From Mother Jones · Anna Merlan · · 3m
The far right's oldest trick: reject the label
After the AfD's win in Saxony-Anhalt, the fight moved from policy to a single phrase people would rather not wear.
In brief
After the AfD's win in Saxony-Anhalt, the fight moved from policy to a single phrase people would rather not wear. Scholars don't use "far right" as an insult or a relative position. It names a specific ideology, nativism plus authoritarianism, and objecting to the label is itself part of the playbook. Originally…
A win with weight
The AfD took a commanding result in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. It fell short of governing alone, but the ultranationalist surge is real and spreading in parts of Germany.
The fight moved to a phrase
Instead of defending the policies, the party's allies spent the week attacking two words: far right. The label became the story.
Weidel says no
Co-chairwoman Alice Weidel tweeted "AfD is not far-right" in response to a CBS News headline that used the term.
“AfD is not far-right”
Musk joins in
Elon Musk called the Wall Street Journal "knuckleheads" for using the phrase and said legacy media only sees normalcy as extreme because it is itself far left.
“'Far right' is a propaganda term that became especially popular in recent years.”
The chorus widens
Tommy Robinson called it a codeword for ordinary citizens. Sen. Mike Lee said leftists apply it to any conservative. Donald Trump Jr. argued 45 percent of the vote cannot be fringe.
“Far right is codeword for ordinary decent citizens.”
Trump Jr. has a point
Policies once parked outside the mainstream, especially on immigration, now sit inside it. That shift is real, and it is exactly what makes the word feel contested.
Remigration, named plainly
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the AfD's "remigration" plan, a concept the U.S. government now champions, would amount to ethnic cleansing if carried out.
“ethnic cleansing”
The receipts in the party
One incoming AfD parliamentarian was reportedly a secret Stasi officer. Another came from the youth wing of a neo-Nazi party. Björn Höcke has been fined twice for a banned Nazi phrase.
“the only people in the world who planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital”
An old playbook
Extremism scholar Cas Mudde says the denial goes back decades. In the 1980s, Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front claimed to be neither left nor right, just the voice of the people.
“The far right has always challenged the terminology.”
What the term means
Mudde says scholars don't grade it against the mainstream of the moment. It names a core ideology: nativism, a xenophobic nationalism, plus authoritarian demands for state-enforced order.
“the term is accurate for the parties and politicians mentioned here”
Denial as brand management
Sam Jackson of the University at Albany sees a strategy. Accept the label and you are marginal. Reject it and your ideas sound common, which matters most in Germany.
“I want to make it sound like my ideas are common and widespread.”
Germany answers Rubio
When Berlin classified the AfD as extreme right, Marco Rubio called it "tyranny in disguise." The German Foreign Office replied that courts will decide, and that history taught them why.
“We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.”
The headline
Scholars don't use "far right" as an insult or a relative position. It names a specific ideology, nativism plus authoritarianism, and objecting to the label is itself part of the playbook.
