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   Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:26 JST Thomas Zimmer

   Sunday reading: One week ago, the far right emerged from the German election stronger than it has ever been since 1945.
    
   I wrote about the relationship between MAGA and the AfD and what to make of the transnational alliance of extremists.
    
   This week’s piece:
    
   https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/maga-the-german-far-right-and-the

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:25 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     What to make of the results of the German election?

     On the one hand: About three quarters of the voting public stuck with democratic parties.

     On the other: The AfD got 20.8 percent of the vote - by far the strongest result the far right has achieved in Germany since the fall of the Nazi regime.

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:32 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     How are these frictions being integrated on the far right? By a shared sense of being under siege from “the Left,” by which they mean any attempt to level or even constrain hierarchies of race, gender, and wealth. This anti-“Left” sentiment defines the political identity of the far right.

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:33 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     In many ways the AfD is the German version of the fully Trumpified Republican Party: A far-right coalition that unites different shades of radical reaction and “counter-revolutionary” extremism. No surprise, in that sense, that MAGA has been trying to interfere to boost the AfD.

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:33 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     But there are some revealing tensions and contradictions in the Musk/MAGA-AfD relationship. The AfD, for instance, does not share the reactionary modernism of the tech right - it instead rages against “windmills of shame.” Trump agrees, but Musk certainly does not.

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:33 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     On immigration, the AfD is most closely aligned with the America First nativist wing of the MAGA coalition. That means it pursues a different vision than the rightwing tech lords, who aren’t any less racist, but maintain they should have unfettered access to cheap labor from across the world.

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:33 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     Finally, both Musk and Vance seem completely oblivious to the aggressive anti-American sentiment on the German far right. To much of the AfD, obsessed with the idea of regaining former national glory, America is an evil empire that treats Germany as “a slave.”

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     Thomas Zimmer (tzimmer_history@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 03-Mar-2025 00:15:34 JST Thomas Zimmer

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     What is the AfD?

     Founded in 2013, the AfD quickly evolved from what was initially mainstream-rightwing-to-reactionary territory into a far-right party that fully rejects liberal democracy and is undoubtedly the political home of Germany’s rightwing extremists.