A French take on the rise of the ‘ecologically minded’ extreme-right in Germany
Evil doesn’t die; it reinvents itself.
Following the worrying results of last September’s local elections in Saxony—where the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came second with 34 % of the vote —freelance journalist Adèle Cailleteau travelled to the sleepy town of Leisnig in central Saxony to report on a related phenomenon which has emerged over the last few years.
Far-right activists (not even necessarily members of the AfD) had been buying farms across Germany, inspired by their ethno-nationalist (the German word is Völkisch) ideology of ‘Blut und Boden’ (‘blood and soil’) a 19th-century precursor to Nazism. “They want to spread their poison everywhere,” says a local resident of Leisnig who—like all other interviewees in this piece – preferred to remain anonymous. In the lead up to snap German elections on Sunday we revisit Cailleteau’s compelling piece for France’s Reporterre.
The goal of these activists, disguised as harmless stalwarts of the community and lovers of the German countryside, is to settle in “rural and white areas”, as Cailleteau describes them, so as to thereby “preserve the German ethnic substance.” There is a certain cosplay element to their activities. “They might buy up farms,” she notes, “but they don’t necessarily maintain them as such.”
The article quotes a 2021 government report: “Behind the harmless façade of organic farmers attached to tradition lies in reality a belief in the alleged superiority of the German people and a racist and Anti-Semitic worldview.” The German term used to describe such people is Völkische Siedler, which roughly translates as ethno-nationally motivated migrants.
Although present across all sixteen German states, Völkische Siedler have a particular affinity for those in the east, which used to be part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In these ever-aging villages, where, the journalist writes, “many abandoned farms and houses cost almost nothing”, their arrival has had superficially positive effects. They integrate seamlessly into local daily life, “attending funerals as a sign of solidarity, help out, volunteer in the local fire services”. As for their ideology, she adds, “it is not necessarily a problem in the country where the far-right party AfD scores the highest.” Here, the extreme-right activists can simply live out their “Germanic tradition”.
But how did it come to this? In Leisnig, everything shifted about a decade ago, writes Cailleteau, when the Strauch family opened a publishing house, selling books on the Second World War as well as Nazi paraphernalia, including maps of the German Empire before 1945 and posters with Waffen SS soldiers front and centre. Other new residents include Christian Fischer, the former executive of the now-banned youth association Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ), who charmed the locals with his “perfect son-in-law” image.
Initally, these newcomers were discreet, demonstrating their overt political activism in larger, neighbouring cities like Chemnitz or Dresden. In Leisnig, they integrated into everyday activities at their children’s local nurseries and schools, as well as in associations and in charity work. Some collected donations for the 2021 floods in the not-so-local Ahrtal.
The restrictive Covid-19 guidelines brought these extreme-right activists more into the open. In 2021, they began organising regular demonstrations and, as Cailleteau reports, went to great lengths to create their own “independent news outlet, Leisnig.Info” for promotional purposes. As one local resident notes, their activities “are more subtle and smarter than the Neo-Nazis from the 1990s.” (One term used to describe these years in Germany is ‘Baseballschlägerjahre’ – the baseball bat years).
The Völkische Siedler have also sought political allies, approaching members of Freie Sachsen, a far-right party that aspires the state’s independence from Germany and bands together various diffuse groups of extremists and Neo-Nazis. Some entered the local government last year. Christian Fischer who now sits on the Stadtrat of Leisnig (city council).
“Their goal is to prevent the proper functioning of the city council, with the aim to slow down whatever they can,” notes another Leisnig resident. “They don’t want to win anything, only to destroy.” Other anti far-right residents have formed a Bürgerinitiative (citizen’s alliance) with a core team of ten that has made a number of small wins: for example, getting local real estate agents to look at prospective clients more closely.
Yet these efforts are insufficient says Kerstin Köditz an ex-MP for Die Linke in Saxony’s Parliament. “The German authorities don’t take get how serious the extreme-right issue is or they even minimise it,” she says. “As for us, in rural areas, it will become very complicated when our progressive-thinking inhabitants leave due to the arrival of these ethnic colonisers. We [are too rural to] attract people from immigrant backgrounds, but we need inhabitants to keep the countryside alive.”
What is her solution? “We are not going to solve the problem by leaving or hiding”, says one of the residents. The new wave of far-right activists left the West “because it was made uncomfortable for them. We must make sure that it is the same way here.”
Full original in French published on 7 September 2024 under the title: En Allemagne, des «colons ethniques» veulent blancher les campagnes.
Launched in 2007 by journalist Hervé Kempf, Reporterre is France’s oldest daily news site on matters of ecology.
Adèle Cailleteau is a freelance journalist based in the Île-de-France.
Stella Weiß is a Leipzig-based photographer.
