- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
A 22-year-old German politician who secretly served in Ukraine’s army now faces expulsion from the pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party after calling his own leadership “Russia-kissers.”
Does someone know what’s the overall sentiment of the German far-right wing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Obviously the AfD is pro-Russia, and the far-right shares similar views on queer people - or “LGBT extremism” as the Russian state calls it - for example, but on the other hand I can also see them showing sympathy for Ukraine with controversial figures like Oleksandr Alfiorov as head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.
The modern far-right is heavily Pro-Russia overall. It’s the strongest in East Germany where there is also a lot of nostalgia for the GDR, both from the right and the left.
Add in some public AfD-figures making claims like “Hitler was a communist” and there is just infinite confusion and anyone ends up being free to believe whatever fits their view.
So you have far-right people opposing Ukraine because Ukraine had a Nazi-Battalion and you have far-right people claiming the Nazis were actually leftists. There’s no logic to be found here, but it all boils down to them being fans of Russia and gobbling up whatever gets pushed in their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter-Feeds.
I found a (possibly outdated) interesting German analysis paper by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation from March 2022 on how right wing extremists and conspiracy ideologists reacted to the conflict.
As it was mentioned, most of the far right (especially the AfD of course) is pro Russia. There is a smaller Nazi party called “Der III. Weg” (The third way) which is an interesting outlier though. They’re very pro Ukraine since they had good contacts with the Azov battalion even before the war. They claim that Ukraine is “fighting against Caucasian invaders of Europe”, call Russia “Neo bolshevists”, say they are supporting “anti white riots” in Africa and so on.