. Thuringian newspaper, October 16, 2014.
73. ↑ Höcke again causes a stir with statements. Focus, May 29, 2015
74. ↑ New evidence for the NPD proximity of AfD country chief Höcke. ( Memento from May 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) MDR, May 29, 2015.
75. ^ Helmut Kellershohn: The Institute for State Policy and the Young Conservative Hegemony Project. In: Stephan Braun, Alexander Geisler, Martin Gerster (eds.): Strategies of the extreme right: Backgrounds - Analyzes - Answers. 2nd updated and expanded edition, Springer, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-01983-9 , p. 462; Helmut Kellershohn: Cracks in the beams. Wing fighting in the young conservative New Right and the AfD. In: Alexander Häusler (ed.): The alternative for Germany. Program, development and political positioning. Springer, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-10638-6 , p. 189; Helmut Kellershohn: Götz Kubitschek and the Institute for State Policy. In: Helmut Kellershohn, Wolfgang Kastrup (Hrsg.): Kulturkampf von rechts. AfD, Pegida and the New Right. Unrast, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-89771-767-1 , p. 100.
76. ↑ AfD boss calls for a clear demarcation of his party to the right. ( Memento from October 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Frontal21 / ZDF, June 2, 2015
77. ↑ ^{a b} Felix M. Steiner: AfD and Identitarian Movement - The Hour of the "New Right". Cicero, June 29, 2016
78. ↑ Melanie Amann: Populism: Right Friends. Spiegel, May 28, 2016
79. ↑ Höckes wing and faction leader Weidel form an alliance. Spiegel online from July 12, 2019
80. ↑ Steffen Kailitz : "Saxony - a stronghold of the AfD? Development, perspectives and classification of the federal party and the Saxon state association. ”In: Uwe Backes / Steffen Kailitz (eds.): Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, p. 198
81. ↑ Fabian Virchow, Martin Langebach, Alexander Häusler (eds.): Handbuch right-wing extremism. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-531-19085-3 , p. 168 f.
82. ^ AfD: Höcke thanks Pegida. Zeit Online, April 9, 2016
83. ^ State party conference of the AfD: Höcke advertises alliance with Pegida, FPÖ and Front National. Thuringian General, April 9, 2016
84. ↑ Monitor / ARD: Alternative for Germany - How one party is tilting more and more to the right. September 11, 2014
85. ↑ Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: The right ›courage‹ citizens. Origin, development, personnel and positions of the »Alternative for Germany«. VSA, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-89965-640-4 , p. 145.
86. ↑ Volker Weiß : The authoritarian revolt. The New Right and the Fall of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2018, p. 157
87. ↑ The ominous right “Hercules Circle” meets in Northern Hesse. Thuringian General, May 30, 2016
88. ↑ Danijel Majic: AfD-near “Hercules Circle”: Closed society with Höcke. FRI, May 29, 2016
89. ↑ Matern Boeselager: Björn Höcke and his friends are now calling for species protection for Germans. Vice.com, May 27, 2016
90. ↑ Volker Weiß : The authoritarian revolt. The New Right and the Fall of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2018, p. 25
91. ↑ Knut Krohn: The AfD and the right edge: Höcke defends Holocaust denier. Stuttgarter Zeitung, November 22, 2016
92. ↑ Melanie Amann: Fear for Germany: The truth about the AfD: where it comes from, who leads it, where it is going. Droemer, 2017, p. 112
93. ^ Raid against right-wing extremists: Nazi hipsters in crisis. SZ, April 28, 2018
94. ↑ Björn Höcke speaks at Pegida. MDR, May 15, 2018
95. ↑ Ludwig Bundscherer: Björn Höcke and the leading culture: Media offensive of the Thuringian AfD. MDR, May 16, 2018
96. ↑ René Meinig: Höcke appears for the first time with Pegida. Sächsische Zeitung.de, May 15, 2018
97. ↑ Simon Berninger, Margarethe Gallersdörfer: AfD Thuringia: The Protection of the Constitution checks surveillance of Höcke's regional association. ( Memento of November 30, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) FR, September 8, 2018
98. ↑ ^{a b} Lennart Pfahler: Extremism researcher: Some right-wingers understand Höcke's words as a call to violence. HuffPost, November 3, 2018
99. ↑ Patrick Gensing: Höcke and the "peaceful citizen protest". www.tagesschau.de, October 23, 2019
100. ↑ Because of criminal charges: Public prosecutor's office examines Björn Höcke's speech. www.welt.de, February 19, 2020
101. ↑ Jörg Köpke: Public prosecutor examines Höcke speech for sedition. www.rnd.de, February 19, 2020
102. ↑ Arno Frank: Björn Höcke in the MDR summer interview: One single evasive maneuver www.spiegel.de, August 25, 2020
103. ^ ^{A b} Theresa Martus: Björn Höcke in the MDR summer interview: "Corona is over" www.waz.de, August 25, 2020
104. ↑ Heide Oestreich: "Natural gender order". taz, September 17, 2014.
105. ↑ Fabian Leber: The AfD and the good thing about the GDR. Tagesspiegel, August 6, 2014
106. ↑ For AfD, the three-child family is a political model. Thuringian newspaper, July 20, 2014.
107. ↑ Peter Wütherich, Alexander Fröhlich: AfD wants to make a name for itself with right-wing theses. Potsdam Latest News , July 31, 2014.
108. ↑ ^{a b c} Andreas Kemper: Björn Höcke's fascist river: The völkisch Machiavellism of the AfD politician. Grass Roots Revolution, September 1, 2018
109. ^ Andreas Kemper: Gender and family policy positions of the AfD. In: Helmut Kellershohn, Wolfgang Kastrup (eds.): Kulturkampf von rechts , Münster 2016, p. 156.
110. ↑ Marc Röhlig: So twisted the AfD facts in order to incite against gays. Bento, October 4, 2016
111. ↑ AfD: Höcke does not want to accept gays and lesbians. Queer.de, May 16, 2018; Marc Röhlig: As soon as it is clear that Höcke is allowed to stay in the AfD, he is again raising the mood against homosexuals. Bento, May 16, 2018
112. ↑ Martin Debes: The thousand years of Björn Höcke. Thuringian General, October 20, 2015
113. ↑ Hanno Müller: Historiker: "Höcke knows exactly from which context his statements come." Thüringer Allgemeine, December 15, 2015
114. ↑ Lukas Kiepe (Ed.): Jerk to the right? Right-wing populism, right-wing extremism and the question of counter-strategies. Barbara Budrich, Opladen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8474-2069-9 , pp. 61–65 , citations p. 63.
115. ^ Andreas Speit: Bürgerliche Scharfmacher: Germany's new right center - from AfD to Pegida. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-280-03940-3 , p. 63f. ; Andrea Dernbach: Günther Jauch couldn't stand up to Björn Höcke - or did he not want to? Tagesspiegel, October 19, 2015
116. ^ Frank Lübberding: Black-red-gold coup from the right. FAZ, October 19, 2015
117. ↑ Höckes Talking - Goebbels' Sound? WDR.de / Monitor, October 21, 2015; Catherina Kaiser: Hard to tell apart: Who said it - Höcke or Goebbels? Huffington Post, October 22, 2015; Lutz Haverkamp: Björn Höcke and the AfD: A Nazi comparison. Tagesspiegel, November 26, 2015; Andreas Kemper: On the Nazi rhetoric of AfD politician Björn Höcke. DISS Journal 32 (2016).
118. ↑ “He's back” and “Shame”: BZ, Mopo and Berliner Kurier criticize the memorial speech by AfD man Björn Höcke so vehemently. Meedia, January 19, 2017
119. ↑ Margarethe Gallersdörfer: AfD book is not blackened. FRI, August 18, 2018
120. ↑ ^{a b} Marc Röhlig: At the national meeting of the AfD: Björn Höcke speaks of wolves and sheep - like Goebbels. Bento, June 24, 2018
121. ↑ Patrick Gensing: Thuringia: The protection of the constitution is targeting AfD. Tagesschau.de, September 6, 2018
122. ↑ Boris Rosenkranz: AfD meeting: participants threaten and attack journalists. Übermedien, June 26, 2018; Stefan Lauer: Kyffhäusertreffen the AfD: The mask has slipped again. Belltower News, June 27, 2018
123. ↑ Björn Höcke breaks off the interview with ZDF. www.zeit.de, September 15, 2019
124. ↑ Erica Zingher: Björn Höcke threatens ZDF. taz.de, September 16, 2019
125. ↑ Ingo Salmen: Björn Höcke breaks off the ZDF interview: First he gives the victim, then he threatens the journalist. www.tagesspiegel.de, September 16, 2019
126. Jump up to ZDF interview: Höcke threatens journalists with "massive consequences". www.mdr.de, September 16, 2019
127. ↑ Jens Jessen: Strength is to remain fair . In: The time of September 18, 2019.
128. ↑ "Anyone who asks critical questions is an enemy." Www.spiegel.de, September 22, 2019
129. ↑ Höcke cancels the interview without explanation - newspaper prints white page. www.focus.de, October 7, 2019
130. ^ Jobst Paul: The decline - the overthrow - the nothing. Racist demagogy and suicidal perspective in Björn Höcke's Schnellrodaer IfS speech. Duisburg Institute for Linguistic and Social Research (DISS), February 16, 2016 (PDF, Appendix pp. 26–39)
131. ↑ Volker Zastrow: New rights: Höckes race theory. FAZ, December 20, 2015
132. ^ Jobst Paul: The decline - the overthrow - the nothing. Racist demagogy and suicidal perspective in Björn Höcke's Schnellrodaer IfS speech. DISS, February 16, 2016 (PDF pp. 1–25)
133. ↑ Oda Lambrecht, Christian Baars: Accusations after the speech of the AfD country chief: outrage over Höcke's "biological racism". NDR / Tagesschau.de, December 11, 2015
134. ^ Opinion on the AfD: Political scientist certifies Höcke "clear racism". Spiegel Online, January 1, 2016
135. ↑ Daniel Bax: Got to the tree frog. taz, December 15, 2015.
136. ↑ Andreas Beyer: Evolution, Cultures, Reproduction, Björn Höcke and the AfD: How racist ideas are made socially acceptable by the AfD. AG Evolutionsbiologie.net, 2016
137. ↑ Simon Hurtz: AfD Thuringia: "Blanker Racism": Höcke and the reproduction of Africans. SZ, December 12, 2015; Statement by Björn Höcke, chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament, on his speech on November 21 in Schnellroda. Landespressedienst.de, December 14, 2015
138. ↑ Höcke presents a position paper against “multicultural extremists”. FAZ, May 15, 2018
139. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report 2019, p. 86
140. ↑ Benjamin Stahl, Jonas Keck: 250 people against the AfD - Höcke denies climate change. www.mainpost.de, August 10, 2018
141. ↑ Höcke uses the Frankfurt train station attack for claims. Sueddeutsche.de, August 4, 2019
142. ^ Claus Christian Malzahn: "Quiet horror" in Buchenwald about the AfD. Welt online, January 25, 2015
143. ↑ From filthy child to shadow boss: How Höcke works his way into the center of power , Focus Online, July 10, 2016.
144. ↑ Mely Kiyak: A totally different Germany. Zeit Online, January 25, 2017
145. ^ ^{A b} Matthias Meisner, Laura Hofmann: Brand speech in Dresden: Der totale Höcke. Tagesspiegel, January 18, 2017
146. ↑ Höcke speech in full. "State of mind of a totally defeated people". Tagesspiegel, January 19, 2019
147. ↑ Examples: Katja Thorwarth: Comment on AfD in Dresden: Björn Höcke gives the Nazi. FR, January 18, 2017;
     Björn Höcke provokes in Dresden. ( Memento from January 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) MDR, January 18, 2017;
     Thuringian AfD boss: Minutes of a speech: Björn Höcke, the arsonist. SHZ, January 18, 2017;
     AfD - Höcke calls the Holocaust memorial "Monument of Shame". ( Memento from January 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Deutschlandfunk, January 18, 2017;
     AfD board member Björn Höcke suggests leaving the party. Hamburger Abendblatt , January 18, 2017;
     Gerd Appenzeller: AfD voters forfeited the right to error. Tagesspiegel, January 20, 2017
148. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber: Revisionist Zündler. Look to the right , January 31, 2017 (chargeable).
149. ↑ Martin Sabrow: Höcke and we. Contemporary history online , January 25, 2017.
150. ↑ Justus Bender: What does the AfD want? Pantheon Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-570-55353-4 , p. 203.
151. ↑ Thomas Niehr, Jana Reissen-Kosch: People's Voice? On the language of right-wing populism. Dudenverlag, Berlin 2018, p. 113.
152. ↑ Holocaust commemoration: Oppermann calls AfD man Höcke a "Nazi". Welt online, January 19, 2017
153. ↑ Ellen Ivits: “Right broth” - a linguist analyzes Höcke's speech of “shame”. Stern, January 18, 2017
154. ↑ Heinrich Detering: What does “we” mean here? On the rhetoric of the parliamentary right. Reclam, Ditzingen 2019 (3rd edition), p. 26 f., 30
155. ↑ Left-wing politician files criminal charges against Höcke. www.spiegel.de, January 18, 2017
156. ↑ Examples: Andreas Szabo: Höcke's appearance in Dresden triggers protests. Radio Dresden, January 18, 2017;
     Oppermann: Höcke is a Nazi. FAZ, January 19, 2017;
     According to Höcke's controversial statement: dispute over Holocaust memorial in the AfD. Mercury, January 18, 2017
157. ↑ Amanda Taub, Max Fisher: Germany's Extreme Right Challenges Guilt Over Nazi Past. New York Times, January 18, 2017; Justin Huggler: AfD politician calls for Germany to stop atoning for Nazi past. Telegraph January 18, 2017.
158. ^ Bernhard Honnigfort: Höcke stages the scandal. www.fr.de, January 18, 2017
159. ↑ Höcke takes on the concentration camp memorial. Zeit Online, January 26, 2017
160. ^ Concentration camp memorial bans Höcke from entering the house. Zeit Online, January 27, 2017
161. ↑ Anton Troianovski: The German Right Believes It's Time to discard the Country's Historical Guilt. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) March 2, 2017; Anton Troianovski: German Politician's Comments About Hitler Stoke Debate. WSJ, March 7, 2017; Anna Kröning: Björn Höcke has an irritating view of Adolf Hitler. Welt online, March 6, 2017
162. ↑ Gauland defends Höcke's controversial Hitler statement. Welt online, March 8, 2017
163. ↑ Maria Fiedler: AfD Vice Gauland defends Höcke's Hitler statement. Tagesspiegel, March 8, 2017
164. ↑ Ronald Lauder: "The AfD is a shame for Germany". Welt online, March 29, 2017
165. ↑ Melanie Amann: Walk in the forest with Björn Höcke. "Now you stand here with the devil of the AfD". Spiegel, October 26, 2018.
166. ^ Jörg Häntzschel: cultural policy of the AfD. As sophisticated as it is seedy. SZ, July 26, 2018
167. ^ Günther Lachmann: AfD executive committee distances itself from Björn Höcke. Welt online, December 18, 2015; "They represent an antagonism": Because of his statements and appearances: AfD advises on Björn Höcke's expulsion. Focus, December 18, 2015
168. ↑ Marcus Bensmann: What Gedeon writes about America, Nazis and Jews tagesspiegel.de
169. ↑ Hannelore Crolly, Matthias Kamann: How the AfD winds up in the anti-Semitism dispute Welt.de
170. ↑ Martin Debes: Björn Höcke and the conspiracy theorist Wolfgang Gedeon. Thuringian General, July 22, 2016
171. ↑ Marc Grimm, Bodo Kahmann, Stephan Grigat : AfD and Judenbild. A party caught between anti-Semitism, defense against guilt and instrumental Israeli solidarity. In: AfD & FPÖ: Anti-Semitism, ethnic nationalism and gender images. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2017, ISBN 978-3-8487-3805-2 , pp. 41–60
172. ↑ ^{a b} Right-wing extremism researcher on Höcke: "He is not an independent thinker." Taz.de, October 26, 2019
173. ^ Henry Bernhard: Anti-Semitism today: The AfD lays hand on the principle “Never again!” Www.deutschlandfunk.de, January 27, 2020
174. ↑ Herrmann describes "some representatives of the AfD" as intellectual arsonists. Spiegel online, October 10, 2019
175. ↑ ^{a b} Bavarian Constitutional Protection Report 2019 , p. 112, 151
176. ↑ Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution “Situation Report Antisemitism” ( PDF ) (July 2020), p. 33.
177. ↑ Andrea Röpke , Andreas Speit : Völkische Landnahme. Old clans, young settlers, right-wing ecos. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 12, 67
178. ↑ Steffen Kailitz : "Saxony - a stronghold of the AfD? Development, perspectives and classification of the federal party and the Saxon state association. ”In: Uwe Backes / Steffen Kailitz (eds.): Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, pp. 174, 176 f.
179. ↑ Christian Jakob, Konrad Litschko: “'Join us!' The right-wing extremist scene calls on civil servants to resist. ”In: Matthias Meisner , Heike Kleffner : Extreme Security. Right-wing extremists in the police, constitutional protection, armed forces and justice. Freiburg, Herder 2019, p. 69 f.
180. ↑ ^{a b} Raoul Löbbert: Björn Höcke: Der Volksempfänger. Zeit Online, January 21, 2019
181. ↑ Andrea Röpke / Andreas Speit: Völkische Landnahme. Old clans, young settlers, right-wing ecos. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 14
182. ↑ Steffen Kailitz: "Saxony - a stronghold of the AfD? Development, prospects and classification of the federal party and the Saxon state association. ”In: Uwe Backes / Steffen Kailitz: Saxony - A stronghold of right-wing extremism? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, p. 174
183. ↑ Marcel Tschekow: Revolution from the right? Ada Magazine, September 2018
184. ↑ Hajo Funke: Höcke wants civil war. Zeit Online, October 24, 2019
185. ↑ Hartmut Westermann: On the genesis of the Pauline organism analogy. In: Matthias Remenyi, Saskia Wendel (ed.): The Church as the Body of Christ: Validity and Limits of a Controversial Metaphor. Herder, Freiburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-451-02288-3 , p. 90
186. ^ Hajo Funke: From angry citizens and arsonists. AfD - Pegida - violence networks. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg 2016, p. 90.
187. ↑ Melanie Amann, Maik Baumgärtner, Markus Deggerich, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven Röbel, Steffen Winter: Above and below. Spiegel 39/2014, pp. 26-28.
188. ↑ Alexander Häusler (Ed.): The alternative for Germany: program, development and political positioning. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 190
189. ↑ Sabine am Orde: Höcke, the AfD and their social policy: Pension from the far right. taz, January 30, 2018
190. ^ Severin Weiland: Strategy of the right-wing populists: How the AfD fishes with the SPD and the left. Spiegel, July 17, 2018
191. ↑ Jürgen P. Lang: AfD party congress: Right shift to the left? BR24, June 30, 2018
192. ^ Alternative for Germany: Project People's Party. taz, February 8, 2019
193. ↑ Sebastian Hennig (Ed.): Never twice in the same river: Björn Höcke in conversation with Sebastian Hennig. (With foreword by Frank Böckelmann .) 2nd improved edition, Manuscriptum, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-944872-72-8 .
194. ↑ Anna-Maria Schielicke: In essence nothing new. Sehnsuchtsort.de, November 30, 2018
195. ↑ Marc Röhlig: Thuringian AfD sends threatening letters to schools, state government remains powerless. Bento, November 17, 2018
196. ↑ AfD sends letters to Thuringian schools - Minister Holter: "Teachers shouldn't be intimidated." Ostthüringer Zeitung, November 14, 2018
197. ↑ Thuringian state government and teachers distance themselves from AfD letters to schools. Ostthüringer Zeitung / dpa, November 14, 2018
198. ↑ The head of the teacher association writes to Höcke: “To be honest, we feel annoyed”. News4teachers, November 30, 2018
199. ↑ Greta Hartmann and Alexander Leistner Contested Legacy. On the topicality of "1989" as a resistance story . In: From Politics and Contemporary History 35–37 (2019), pp. 18–24, here pp. 23 f.
200. ↑ Patrick Gensing and Konstantin Kumpfmüller: Historical comparisons: Do we live in a "GDR 2.0"? . tagesschau.de , August 2, 2019, accessed September 28, 2019.
201. ↑ Höcke calls Germany a democratic state of mind. www.welt.de, October 3, 2019
202. ↑ Alexander Häusler: Angry Citizen Party AfD. Saxon newspaper , September 26, 2014
203. ↑ Alexander Häusler, Rainer Roeser: Between criticism of the euro and right-wing populism. Features of the shift to the right in the AfD. In: Andreas Zick, Beate Küpper: Anger, contempt, devaluation. Right-wing populism in Germany . Edited for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation by Ralf Melzer and Dietmar Molthagen , Dietz, Bonn 2015, ISBN 978-3-8012-0478-5 , pp. 124–145, citations p. 125 and 137.
204. ↑ Alexander Häusler (ed.): Völkisch-authoritarian populism. The shift to the right in Germany and the AfD. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-89965-835-4 , pp. 11 and 16f. (PDF)
205. ↑ Dietmar Neuerer: Thuringia boss Höcke: "Clearly right-wing extremist". Handelsblatt, October 20, 2015.
206. ↑ Andreas Kemper: "... overcome the neurotic phase in which we have been for seventy years". The difference between conservatism and fascism using the example of the “historical mission” Björn Höckes (AfD). Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Thuringia, Jena 2015, quotations on p. 9, 74 and 92.
207. ^ David Bebnowski: The alternative for Germany. Rise and social representation of a right-wing populist party. Springer, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-08285-7 , p. 2.
208. ^ Helmut Kellershohn: Kulturkampf from the right: actors. For the introduction. In: Helmut Kellershohn, Wolfgang Kastrup (Hrsg.): Kulturkampf von rechts. AfD, Pegida and the New Right. Unrast, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-89771-767-1 , pp. 68–72, here p. 70.
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211. ↑ Mario Dobovisek: "The AfD has radicalized to the right". Deutschlandfunk, October 23, 2015.
212. ↑ NTV interview with the political scientist Hajo Funke: AfD and the refugee crisis: "Höcke dominates fascist agitation". In: ntv.de from October 23, 2015.
213. ^ Hajo Funke: Wars, refugees, human rights, terror and the dangers from the right as special political challenges . In: Cinur Ghaderi, Thomas Eppenstein (Ed.): Refugees. Multi-perspective approaches . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-15740-1 , pp. 31-49, here: p. 37.
214. ^ Hajo Funke, Ralph Gabriel : From angry citizens and arsonists. AfD - Pegida - violence networks. vbb, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-945256-64-0 , p. 85 f.
215. ↑ Markus Linden: Neorechte movement. From media bashing to national resistance. nzz.net, October 26, 2015.
216. ↑ Matthias Naß : "I consider this to be extremely dangerous" (conversation with Norbert Frei), Zeit Online, October 29, 2015
217. ^ Richard Stöss: The right edge of the political system of the Federal Republic. Federal Agency for Civic Education , right-wing extremism dossier, 7 July 2016.
218. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber: An assessment from a political science perspective: The AfD is a right-wing extremist party. Humanistic Press Service, November 2, 2018
219. ^ Anne Burgmer: Historian Wolfgang Benz: "Björn Höcke is an avowed racist racist - like Hitler". Kölner Stadtanzeiger, November 6, 2018
220. ↑ MDR, January 25, 2019: Buchenwald Memorial defends the exclusion of AfD politicians. ; Götz Aly warns of Nazi glossing over. ( Memento from January 26, 2019 in the Internet Archive ); Thüringer Allgemeine, January 25, 2019: Holocaust memorial hour in the state parliament becomes the accusation of the perpetrators of yore - and the AfD. ; Speech for the Memorial Day for the Victims of National Socialism on January 27, 2019.
221. ↑ "I call Björn Höcke a pre-fascist." Sueddeutsche.de, October 28, 2019
222. ↑ The well-known tolerance dilemma www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, August 25, 2020
223. ^ Nils Werner: Government crisis in Thuringia: Why parallels to the Weimar period do not help. www.mdr.de, February 5, 2020
224. ↑ Fraud investigations against Höcke due to bogus salaries stopped. Thuringian General, August 26, 2016
225. ↑ AfD country chief at Günther Jauch: Report against Björn Höcke after TV appearance. Berliner Zeitung, October 26, 2015
226. ↑ Suspicion of sedition: AfD boss Höcke reported. Merkur / dpa, December 8, 2015
227. ↑ Can a “right slanderer” be a teacher? Frankfurter Rundschau , October 22, 2015
228. ↑ May Björn Höcke return to his former school? Stern , December 18, 2015
229. ↑ Tobias Peter: Hessen no longer wants Höcke to teach. FRI, January 16, 2016
230. ↑ justiz.sachsen.de: March 1st, 2017 - Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office is closing the investigation against Björn Höcke because of his speech in Dresden on January 17th, 2017. ; Public prosecutor's office closes investigations against Höcke. Spiegel Online, March 1, 2017
231. ↑ Fake book title: AfD speaks of a "cryptic joke". Tagesschau.de, June 1, 2017; Jan-Henrik Wiebe: Thuringian AfD parliamentary group forges book titles from Justice Minister Maas. Thuringia24, May 31, 2017
232. ↑ Dispute over book cover: Court rejects lawsuit against AfD parliamentary group. SZ, October 21, 2018
233. ↑ Markus Grill, Sebastian Pittelkow, Katja Riedel: Björn Höcke's immunity lifted. Tagesschau, December 14, 2018
234. ↑ Public prosecutor's office closes investigations against Höcke. www.spiegel.de, February 8, 2019
235. ↑ Höcke may be called a "fascist" , euronews , September 29, 2019.
236. ↑ Order of the Meiningen Administrative Court in administrative litigation, No. 2 E 1194/19 Me, September 26, 2019.
237. ↑ Court ruling: Björn Höcke can be called a "fascist". Spiegel Online, September 28, 2019
238. ↑ Jörg Köpke: It is official: Björn Höcke can be called “fascist”. landeszeitung.de , September 28, 2019
239. ↑ Björn Höcke achieves success in court , Spiegel online, March 23, 2020.
240. ↑ Hansjörg Müller: The protection of the constitution takes the Höcke-AfD under the microscope. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 6, 2018
241. ↑ Sabine am Orde: Thuringia goes ahead. taz, September 7, 2018
242. ^ Tilman Steffen: Who's Afraid of the Protection of the Constitution? Zeit Online, September 18, 2018
243. ↑ Thuringian AfD sued against possible observation by the protection of the constitution. Zeit Online, December 11, 2018
244. ↑ Andreas Ulrich, Melanie Amann, Martin Knobbe: Verfassungsschutz report on the AfD: defamatory, anti-Semitic, racist. Spiegel, January 17, 2019; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: Specialist information on the “Alternative for Germany” party (AfD). ( Memento of January 19, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) January 15, 2019; Andre Meister, Anna Biselli, Markus Reuter: Constitutional Protection Report on the AfD - 7.2.1 Björn Höcke. Netzpolitik.org, January 28, 2019
245. ↑ Holger Stark: AfD: Too radical www.zeit.de, February 12, 2020
246. ↑ Jana Simon: Center for Political Beauty: Höcke has visitors. In: Die Zeit 49 / October 30, 2017, pp. 17–19
247. ↑ The legitimate heirs "von Till Eulenspiegel". At: Deutschlandfunk , November 22, 2017; Artists set up a Holocaust memorial in front of Björn Höcke's front door. NZZ, November 22, 2017; Höcke should get on his knees. Is that art? Welt, November 22, 2017.
248. ↑ Proceedings stopped because of action in front of Höcke's house. At: FR , November 15, 2018
249. ↑ The Public Prosecutor . In: Zeit Online , April 5, 2019
250. ^ Christian Fuchs, Luisa Hommerich: Center for Political Beauty: Fast Procedure . In: Zeit Online , April 9, 2019
251. ^ Field of stelae in Bornhagen: Björn Höcke gets no rest. In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 14, 2018
252. ↑ As a Hitler assassin at the book fair: Martin Sonneborn comes as Stauffenberg to Höcke reading. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 12, 2018; Frankfurt Book Fair: Martin Sonneborn attends Höcke reading - as Stauffenberg. In: FAZ , October 12, 2018; Marc Reichwein: Martin Sonneborn comes as Stauffenberg - and steals the show from Höcke. In: Welt Online , October 13, 2018
253. ↑ A “solid post” for “Bernd”: ZDF “pays tribute” to AfD boss Höcke. In: Thüringer Allgemeine , December 21, 2015.
254. ↑ today show : Subject Bernd Hoecke ( Memento from February 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
255. ↑ No speedster! That's what the naked guy does with Jan Böhmermann. In: Neo Magazine Royale ; Bjorn Höcke? Bernd Höcke? What's the man's name now? In: Augsburger Allgemeine , April 21, 2017
256. ↑ Bernd or Björn Höcke - The ultimate confusion has reached a new level. Vice.com, April 20, 2017
257. ↑ Hendrik Steinkuhl: “A real loser first name”: AfD politician “Bernd” Höcke becomes a running gag of the media. Meedia.de, March 23, 2017
258. ↑ Now the Bundestag officially calls Höcke "Bernd" - the most successful running gag of all time. At: Vice.com , January 25, 2018
259. ↑ Knut Krohn: The big Rülke show against the AfD. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , October 16, 2017
260. ↑ Bundestag calls AfD politician Björn Höcke "Bernd". In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 25, 2018; Bundestag.de: Questions about the memorial in front of the Höcke apartment : incorrect version ( memento from January 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ); corrected version ( memento from January 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ); AfD politician with name problem: It's official: Bundestag turns Björn Höcke into "Bernd". At: SHZ , January 26, 2018
261. ↑ Malte Mansholt: Bernd instead of Björn: This is how the “Today Show” celebrates the Bundestag's Höcke breakdown. In: Stern , January 27, 2018