Who is the radical German politician who speaks like the Nazis and will be prosecuted for inciting hatred?

Björn Höcke, leader of the most radical wing of the party Alternative for Germany (AfD)will be tried by the Regional Court of Mühlhausen, in the state of Thuringia, accused of inciting ethnic hatred through a social media post from 2022.

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The AfD is the second political force with the highest voting intention at federal level according to polls, even surpassing the social democratic party of current Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Höcke is the head of that party in Thuringia and is expected to run as a candidate for regional government in the September 1 elections.

The accusation against him stems from a publication made by Höcke in 2022, when, in reference to a violent incident in a German city, he stated that “the author probably has a mental disorder and suffers from this widespread disease among immigrants that makes them scream ‘Allahu Akbar’” (an Arabic expression meaning ‘God is the greatest’).

This supposed disease, the message continued, “distorts their (the migrants’) perception so much that in their ‘unfaithful’ hosts they see lives unworthy of living.”

Born in Lunen on April 1, 1972, the grandson of Germans expelled from the former Kingdom of Prussia, Höcke graduated from the Rhein-Wied-Gymnasium secondary school and then studied Sports and History at the universities of Giessen and Marburg. He later worked as a teacher at the Rhenanus school in Hesse.

He had a brief stint at União Junge, as the Christian Democratic Union youth organization is known. He later became one of the founders of the AfD Thuringia, the party with which he reached the Regional Parliament in 2014.

Höcke was also the leader and founder of the faction known as Der Flügel (The Wing in Spanish), which was dissolved in March 2020 after being placed under surveillance by authorities due to its extremist tendencies.

He is known for his critical stance towards multiculturalism and Islam in Germany. Different media and local analysts described Höcke as populist and ultranationalist, mainly for his proposals that include the mass deportation of migrants, the cessation of social aid, the return to the national currency instead of the euro, the strengthening of border control, the limiting asylum laws and eliminating environmental measures such as the use of wind turbines.

In 2017, he caused controversy by calling the existence of a Holocaust monument in Berlin “shameful” and calling for “a 180-degree turnaround in commemoration policy in Germany.” Furthermore, he considers it “a big problem” that Adolf Hitler is considered “the incarnation of absolute evil”.

In 2019, a German court ruled that calling Höcke a “fascist” could not be considered defamation. In September 2023, the regional court of Halle in Saxony-Anhalt admitted a tax charge against Höcke for using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations.

In 2019, a German court ruled that calling Höncke a “fascist” could not be considered defamation. (INA FASSBENDER/AFP/)

The case concerned a political event held on May 29, 2021 in Merseburg, where Höcke was said to have said “everything for our homeland, everything for Saxony-Anhalt, everything for Germany”. This last phrase is actually a motto used by the Sturmabteilung, a Nazi paramilitary organization, therefore its use is prohibited by the country’s laws. This process is still under development.

So far, no date has been set for the first hearing against Höcke in the new case announced this week.

Source: Elcomercio