FASCIST FRIENDS 

Trump team lashes out at Germany for censure of far-right group

By AFP
May 2, 2025


Dozens of fake sites mimicking German media are flooding the internet with content favourable to the far-right AfD party - Copyright AFP Sergio Lima

US President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday lashed out at Germany in unusually strong terms after the US ally designated the far-right AfD party as an extremist group.

Vice President JD Vance, who had defiantly met with the AfD leader during a visit to Munich in February, drew an analogy to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a triumphant moment that has united Germany and the United States.

“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” Vance wrote on X Friday.

He described the AfD, which like Trump has campaigned against immigration, as “the most popular party in Germany.” It came in second in February elections.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also used heated language to denounce the action by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which gives authorities greater leeway to monitor the group.

“Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition,” Rubio wrote on X. “That’s not democracy — it’s tyranny in disguise.”

“Germany should reverse course,” said Rubio, who is also Trump’s national security advisor.

“What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD — which took second in the recent election — but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes,” Rubio said.

Germany’s foreign ministry hit back at the criticism by Rubio, saying the designation was made after an independent investigation, and noting the country’s Nazi past.

“This is democracy,” the German Foreign Office said in English-language X response to Rubio.

“We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”

Such public spats would have been unthinkable under most US administrations.

But Trump and his aides have repeatedly singled out Germany for criticism, denouncing former chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome a decade ago to refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and other conflicts.

Trump has sought to use executive authority to deport migrants en masse, rounding up people without waiting for courts and sending some to a crowded, maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

Vance used a February speech to the Munich Security Forum to denounce the ostracization of the AfD and then met its leader Alice Weidel.

The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which had already designated several local AfD branches as right-wing extremist groups, said it decided to give the entire party the label due to its attempts to “undermine the free, democratic” order in Germany.

The Trump administration has also defended French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who was banned from standing for office after being convicted over misuse of European Parliament expenses.

burs-sct/sla

'Posterized!' Germany fires back as Rubio defends far-right party tied to Nazi slogans

Daniel Hampton
May 2, 2025 

RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a meeting of the Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias Task Force at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is under fire after he publicly condemned Germany’s decision to classify the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party as an extremist organization.

Rubio took to the X platform on Friday to opine that Germany "just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition."

"That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise," he wrote. "What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course."

Jewish organizations have called the party antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic.

"Founded in 2013 as an anti-European Union party, AfD has since radicalized and become an extremist, anti-immigrant party whose aim is 'to eliminate the free democratic basic order,' according to a 2023 report by the German Institute for Human Rights," noted the Anti-Defamation League.

The organization added that Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, has "twice been fined by a German court for using a banned Nazi slogan."

"The phrase, 'Everything for Germany' (“Alles für Deutschland”) was a slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers and engraved on their daggers," the ADL noted.

Critics unloaded on Rubio over the post — including Germany's Foreign Office, which sounded the alarm about "right-wing extremism."

"This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped," German officials replied.

Others joined in condemning Rubio.

"Nothing to see here—just the Secretary of State attacking one of our strongest allies, falsely accusing it of 'tyranny in disguise,' all in defense of a far-right, Holocaust-denying, pro-Putin party. This is INSANE," wrote the Republicans Against Trump account.

"You are in no position to lecture anyone, Marco. And the fact that you are now trying to prop up the AfD just shows how weak you really are," chided Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson.

"Nothing to see here: just the US Secretary of State advocating for an anti-Semitic, anti-Islamist right-wing German political party ... and then getting posterized by the German Foreign Office's social media manager," remarked Michael A. Cohen, columnist for MSNBC, on X.

"Rubio publicly criticizing an ally for cracking down on right-wing extremism. And Germany hitting back. We are in a new world," commented Noah Barkin, visiting senior fellow at the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund of the United States