Nominally, the AfD’s majority argues that extremism has no place in the party. This is a necessary behaviour due to the fact that in post- war Germany parties that have got the stigma of extremism did not do well in elections.

Yet, in fact the AfD is part of a broader nativist and racist mass movement that has emerged since 2013. It has started with campaigns against the accommodation of refugees in Saxony and Berlin run by the NPD.

It later grew close to the fast-rising (for a time) number of Pegida demonstrators and brought to light new extreme right splinter groups like the Identitarian movement. All these elements share the idea that immigration and Muslims are a deadly threat to what they see as European identity.

While the AfD officially decided not to collaborate with groups like the Identitarian movement, several of its activists do so, especially those from the party’s youth wing.

There are also close connections to far right middle-class student fraternities upholding racist values and to the extreme right Institut für Staatspolitik think tank and its various initiatives. For example, in late April 2017, Max Kolb, board member of the Young Alternative in Hesse, attacked a photojournalist in Marburg together with Philip Stein head of the 1-%-initiative, a right-wing grassroots group arguing that it needs just 1% of the population to effectively change the course of politics.

While Frauke Petry in Saxony denied any closer collaboration with the nakedly racist Pegida movement, others declared Pegida and the AfD to be “natural allies”. In fact, up to 85 % of the participants in the Dresden Pegida rallies stated they vote AfD.

Almost every week, AfD candidates running for the national parliament or members of the AfD rank and file find their latest hate outbursts featuring in the media.

In August alone, it was Laleh Hadjimohamadvali, running for the AfD in the Saarland, who declared that Islam is even worse than the Plague while another AfD-er suggested that one option to handle the issue of refugees coming across the Mediterranean would be to sink the boats containing them.

It has also become known that Hardi Schumny, currently handling financial issues of the group Christians in the AfD, donated to the nazi NPD some years ago. Jens Maier, a judge who is challenging Frauke Petry’s leading position in Saxony, even found noble words for the NPD and termed Anders Breivik’s terrorism merely an “act of desperation”.

These are the kind of people that make up the AfD.