The leak of a document from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s conservative party, sheds light on the way U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy is being emulated by right-wing parties across Europe.
The AfD, which came second in the federal elections with 20.6 percent, has been designated "extremist" by German intelligence agencies, and its policies declared incompatible with the free democratic order. As a result, the party is currently shut out of any potential right-wing coalition at a national level, through the adoption of a "firewall" policy by the centre-right CDU-CSU.
However, exceptions to the ban have begun at local level, and in January the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had to rely on the AfD to pass a new law restricting inward migration.
In a document leaked to Politico and reported by Paul Mason last 16 July 2025, the AfD outlines the next stage of its plan for power. It wants to break down the firewall by polarizing public debate between itself and the "woke left" – as personified in the Left Party.
"Our goal is to create a situation in which the political divide no longer runs between the AfD and the other political currents, but rather one in which a bourgeois-conservative camp and a radicalizing left-wing camp face each other, comparable to the situation in the U.S.," says the document.
By forcing voters of the political centre to take sides on the basis of values, and by stigmatising the left in the same terms as President Trump – "radical left lunatics" – the AfD wants to erode support for the firewall at a cultural and narrative level, to the point where the CDU-CSU can no longer justify it to their voters.
Combined with a shift of emphasis in its language, to present a more moderate face to the electorate, the AfD hopes this will finally end its isolation and open a pathway to power. This is exactly what President Trump did by exposing the extremist and destructive ideologies of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, pro-Palestine and trans rights protesters. And it has a long track record.
The US Anti-Defamation League, in a report this month, says recorded incidents of antisemitism almost doubled in Germany between 2022 and 2023, to 4,782, with regional figures for 2024 said to match that. The pattern is closely matched by figures from the U.K. and U.S.A., where justified anger among Muslim communities over Israeli war crimes in Gaza have frequently spilled over into chants and violent actions targeting Jews and Jewish institutions.
In Germany, where the AfD opposes circumcision and Kosher slaughter, the Central Jewish council reports: "A front has formed, cutting across the left and right, from Islamists to the very centre of society. This coalition questions the self-evidence of today’s Jewish life as well as Germany’s culture of remembrance".
The ADL report contains a catalogue of evidence from other national Jewish councils that should make stark reading for progressives. In France, "a very high proportion of antisemitic acts are related to the Israel-Hamas war ..." with more than 10 percent of incidents involving physical assaults — an all-time high.
In the online space, it is now common to see the most extreme opponents of Israel reposting and interacting with fascist antisemites, while Islamophobia and stigmatization of migrants runs riot. There has emerged, in many countries, a situation where people on the pro-Palestinian progressive left and the far right are in a state of "mental civil war" with each other.
What is driving people towards parties like the AfD is no longer simply economic hardship, or hostility to migrants, but a sense that the rule of law is breaking down; that in the absence of sustained growth, both geopolitics and domestic politics have become a zero-sum game, in which for my family or community to prosper, yours must fail.
In the UK, the situation is set to be exacerbated by the formation of a new left party, involving former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the dissident Labour MP Zarah Sultana and four "independent" Muslim MPs elected on religious conservative politics and fuelled by anger over Gaza.
In short, by mobilizing anti-Israel rhetoric from the streets into electoral politics, Corbyn looks set to fuel exactly the kind of polarizing atmosphere that the British far-right party Reform, currently polling up to 30 percent, can feed off.
At the core of all of these is the insurance that traditional culture and physical security are secured. Everyday life has to feel not just more prosperous but safer from migrants and more predictable than what the transgender movement is flaunting. When there are tens of thousands of people who are opposing the leftist ideology and lifestyles, only a vigorous conservative party, with a clear story about how things can get better fast, stands a chance of halting the slide to Islamic extremism.