THE NEW YORK TIMES: Björn Höcke has done more than take the far right into the mainstream. He is tilting the mainstream toward the far right.
From the small stage of a pub in a wooded town of eastern Germany, the right-wing ideologue Björn Höcke regaled a crowd of followers late last year with the tale of his imminent trial. He faced charges for saying “Everything for Germany” at a political rally — breaking German laws against uttering Nazi slogans.
Despite that approaching court date, he looked down at the crowd, and gestured to them with an impish grin. “Everything for?” he asked.
“Germany!” they shouted.
After a decade of testing the boundaries of political speech in Germany, Mr. Höcke, a leader of the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, no longer needed to push the limits himself. The crowd did it for him.
That moment crystallizes why, to his critics, Mr. Höcke is not simply a challenge to the political order, but a threat to German democracy itself. » | Erika Solomon | Erika Solomon reported from Halle, Germany, and the state of Thuringia in eastern Germany. | Sunday, June 23, 2024
