He claims to be a “dissident” who is persecuted for having “the wrong opinion.” But Björn Höcke, who at 51 years old is one of the leaders of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), has been denounced by the public prosecutor’s office of the Land of Saxony-Anhalt (this German), not because of what he thinks, but for the use of symbols of anti-constitutional organizations.
Specifically, Höcke, head of AfD in Thuringia (east), is accused of having summoned the Sturmbabteilung (SA, by its German acronym) or “Storm Troops” and also known as “brown shirts.” That was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi party that would end up being purged from the Third Reich in Operation Hummingbird, which included the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934.
The SA used the expression ‘Alles für Deutschland!’ or “All for Germany!” And that same expression was what Höcke supposedly ‘decorated’ the high point of a rally in May 2021, before the Sachsen-Anhalt regional elections, held in June of that year. “Everything for our homeland, everything for Saxony-Anhalt, everything for Germany,” Höcke launched at the campaign event, organized in the city of Merseburg and attended by about 250 people.
AfD had a good result in those elections. It was the second force (20.8%), only behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, 37.1%). But that did not prevent that act in Merseburg from giving rise to a complaint for that expression. Now we will have to see if it is included in article 86 of the Penal Code, which prohibits the “distribution of propaganda material from anti-constitutional organizations.”
Against Höcke speaks, in addition to a past in which he has been identified as a collaborator in publications close to or belonging to the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) – here also known as the “neo-Nazi party” -, that the Court of Halle has accepted the complaint in which it is understood that the AfD politician knowingly used the expression of the SA.
On the other hand, Höcke is not the only one who has problems for citing the SA. In the current Bavarian regional election campaign, the AfD has had to remove some posters for the October elections because they read: “Everything for Germany!”
The AfD leadership in Bavaria has distanced itself from that paraphernalia, arguing that it had not given approval for those posters. “Something like this has nothing to do with the AfD,” said Stephan Protschka, head of the far-right party in Bavaria, alluding to Adolf Hitler’s “brown shirts” formula, reported the Münchner Merkur newspaper.
Höcke will have to defend himself if he doesn’t want his problems with the law to get worse. In the worst case, the expression for which he has been denounced could cost him up to three years in prison, a fine or both. But that is not the only judicial problem for the AfD leader in Thuringia.
These days he has also been in the news because his parliamentary immunity has been withdrawn in ‘his’ Land. The blame lies with another complaint against him that the Mülhausen Prosecutor’s Office is dealing with. In this case, Höcke is accused of a hate crime, according to the regional press.
It is the seventh time that his immunity has been withdrawn for reasons like this. So far, he has never been convicted. It wouldn’t be surprising if that happened. Not in vain, the AfD in Thuringia is under the surveillance of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the intelligence services of the Ministry of the Interior.
