Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party has been rocked by scandal in recent days after its top candidate in upcoming EU elections defended the Nazi Party’s notorious Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization.
“I will never say that everyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” said Maximilian Krah in comments made to an Italian newspaper. The Nazi Party was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people during World War II, including some 27 million Soviet citizens. The SS violently upheld Nazi rule within the Third Reich and killed millions more in concentration and extermination camps throughout Europe.
The AfD has since banned Krah from campaign appearances and the party has been expelled from the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy Group.
“It doesn't seem like this is going to hurt the AfD's chances in the election,” said host Michelle Witte, who responded to the incident on Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Friday. “They're expected to double their representation in the EU parliament, this is according to Politico. The group that they had belonged to, Identity and Democracy, is still expected to grow.”
“Other EU right-wing parliamentary groups are expected to grow, and then Politico points out that if you combine the seats of right-wing groups and then also the parties that aren't with any group… they are just 10 seats short of the ruling European People's Party of [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen,” she noted. “If those right groups were managing to work together, which they are not right now, that is potentially a pretty intimidating force.”
But political commentator Phil Kelly said it’s the mainstream center in Europe that has paved the way for the resurgence of previously fringe political forces.
“It's actually the liberal center of the European Union that is fueling the kind of resurgence of that far right,” said the Belfast-based activist. “Because when you think of Ursula von der Leyen and the statements she's made, when you think of the center-right and the prime minister of Estonia, when you think of even the Green Party in Germany, these are political forces calling in some sections for the dismantling of Russia, for increasing arms to be sent to the Zelensky regime.”
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas sparked controversy recently with comments suggesting NATO should seek to Balkanize Russia after its current conflict with Ukraine. “There could really be a change in society,” said the Baltic leader, claiming the Eurasian country should be split into several “small nations.”
Pro-war figures like Kallas have dominated European politics as mainstream forces have sought to sideline the populist left, to the benefit of right-wing insurgents. Establishment parties formed a grand coalition to thwart Sinn Féin from taking power after the Irish republican party prevailed in recent elections.
In the United Kingdom, state intelligence actors and Zionist donors joined forces to sabotage socialist Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, with claims of “anti-Semitism” taking center stage in the smear campaign against the pro-Palestine candidate. US intelligence apparently assisted in the effort, with former Vice President and ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo promising to help prevent the populist figure from being elected prime minister in private comments leaked by the Washington Post.
“The architects of this, the people who are goose stepping Europe towards the abyss are those liberal centrists whose policies have failed, who are arming actual Nazis in Ukraine,” said Kelly. “I'm thinking of the Canadian liberal prime minister and President Zelensky standing in the Canadian Parliament and honoring the World War Two service of an SS veteran. It's not just the kind of AfD lunatics who seem to have a nostalgia for the Waffen SS.”
“Europe is in a very, very dangerous place. The focus of that obviously is the war in Ukraine, but it's at a very, very dangerous moment. And the problem is there is no counterweight to the far-right, and that failing liberal center.”
Witte blamed liberal and centrist forces in the EU for mainstreaming the far right’s policies around immigration. As Western military and political interference has destabilized countries like Libya and Syria, Europe has faced a significant migrant crisis. The European Union has responded by funding aggressive programs wherein “tens of thousands of migrants every year” are dumped in the North African desert – policy which critics have called a “death sentence.”
Meanwhile, middle class Europeans have suffered as government resources are strained by the cost of accommodating immigrants, who are exploited by big business to suppress wages.
“More and more the ‘lesser evil’ is appearing to be just as bad as what it warns against,” said Kelly. “When people talk about European values and ‘is there a difference between liberals and fascism’ – I don't understand what ‘European values’ means because Europe is the continent that built Auschwitz. Europe is the continent that colonized Africa, Asia, huge swathes of Latin America. Some of the worst crimes in human history were committed by the Belgian empire in Congo.”
“This is, again, the continent that gave rise to the Nazis,” he added, “where ex-Prime Minister of Britain Boris Johnson only this week was posing with members of the Azov* Brigade and saying that Ukraine should be sent weapons with which they should attack Russia and fire missiles into Russia. So this idea of European values is absurd to me.”
“These are the European values that supposedly Ukraine is the shield of? European democracy and freedom? Europe is living up to its historical legacy, which is one of a criminal gangster cartel creating misery across the world. And its inhuman response towards refugees and migrants is just a further example of that.”
*Recognized as an terrorist organization and banned in Russia.