>> Support for the Alternative for Germany is higher than ever before.

>> NARRATOR: Correspondent Evan Williams investigates the surging popularity of Germany’s New Right.

>> Now we are the party of the future.

>> NARRATOR: The effort to attract a new generation.

>> The AfD is dominating the political discussion on TikTok.

>> NARRATOR: And the international connections.

>> Russia supports far-right actors all over Europe and the United States goverment does much the same out in the open.

>> NARRATOR: Now on FRONTLINE, the Rise of Germany’s New Right.

(crowd cheering) >> It's now.

Can you hear me?

(crowd cheering) >> Hello?

>> Hello?

Can you hear me okay?

>> Yes, we can hear you!

(crowd cheering) >> Unfortunately I can't-- I can't hear you very well... (cheering) So, hopefully... wow.

Hello, everyone.

I hope you can hear me well.

>> EVAN WILLIAMS: It was less than a month before the German federal election.

>> Well, first of all, I wanted to really say that I'm very excited for the AfD, and I think you are really the best hope for Germany.

>> WILLIAMS: Elon Musk was addressing a rally for the hardline nationalist party AfD: "Alternativ fur Deutschland."

>> It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that, in some sort of multiculturalism that, that... dilutes everything.

The German people are... sort of, really an ancient nation, it goes back thousands of years.

>> This is absolutely unprecedented.

A foreign billionaire using this platform that he owns to support a radical, if not extremist party during the election campaign was a first for Germany, and probably first for many European countries.

It was like an act of recognition.

>> We have the richest and most innovative entrepreneur of the world on our side.

We have Elon Musk.

Of course that makes us extremely sexy.

And perception is reality.

Now we are the party of the future.

We are now the party of international connections and we are the party of modern technology, of innovative thinking.

It shows that we are a serious political force.

(crowd cheering and clapping) >> The fate of the world, I think, rests upon this election in Germany.

It's extremely fundamental.

(applause) And... you know, go, go, go!

Fight, fight, fight.

>> Fight, fight, fight!

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ >> According to some observers, the shift towards the right in Europe is unlikely to slow down.

We've seen parties touting far-right ideologies gain seats in Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Finland, that's just to name a few.

>> PROTESTERS (in German): >> EVAN WILLIAMS: For the past 18 months, as support for nationalist, anti-immigrant parties has surged across Europe, I've been reporting on the rise of the AfD in Germany.

>> BJÖRN HÖCKE (in German): (cheering and clapping) >> WILLIAMS: Sitting down with senior officials... (in interview): Do you believe that people who have not assimilated enough should be deported?

(voiceover): Investigating links to Putin's Russia.

>> It's like a detailed accounting, how the Russians have conducted disinformation warfare.

>> WILLIAMS: And the Trump administration's expressions of support for Europe's far right.

>> No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.

>> They share this perceived existential threat caused by migration.

Far-right views have become more mainstream.

There's increasing collaboration and just discussion of working with the far right.

>> They're no longer excluded, but actually they're part of the political process now.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (indistinct talking) >> To Germany now, where the success of the far right in two state elections is tonight sending shockwaves across the country.

>> A far-right party winning a state election in Germany for the first time since the Nazis.

>> WILLIAMS: In the fall of 2024, I was in Germany as the AfD swept to an election victory in the eastern state of Thuringia.

>> The head of the AfD in Thuringia, a party branded extremist by German intelligence, was celebrating as his group won 33% of the vote in the state.

>> WILLIAMS: The party's leader here, Björn Höcke, is regarded as one of its most radical figures.

>> HÖCKE (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: The AfD had come first in the polls, but failed to win an overall majority.

Germany's mainstream parties were vowing to work together to block the AfD from forming a government; a longstanding tactic against far-right parties known as the "firewall."

>> There is this firewall, a "Brandmauer," as they say in Germany, around the AfD, that is that Democratic parties have said they will not touch it with a barge pole, not work with it, try really to kind of avoid it in Parliament.

>> WILLIAMS: The AfD accuses the mainstream parties of operating like a cartel, and wants to tear the firewall down.

What can you do from opposition-- you won the most votes, but you will not be able to form a government.

Is that fair, do you feel that's fair?

>> HÖCKE: >> REPORTER (speaking German): >> HÖCKE: >> The big question now is what all of this means for Germany's national elections, set to take place next year, and whether the rest of the country will follow this sharp shift to the right.

♪ ♪ >> WILLIAMS: Opponents of the AfD have long been warning that the party represents a threat to German democracy.

Stephan Kramer is the domestic intelligence chief in Thuringia.

He's Jewish, and one of the AfD's most vocal adversaries.

>> We're in Germany.

This is Germany, and this Germany has the Holocaust experience and history.

We have a principle in Germany which is called defense of democracy.

It comes out of the ideas and experiences that we had with Nazi dictatorship.

Remember, Hitler and his Nazi NSDAP were elected into power.

They didn't do a revolution.

People voted for the Nazis to take over the power.

(crowd chanting in German) (car honks) >> Hitler gets a tremendous ovation when leaving for his first cabinet meeting.

>> WILLIAMS: Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany without ever winning a majority in an election.

>> The Nazi leader poses with his cabinet... >> WILLIAMS: In 1933, he formed a coalition government, and then legally obtained emergency powers, enabling him to ban all other parties.

(applause) >> WILLIAMS: Hitler basically had his playbook and worked his way up the ladder to establish his dictatorship.

(Hitler speaking indistinctly) >> The Nazis used exactly those tools of democracy to take over and wipe out democracy.

>> WILLIAMS: Kramer's agency was set up after World War II, to prevent a repeat of history and monitor extremist threats to democracy.

When we first met him in early 2024, he was in northern Germany to deliver a message to city mayors.

>> KRAMER (speaking German): (speaking English): Everybody is very concerned that our defense of democracy is on the edge.

The New Right, the AfD, is explicitly acting against our principles of the federal constitution.

This is exactly a situation that we would have never thought would occur after what we've learned in '33 to '45, and here we are.

(speaking German): (speaking English): Look, the Germans did not invent antisemitism, but they invented Auschwitz.

And this is, this is something that we should always keep in mind.

♪ ♪ >> Germany's cities lie in ruins, and the hopes of the Nazis lie in the dust.

>> WILLIAMS: After the Second World War, Germany set out to reckon with its grim history.

>> All citizens were ordered to visit the concentration camps.

♪ ♪ >> WILLIAMS: The Nazi party was banned, as were its symbols and slogans.

Strict legal limits were imposed on free speech, Holocaust denial was eventually criminalized, and the political firewall was born.

>> This was a consensus amongst all parties: that we mustn't forget the crimes, and that we need to educate future generations, so that this memory lives on, not as a memory of shame, but as a reminder that we have a responsible role to play in the world, that we need to protect liberal democracy and fundamental human rights.

(cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: After 2015, Germany became a global leader in welcoming refugees; taking in more than a million people fleeing conflicts across the world.

>> ANGELA MERKEL (speaking German): (marching band playing) >> WILLIAMS: But the influx had unintended consequences.

>> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: A rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.

>> PROTESTERS (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: The AfD stoked these fears and won millions of new supporters.

>> PROTESTERS: (booming) >> Germany is in shock after an antisemitic attack on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.

(booming) (women screaming) >> At least ten people were killed when a gunman went on a shooting rampage in Halle.

The victims all had a migrant background.

>> It comes just days after a plot to blow up mosques around the country was foiled.

>> WILLIAMS: After Germany was hit by a wave of far-right terror attacks in 2019 and 2020, the AfD came under increasing scrutiny for its anti-immigrant rhetoric.

>> HÖCKE: (applause) >> WILLIAMS: The AfD officially condemned the attacks and rejected that the killers were motivated by its rhetoric.

But the party was already on the radar of Germany's domestic intelligence.

>> THOMAS HALDENWANG (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: Thomas Haldenwang was director general of Germany's national domestic intelligence until late 2024.

>> HALDENWANG: >> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: At the time, Björn Höcke led a radical faction of the AfD known as the "Wing."

In 2020, domestic intelligence classified the Wing as a "right-wing extremist threat to democracy."

(camera clicks) The AfD soon dissolved the Wing, but eventually the entire party in Thuringia was classified as extremist and placed under surveillance.

Björn Höcke rarely gives interviews to non-German media.

Okay.

(voiceover): But he agreed to sit down with me at an AfD campaign event in the spring of 2024.

Domestic intelligence is monitoring you and your party, because they say you're an extremist threat to democracy.

>> HÖCKE: (applause) >> Björn Höcke is extraordinary within the AfD, because he is really a quite old-fashioned right-wing extremist.

He's not just a radical.

He's not just opposed to immigration.

He is really one who favors rewriting German history.

(applause) >> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: Höcke is a former history teacher, who for years has been pushing against the country's restrictive speech laws.

In 2017, he criticized Berlin's Holocaust memorial, arguing that Germany should reverse the way it remembered its past.

>> HÖCKE: (applause, chanting) >> When he talked about the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, it's the Holocaust memorial of shame.

Everybody knew what he was talking about.

And when he was then confronted-- "what do you mean?

"Is this 'Nazis weren't so bad after all,' is this what you mean?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, this is not what I mean."

(distant marching band, whistling) >> WILLIAMS: Amid calls for him to be expelled from the AfD, Höcke stated that he'd made a mistake, and that he'd learned many lessons.

But he continued to court controversy.

(Höcke speaking German) In 2021, he gave a speech which included a slogan used by the Nazis: "Everything for Germany."

>> HÖCKE: >> PROTESTERS (chanting in German): >> WILLIAMS: Under German law, the phrase is illegal, and Höcke was charged with knowingly using a Nazi slogan.

He later called the Nazi era horrific, but claimed he wasn't aware of the slogan's history.

>> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: Then, he did it again.

>> HÖCKE: >> CROWD (replying in German): (cheers and applause) >> In front of a public audience, he made everybody scream, "all for Germany."

After he already knew that he was on criminal charges for this.

Look.

Any misunderstandings?

"Oh... he didn't know what that means?"

Let me remind you-- he is a history teacher, a certified history teacher, and he knows damned well what this phrase means.

>> WILLIAMS: You've been charged with issuing a Nazi comment, "everything for Germany."

You've been charged with a criminal offense, because that's a crime.

>> HÖCKE: (begins answering) >> WILLIAMS: It's a Nazi saying.

>> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: Höcke was eventually found guilty and fined more than $30,000.

♪ ♪ But his controversial statements did nothing to dent the AfD's popularity... especially in the less prosperous states of formerly communist eastern Germany.

(crowd cheering) In 2023, the AfD won a series of local election victories there, polling over 30% in Thuringia.

>> Support for the Alternative for Germany is higher than ever before in their ten-year history.

>> REPORTER (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: They'd been capitalizing on widespread concern about a new influx of refugees-- this time from Ukraine-- as well as inflation, the cost of living, and the government's expensive green energy policies.

>> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: The party was also aiming to gain ground in the west of the country.

(cameras clicking) It had broadened its appeal by appointing national co-leaders who were seen as more moderate than Björn Höcke.

>> Danke.

>> Cheers.

>> WILLIAMS: Tino Chrupalla, a former businessman; and Alice Weidel, a former investment banker.

>> Alice Weidel started out as a conservative, economically liberal politician.

She has an international lifestyle.

She is married to a foreign woman of color.

And she was seen as, as a moderate, as a market liberal within the party.

That was her schtick.

>> ALICE WEIDEL (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: By the time the AfD won the Thuringia state election in 2024, the party was the second most popular in the country.

And their support among younger Germans was growing, boosted by a wave of pro-AfD social media videos.

(upbeat song playing) >> REPORTER (speaking German): >> And yep, it is the strongest party among young voters in those states-- by a lot.

♪ ♪ >> The far-right AfD is the winner among young men.

>> The AfD's social media campaign is putting them way ahead in the battle for new young voters.

>> The voting share of the AfD in the group of first voters tripled in eastern Germany during the last round of state elections, quite shockingly for many observers.

The AfD has almost 30% of the popular vote within the group under 25.

So that's a tremendous, a shocking change for German politics, considering that those younger voters are the future of the country.

(song ends) (indistinct talking) >> WILLIAMS: Roland Verwiebe is a social scientist at Potsdam University.

>> We see lots of likes, lots of comments and shares.

>> WILLIAMS: He and his team spent more than a year researching the AfD's use of TikTok.

>> The AfD is dominating the political discussion, the political debates on TikTok, especially if you look at younger voters.

>> My confidence and my identity based on my German ethnicity, in my opinion, does not make me a right extremist, it makes me a realist.

>> The AfD is the only political group in Germany which has such a large group of independent actors, right-wing influencers, who produce content by themselves and also promote content which comes from the party.

♪ ♪ They use music.

Videos are usually quite short.

♪ ♪ They very often not talk about politics itself, about complex issues.

They transport emotions, joy, positive messages.

(dance music playing) And what you see is basically the result of 15 years of investing into social media, of being able to play out content to specific demographics.

They were able to develop a real mastership in that regard.

>> WILLIAMS: As part of their research, the team created simulated 18-year old TikTok users, to see what political content the algorithm would put on the feeds of first-time voters.

>> When we were looking at the content exposure to political content in the feeds of the TikTok users that we simulated, we found that 71% of this political content was related to the AfD, which is over two-thirds of the political content that we collected in total.

So, this was quite shocking.

The typical first-time voter that we simulized would encounter about over nine videos per week that are related to the AfD.

About one video related to the also populist BSW, about the same of CDU content, and then the other parties follow with less than one video in a week.

>> WILLIAMS: So it's almost ten times the number of videos... >> Yeah.

>> WILLIAMS: The AfD videos, compared to any other party.

>> MAXIMILIAN KRAH (speaking German): >> WOMAN (speaking German): (cheers and applause) (indistinct talking) (laughing) >> WILLIAMS: One of the AfD's most popular social media stars is Maximilian Krah, a politician and lawyer from the eastern state of Saxony.

(indistinct talking) >> WILLIAMS: Krah is considered to be from the same extreme wing of the party as Björn Höcke.

I met him at an AfD campaign event in early 2025.

(indistinct chatter) Why are you so popular with young people?

>> KRAH (speaking English): Because those people are told that they are not worth a lot, people don't listen to them.

Your nation is a construction, your predecessors criminal.

Better to change everything, and what we say is no.

You are somebody who is worthy to get love, respect for what you are and for what you represent, and for what your parents and your grandparents stand for.

And this is a very positive message, and I guess this resonates with the, with the desires of young people.

>> (chanting): Max, Max, Maxi Krah!

Max, Max, Maxi Krah!

♪ ♪ >> WILLIAMS: Tell me the thinking behind your social media profile and what you're doing with it.

>> I mean, the first issue is, you know that the legacy media, as it's called now, is hostile against us.

So, that is why... >> WILLIAMS: But are they hostile or do they just ask questions?

>> No, this is why the party moved into social media very early.

Right?

So, it's because of a need.

♪ ♪ Trump was and is the game changer.

>> He got a good stance.

Low key you got a jab, I think.

>> That's pretty good.

>> He brought political communication from the 1970s into the 21st century with social media.

Digital, short, and ironical.

And then someone told me, look, among the German youth, 20% are left wingers, and 80% are non-political.

So I knew I have to touch the non-political.

(speaking German): >> TEEN: >> KRAH: (speaking English): Then I said "30% of young men "don't have a girlfriend, never have.

"Don't be a left wing, don't be woke, don't be soft.

"Don't be a soy boy.

Be a real man, be right wing.

Then you get a girlfriend."

(speaking German): (speaking English): Of course, that's ironical.

But young people have never seen a politician talking to them like that, on issues that are very important to them, and so I became this social media star.

>> WILLIAMS: But aren't these just phrases?

They're just rhetoric.

But they don't really know what your politics are.

>> For a youngster, young man, nothing is as important as sex.

They want it, they don't have it.

If you trust me on the basic questions, on the fundamental questions, or if I have a platform between you and me, a bridge, then I can-- my political, technical issues, I can send over that bridge directly to you.

>> WILLIAMS: And you're saying, "Well, if you, "if you vote for the far right, you'll get sex"?

>> (laughs) >> WILLIAMS: I mean, that's... >> That's a little bit simplified.

That's a simplified-- but I say... >> WILLIAMS: And then you start getting into politics?

>> The first is-- "You want sex, and I know that.

"And I'm the only one who talks about it.

"In the language you understand, the language you use, "the media you use, in the same way.

"I understand you, and now... "Look, I have three or four ideas "how to make your life better and maybe to come a little bit closer to your goal."

And then they say, "Hey, this is the first adult person and then a politician who even understands what I want."

>> WILLIAMS: Mm.

>> That's a big deal.

And that builds that bridge of trust, and because they trust me, they follow me.

(camera clicks) >> WILLIAMS: Krah's following on social media elevated his status in the party.

In 2023, he was selected as the AfD's lead candidate for the upcoming European Parliament election.

>> Krah is quite a flamboyant kind of person.

He is very happy to show that he loves champagne, and he's got lots of kids with lots of women.

He actually, I think, described himself as the German Trump once.

>> WILLIAMS: Ann-Katrin Müller covers the AfD for the investigative magazine "Der Spiegel."

>> Maximilian Krah tried to push the party towards being more right wing.

He has this ethno-nationalist view, and he pushed it and pushed it, pushed it during his campaign.

>> KRAH (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: In March 2024, TikTok deleted some of Krah's videos and stopped promoting his content for 90 days-- for repeated violations of its community guidelines, including sharing conspiracy theories.

>> KRAH (speaking German): Multicultural is multi-criminal.

>> WILLIAMS: As his election campaign continued, Krah would also come under scrutiny for his controversial pro-Russian views.

He repeatedly urged an end to German support for Ukraine.

>> KRAH: >> Alternative for Germany is today the largest far-right party in Western Europe that is pro-Russian.

And the group, the pro-Russian group within the party, is probably about 60 people.

>> WILLIAMS: Anton Shekhovtsov is an expert on Russian links to Europe's far-right parties.

>> The far right in the west, many of them consider Russia as an ally in their own fight; against the establishment, against their liberal Democratic ruling elites.

So they would consider Russia as an ally, and they would be interested in cooperating with the Russians against the common enemy, which is liberal democracy.

>> WILLIAMS: Krah rejects the critique that he and the AfD are cooperating with Russia or undermining democracy.

>> KRAH (speaking English): I always follow German interest in-- concerning Russia.

Economically, the big loser of the Ukrainian conflict is Germany.

We lost our market, we lost our energy supply.

And we take a lot of refugees, who, different to other countries, don't work in Germany, because the welfare level is so high.

>> WILLIAMS: Mm.

>> So, that said, this conflict is a disaster for Germany, foremost.

And of course that's one of the reasons why I want to end it.

>> E.U.

leaders are sounding the alarm of a potential Russian interference in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections as several M.E.P.s have been accused of acting as Russian agents.

>> WILLIAMS: As the European Parliament elections approached, a series of scandals threatened to derail Krah's campaign.

>> Investigators suspect him of allegedly receiving payments from Russia and China.

His office was also searched in early May.

>> WILLIAMS: In April 2024, German prosecutors began investigating Krah, after he was accused of accepting payments from Russia and China.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

(siren wailing) Then, just before the elections, Krah appeared to downplay Germany's Nazi past.

>> Maximilian Krah was recently quoted as saying that not all members of Nazi Germany's SS were criminals.

>> Krah made these comments that not everyone in the Waffen SS was a criminal.

By definition, under German law, the Waffen SS is a criminal organization.

It's unconstitutional.

It was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that ran the concentration camps.

I mean, what more do you want?

>> WILLIAMS: Tell me what happened with this SS comment and what you were trying to get across.

>> Look, the situation was I had an interview with the "Financial Times," and then there was another colleague from "la Repubblica."

And after the the interview was over, she said, "And by the way-- by the way, you said, "'our ancestors were not criminals.'

One of my ancestors was in the SS.'"

What shall I say?

And I knew now this is a trap.

And I said, "Ooh, have you ever checked "what this ancestor has done?

"Because I will not say to you that everyone who had this uniform was a criminal."

>> WILLIAMS: I mean, people took it-- it could be taken as messaging the extremists in Germany that you're somehow endorsing those that were in the SS... >> No, no, no... >> WILLIAMS: That was the problem.

>> No, that's why I told you how the situation was in the interview, when she said "What about my relative?"

And I tried to escape the situation-- "Have you checked it?"

She said, "No, do I have to check it?"

"Yes, you have to check it."

>> REPORTER (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: Under pressure, Krah agreed to step down from the AfD's leadership team, but stayed on as one of the party's candidates.

♪ ♪ >> REPORTER (speaking German): (cheering) >> WILLIAMS: In an historic gain, 15 AfD candidates would be elected to the European parliament, including Maximilian Krah.

>> I think one part of that story is normalization.

They are violating taboos all the time, so you get used to it.

You get used to them saying outrageous things.

But I think, part of the story is also, because AfD voters are so outraged, they really dislike the system, they really dislike the elites.

And of course, anything to do with National Socialism is so criminalized in Germany because it is what used to be the ultimate taboo.

It's one way to stick it to the man, to still vote for a party that's obviously violates conventions and taboos around this part of German history.

>> WEIDEL: >> WILLIAMS: The AfD's success was part of a wider pattern across the continent.

>> Far-right parties were expected to do well in these European elections, but their performance delivered a number of bombshells.

>> WILLIAMS: Hard right nationalists gained ground in France, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

>> European voters have pulled the parliament to the farthest right it's ever been, and that is what's causing anxiety.

>> This is a trend that we've seen over the past decade, really.

Some of the biggest gains made by the far right in the European Parliament were actually made in 2019, for example, not in 2024, in the most recent election.

What has, I think, accelerated this trend in more recent years, though, is that mainstream politicians have adopted far-right rhetoric, particularly on migration.

>> WILLIAMS: Armida van Rij is an expert in European politics.

>> Far-right views have become more mainstream, and that has enabled that "cordon sanitaire," the firewall around the far-right parties, to erode gradually and over time.

And so what we're seeing now is in certain countries, both at the national level and on the European level, there's increasing collaboration and just discussion of working with the far right.

So they're no longer excluded, but actually they're part of the political process now.

And what that also means is that now for voters and for populations, they know that a vote for the far right is no longer a lost vote.

(bell tolling) ♪ ♪ (bell tolling) >> WILLIAMS: Shortly after the E.U.

elections, allegations emerged that support for Europe's far-right parties-- especially the AfD-- had been boosted by a flood of online disinformation.

♪ ♪ Investigative journalist Martin Laine got access to a trove of leaked documents.

>> We received a email with a really obscure link attached to it, and we were afraid to even click it, because it looked very suspicious.

And then we downloaded... It turned out to be about 400 documents from an organization called Social Design Agency from Russia.

There are thousands of lines of data there.

It's like a detailed accounting, of how the Russians have conducted disinformation warfare.

What immediately catch the eye was a document mentioning European Parliament elections.

And the documents mentioning the European Parliament elections confirmed that the Russians were trying to disrupt European elections, trying to achieve results beneficial for them.

They were targeting the biggest member states, especially France and Germany, certain political parties, especially AfD.

So, that told me that European elections were being meddled with by the Russians.

(advertisement announcer speaking Russian) >> WILLIAMS: The Social Design Agency is a Russian PR company with close links to the Kremlin.

Even before the European elections, the company had been sanctioned by the E.U.

and the U.S Treasury Department, and accused of running "a foreign malign influence campaign, "including attempting to impersonate legitimate media outlets."

(ad announcer speaking Russian) The trove contained a video boasting about its work.

>> (speaking Russian): >> The video starts with the main guy, Ilya Gambashidze, the head of Social Design Agency, wearing this military-looking outfit.

He even had like a badge saying ideological groups of Russia.

They work like a usual PR firm trying to achieve results.

And the results they're trying to achieve, as it seems, is the popularity of AfD Party in Germany.

>> WILLIAMS: We had the documents translated from Russian into English.

They talk here quite openly about creating fakes and disinformation.

>> Yeah.

>> WILLIAMS: They say that.

>> Yeah, they say that directly.

They use fakes a lot in their documents.

Like, there's documents called fakes and it's just a list of fake stories they've done, especially with Ukraine.

You can see fake picture, fake document, meme, videos, so use, they use these words like fake, fake, fake.

They know that they're... >> WILLIAMS: Producing fakes.

>> So they had a cartoon team on board.

Like, "open borders migrants that are coming in."

>> WILLIAMS: Creating fear, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> WILLIAMS: Meta, the owner of Facebook, has publicly said it's been trying to block disinformation from the Social Design Agency since 2022.

But in the documents, the SDA boasts about its ability to elude Meta's efforts.

>> Here are screenshots from their ad campaigns on Facebook.

Very detailed overview of how they push these stories on Facebook.

So this is the fake user leaving comments so you can see them.

That's one of the one of the most interesting documents.

Basically, reviewing how the European elections went and to analyze the, like, balance in the European Parliament and how it corresponds with their aims.

>> WILLIAMS: That's interesting, so here, "Even more impressive is the success of the Alternative for Deutschland, receiving 17% of the vote overall."

>> They also mention how during the elections, the media sphere was flooded with disinformation and they quote, like, people saying that and saying that, okay, that's, that's what we were doing.

They noticed!

And here they say that on the whole, the overall success of the right wing in the European elections is now perceived worldwide as a success of Russian foreign policy and moreover, a success of Russian propaganda.

>> WILLIAMS: Wow.

Russian has consistently denied it has interfered in foreign elections, and the SDA did not respond to our attempts to reach them.

In September 2024, the U.S.

Justice Department accused the company of covertly spreading propaganda in Europe, as well as the United States.

And said that senior Kremlin officials were involved in the efforts.

>> The FBI agent explains in that affidavit that employees of Russian presidential administration, had like 20 meetings, at least, together with Social Design Agency employees, planning out all those campaigns and stuff.

Specifically, they mention Sergei Kiriyenko, who is a very important man in the Kremlin.

He's a right hand man to Putin, basically.

Historically, it's known that he's the head of, like, the propaganda system in, in Russia, at least in the presidential administration.

And that shows how important this organization is, and how close it is to the Kremlin, it's like, it is the Kremlin, basically.

>> So what Russia is really trying to do is pull at, kind of, loose threads in the fabric of Europe.

And it wouldn't be so effective if it wasn't based on something that people are genuinely concerned about.

If we think in terms of where we are in the world, there was a migration crisis in 2015, 2016, which heavily affected Europe.

We have come out of several years of a COVID crisis.

There's a war on the European continent.

So it's been kind of crisis after crisis after crisis, in the, kind of, most recent decade.

All of that is leading to some people having genuine grievances about we feel left behind.

Globalization hasn't delivered for us.

Russia is really good at kind of identifying something where there's something there and it pulls at that.

And so people feel that they are no longer in control.

Their governments are no longer in control.

All of that leads to further divisiveness, and that's what Russia is trying to achieve.

Right now, it is done to undermine unity for Ukraine.

But the longer term goal is to just cause chaos and disorder in Europe more broadly.

♪ ♪ >> WILLIAMS: I went to the Netherlands to meet a team of digital investigators who'd been commissioned by European parliament members to gather evidence of how Russian disinformation had spread online.

>> So this is what you see in the German accounts.

They all have the same traits.

You can see that those accounts are using the same kind of icons.

The same kind of emoji in their bio.

>> There are almost no accounts using what seem to be real German names.

They're all basically anonymous.

>> Absolutely.

Yeah.

>> I mean, and when you Google these people, or look on LinkedIn, they're not real people.

You can't find them anywhere.

>> WILLIAMS: The team developed its own software to uncover an army of fake accounts on X.

>> 24,000 messages per day.

>> WILLIAMS: Some of which were originally created to support Russia's war in Ukraine... >> This graph shows when these accounts were created.

>> WILLIAMS: ...but had been repurposed to boost support for Europe's far right.

>> So beginning of 2022, when the full scale war in Ukraine started, they were mainly spreading Russian propaganda related to Ukraine; massive amounts of it.

But in the summer when the elections, the European elections were, it's more related to far right and immigration.

>> WILLIAMS: Who are they mainly promoting?

Which parties?

> It was specifically AfD.

>> WILLIAMS: According to their research, more than 10% of all posts about the AfD in the run up to the European elections came from this army of accounts.

>> What you can see is that this account is really pushing all kinds of narratives that are also supported by AfD.

So you can see remigration... >> WILLIAMS: Remigration.

>> It's all the right-wing narratives.

But one thing that's very striking in this account is it will also sometimes seemingly accidental posts in Russian.

While most of the time this account seems to be a German citizen, it sometimes starts retweeting or posting in Russian.

>> WILLIAMS: Do you believe that the far right has gained partly because of this disinformation?

>> I'm 100% sure that it really works, yes.

People don't understand the scale of this disinfo.

I think that's because people can't see it's still very abstract.

Governments are afraid to take action, because maybe they will be blamed that it's against free speech or whatever.

But the moment that you have armies often owned by some country or some political group or whatever, which is spreading hatred and propaganda and lies, and it's very influential, this is undermining Europe.

This is slowly eating at your democracy.

I don't think we should call it free speech.

>> Breaking news from here in Germany where Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost a vote of confidence in Parliament.

>> WILLIAMS: In late 2024, Germany's governing coalition collapsed, triggering a snap election for early in the New Year.

>> Key in Parliament today, this comes at a very bad point in time... >> WILLIAMS: It was an opportunity for the AfD to make a bid for national power.

And it would turn out to be dominated by the party's signature issue: immigration.

>> Police in Germany say several people have been injured after a stabbing in the city of Mannheim.

(people panicking) >> WILLIAMS: In the months leading up to the election, the country was hit by a series of terror attacks.

>> And breaking news from Germany, where police say a number of people have been killed and others injured in a suspected knife attack in the western city of Solingen.

>> WILLIAMS: Culminating in an attack on a Christmas market in the town of Magdeburg which killed six.

(officer shouting in German) >> Tonight, German police have arrested a doctor from Saudi Arabia who's been in Germany since 2006.

>> WILLIAMS: The attacker's motives were confusing.

He was a Saudi who'd been granted asylum, had been critical of Islam online, and even expressed support for the AfD.

Nevertheless, the AfD seized on it.

>> (speaking German): (cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: Alice Weidel would soon be announced as the AfD's candidate for Chancellor.

(chanting) >> WEIDEL: >> WILLIAMS: At a rally in Magdeburg three days after the attack, the crowd began chanting "Alice for Deutschland."

(crowd chanting in German) A play on words echoing the illegal Nazi rallying cry "Alles fur Deutschland."

"Everything for Germany."

>> WEIDEL: (cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: Throughout the campaign, the AfD would argue that immigration had led to exploding crime rates despite the fact that official crime statistics didn't support the claim.

>> If you look on the statistic, it's simply not true that the majority of criminal acts have been done by migrants.

That's not true.

If you look on the federal criminal statistics, it doesn't give that evidence.

But still the AfD is claiming it.

And again, when emotionals are cooking high and when they prove, yes, they have some cases, very brutal where, yes, immigrants have done something, committed something, nobody is interested in the true story and nobody's interested in statistics.

Everybody's interested in the blood and who is responsible for it.

Whom can we hang?

(applause) >> WILLIAMS: Emboldened, the AfD announced its most radical platform to date.

>> WEIDEL: >> WILLIAMS: Until now, Alice Weidel had avoided the controversial term remigration to refer to mass deportations of asylum seekers and immigrants.

>> WEIDEL: >> WILLIAMS: At the party's convention, she embraced it.

>> So suddenly, a word that she's not used.

I mean, the main party account used it.

Everybody used it, kind of.

But she hadn't said it herself in that way.

She suddenly used it right at the start of her campaign.

It was quite a clear sign, you know, I'm going with the part of the party that is the furthest to the right.

So she's, kind of, sent all the signals.

She was very nice to Björn Höcke during that campaign.

She mentioned him over and over again.

She said if they ruled in the federal government, he could be, like, a minister.

She was really keen, apparently, to show how far to the right she wanted to lead the party.

>> WILLIAMS: Soon, the AfD began an ad campaign, distributing tens of thousands of flyers in southwestern Germany designed to resemble plane tickets for deportation.

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: In the place for the passenger's name, the tickets said, "illegal immigrant."

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: The flyers caused an outcry and accusations that they promoted racial hatred.

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: The AfD official behind the campaign was Marc Bernhard.

Can I ask you about this Remigration Post-out that you created here?

There's this one... >> So, yeah.

>> WILLIAMS: So, just tell me what is that?

And what was the purpose and message of that?

>> The purpose is, first of all, it's like for voters, because it's, like, part of the voting campaign, so it's for voters.

And it's supposed to bring one important problem back on the agenda.

And it's very, very strange, I mean, everybody talked about the ticket, but nobody talked about the problem.

>> WILLIAMS: Well, the history... >> And, but nobody talked about the real issue.

And the issue is the murders of Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg, Mannheim, and many other cities.

A lot of-- no, no, no, this is very important.

This is the main issue, and that's why I'm really upset about this discussion.

>> WILLIAMS: So let's say, right, you don't know who received that, let's say a migrant family who may be paying their taxes and working and been here for many, many years, receives that in the mail.

It's a one-way remigration ticket for illegal migrants.

That's a very scary thing to get.

>> Yeah, it clearly says illegal migrant.

So everybody who is here legally has nothing to fear.

>> WILLIAMS: It's been reported that this particular type of ticket was very reminiscent of what the Nazis did with the Jews.

And this hasn't come from, from nowhere in the German context.

How do you respond to that?

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: Bernhard told me the party wants to "remigrate" over a million people, some immigrants that German courts have already ordered to be deported, but mostly Syrian refugees.

>> We're talking about one to 1.2 million Syrians which are in Germany.

And of course, the war, the civil war is over, so they have to go back.

>> WILLIAMS: But those people have now formed established lives, they've got children in school, they've got jobs.

>> Most of them don't have jobs.

Most of them are not well integrated.

That's exactly the issue.

>> WILLIAMS: German labor statistics show that over time, most Syrians able to work do get jobs but Bernhard and others continue to use the issue as a key talking point.

>> People who are not integrated are normally those who are not working, who are not, they are also not integrated in the working market and so on.

So, and then if you switch off social benefits, they will go themselves because it's too expensive for them to finance their life here.

>> Let's bring you some news on another story we're watching.

This is out of Germany... >> WILLIAMS: Around a month before Germans went to the polls there was another high profile attack, this time by an Afghan immigrant who had been slated for deportation.

>> Two people, including a two-year-old boy, were killed in a public park in the central city of Aschaffenburg.

>> (speaking German): >> Things are very fraught here, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this somehow is leapt upon by those who can see a profit in using this for their campaign in the elections.

>> WILLIAMS: Under growing pressure, the leader of the mainstream conservative party, and frontrunner for Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the asylum system needed fixing, and called for tighter border controls.

>> MERZ (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: To get a motion through Parliament, he did something unprecedented; breaking the post-war convention of no political deals with the far right.

Merz agreed to work with the AfD.

The "firewall" had been breached.

>> MERZ: >> This was a really, really important point in German history because it changed what the Conservatives have said all along, that they would never work with the AfD and their votes and to do it so shortly before an election, it's send out all kinds of signals that people were very confused and very scared about, like, did that mean that after the election, suddenly Merz would work with them, would he go into a coalition with them?

What was going to happen?

And also it showed AfD voters, you know, there might be an option to power.

So we might be right by voting for them.

>> MERZ: (cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: Merz went on to promise voters that he would never go into a full coalition with the AfD.

>> MERZ: >> WILLIAMS: But Germany's political landscape had been transformed.

What impact has that had on you, on the party's popularity going to the election?

>> It showed the absurdity of this firewall.

I mean, the CDU is apologizing itself for using a majority in Parliament.

That's absurd on every theory of democracy.

>> WILLIAMS: Yes, but they broke what has been the firewall against working with a far right party since World War II.

That's the whole history of German politics, right?

So this is a very, it's a very important moment.

>> Obviously, um, it is one next step to normalize our party.

>> WEIDEL: Hello?

>> Can, can you hear me okay?

>> WEIDEL: Yes, we can hear you.

>> Unfortunately, I can't hear you very well.

Um, so hopefully-- wow, hello everyone.

>> WILLIAMS: It was then that Elon Musk weighed in.

>> I was in the hall when Elon Musk came onto the screen live and Alice Weidel was really nervous and happy about him showing up.

And then he started his speech.

It was also a bit rambling, but then he came to the point which was, like, we shouldn't be too afraid of our history as Germans.

>> So, like, you know, I think there's, like, frankly, too much of a, of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.

People, people, you know-- children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, or even, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents, maybe, even.

>> People were kind of astonished that he would say it so openly, but then they clapped.

>> And we should be optimistic and excited about a future for Germany.

(cheers and applause) And, that's really my message.

Is be optimistic, excited.

And, uh, and, and, uh, preserve German culture.

And protect the German people.

>> WILLIAMS: For opponents of the AfD, it was a disturbing development.

>> If somebody with his range, with his tools, uses such a language, he diminishes all efforts in learning from the Holocaust, learning from the Nazi past.

>> I do not say it lightly when I think the future of civilization could hang on this election.

Uh, so, when something is so important, you really need to say, okay, you're gonna go all out to convince people to vote for AfD.

>> Basically a lot of the voters for the AfD, and a lot of right-wing extremist people in Germany, they got a boost.

They got a boost for their own opinion, and the fact that if a great guy like Elon Musk, a world man, a citizen, an entrepreneur and whatsoever is basically saying the same thing, I mean, they feel, like, ordained.

>> Fight for a great future for Germany!

Fight for a great future for Germany!

Go, go, go!

(cheers and applause) Convince your friends, convince everyone, let's go.

>> WILLIAMS: Elon Musk, his intervention is very public and very strong and enthusiastic... >> Yes.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

>> WILLIAMS: ...support for the AfD.

What influence did that have on AfD support?

>> I would say two.

You know, we have this firewall concept that we are on the bad side of the firewall.

>> WILLIAMS: Well, no parties will work with what they call the far right.

>> Yes, but now Elon Musk's on our side, and they are compared to all the losers-- I mean, they are losers, the established parties.

And we have the richest and most innovative entrepreneur of the world on our side.

So he is balancing that out.

Now the question is which side of the firewall is sexier?

I mean, you have an invitation to a party.

AfD and Elon Musk party?

Or all this German established politics... ...puppets?

So I think on the long term, it will have an extreme impact because it shows that we are a serious political force.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: Online, the AfD had been ramping up an increasingly provocative campaign aimed at younger voters, using AI to produce videos playing on fears about immigrants and crime.

>> (speaking German): >> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: The party's youth wing had even created a game in which players win points for arresting and deporting illegal immigrants.

>> (speaking German): >> GIRL (speaking German): >> MAN (speaking German): >> GIRL: >> MAN: ♪ ♪ >> (singing German): >> WILLIAMS: One AI-generated video, also produced by the AfD's youth wing, plagiarized a popular song and rewrote the lyrics to call for mass deportations.

>> I mean, it's clear that it's fundamentally racist.

It's white, blonde, blue-eyed people.

The idea of Aryan people, as the Nazis would have put it, sending off brown-skinned men.

They are trying to send a very clear message about who belongs in Germany and who does not.

And what should be done with those who do not.

>> (chanting): (chanting continues) >> WILLIAMS: In early February, the AfD's youth wing, the Junge Alternative, J.A., was holding its conference in Thuringia.

>> (chanting in German): (clapping to the beat) >> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: I was there to try to speak to the team behind the AI video campaign.

The atmosphere was tense.

>> (speaking German): (shouting) (speaking indistinctly) >> WILLIAMS: We weren't allowed into the conference itself, but obtained footage of what was going on inside.

>> (singing in German): >> WILLIAMS: One of the J.A.

leaders who commissioned the AI video agreed to come out and talk to us.

Eric Engelhardt was head of the group's Thuringia branch.

>> ENGELHARDT (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: So, you ordered that video to be made.

Just the content of the video.

You see brown people being taken onto planes, you see very Aryan-looking women and men having a party.

How can that be appropriate?

It looks very offensive.

>> ENGELHARDT: >> (chanting in German): >> WILLIAMS: The J.A.

has long been accused of neo-Nazi links, and was itself declared an extremist organization by Germany's domestic intelligence in 2023.

Do you understand why people see you as extremists?

They worry about a future with AfD?

They worry about you targeting minorities, Muslims, refugees, people needing help.

You are very aggressively against all those people.

>> ENGELHARDT: >> NARRATION: The J.A.

has since disbanded, and the AfD is in the process of forming a new youth wing with many of the same members expected to join.

>> (speaking German): ♪ ♪ (lasers firing) (crowd booing) >> WILLIAMS: As the election neared, the AfD launched a new ad campaign with a Star Wars theme.

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: At a rally in the city of Heidenheim, they celebrated the rise of right-wing parties across Europe and the election of a new president in the United States.

>> (speaking German): (cheers and applause) President of the United States of America.

>> Certainly, the populist and the far right and the Eurosceptics in Europe feel that they've now got their man in the White House back.

They share this perceived existential threat caused by migration.

They share attitudes towards anti-wokeism, they share, you know, the need for traditional so-called "family values."

But those are ideas and ideologies.

What does this actually mean on the ground?

(applause) >> (speaking German): (cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: By now, Alice for Deutschland, the play on words recalling the banned Nazi rallying cry had become the party's official slogan.

>> (speaking German): >> WILLIAMS: Markus Frohnmaier is one of Alice Weidel's closest advisers.

(on-camera): Mr.

Frohnmaier.

(voiceover): A former leader of the J.A., he rose up through the party to become the AfD's foreign policy spokesman.

Frohnmaier told us he sees both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as ideological allies.

>> FROHNMAIER: ♪ ♪ >> Vice President Vance is expected to address the Munich Security Conference tomorrow.

>> WILLIAMS: The AfD would soon get another boost.

>> Please welcome Vice President JD Vance.

(applause) >> WILLIAMS: In mid-February, Vice President JD Vance was in Munich to address an international security conference.

>> No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.

>> WILLIAMS: To the surprise of many, he went on the offensive-- accusing Europe's leaders of suppressing free speech, and weighing in directly on the German elections, by criticizing the firewall.

>> What no democracy-- American, German or European-- will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid, or unworthy of even being considered.

Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters.

There's no room for firewalls.

You either uphold the principle, or you don't.

Thank you all, good luck to all of you.

God bless you.

(applause) >> WILLIAMS: German political leaders pushed back.

>> MERZ: >> Again, unprecedented.

I can't think of any instance where a member, a high-ranking member of the United States government, told any European country how to vote or what to do about a specific opposition party.

We have a strange constellation where Russia supports far-right actors all over Europe for their own interests, of course.

They support right-wing authoritarian movements and parties, and the United States government does much the same out in the open.

They're coming out in support of the AfD.

So you see an ideological alignment between the United States government and Russia, something I've never expected to see in my lifetime.

♪ ♪ >> It's election day here in Germany.

Voting is underway with the people now having their say on who should come to grips with Germany's economic recession, divide over migration, and foreign policy challenges.

>> In an election that's expected to shape the political direction of the country and Europe as well.

♪ ♪ (cheers and applause) >> WILLIAMS: In the end, the AfD doubled its national vote share to almost 21%, winning a record number of seats in Parliament.

(applause) The firewall would continue to keep them from power, but they still saw the result as a victory.

>> WEIDEL: >> WILLIAMS: Björn Höcke was at the AfD's election night party.

Once part of the AfD's radical fringe, Höcke was now a core member of the national leadership.

The firewall still stands-- you're still in opposition.

What can you really do?

>> HÖCKE: >> WILLIAMS: Two months after the election, Germany's domestic intelligence upgraded its classification of the AfD, labeling the entire party a proven "right-wing extremist" organization.

>> A diplomatic row has erupted between Germany and key members of the Trump administration... >> WILLIAMS: The Trump administration condemned the move.

>> So Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio slamming Germany's government for allowing its spy agency to monitor and label AfD as extremists.

A move Rubio called "tyranny in disguise."

>> WILLIAMS: Secretary of State Rubio's comments in particular angered German officials.

>> It's not true what he's simply saying, it's not fact-based.

What the federal agency of domestic intelligence stated was clearly based on evidence and on facts that were put together, and this is not about, putting someone irresponsibly out of a democratic process.

This is about protecting our constitutional rights in a legal state, with legal evidence, which can be challenged in front of courts, which neither Mr.

Rubio nor Mr.

Vance mentioned in their statements.

>> WILLIAMS: The AfD has appealed and the classification has reverted to "suspected extremist threat" while the German courts review the case.

(reporters clamoring) >> In the Czech Republic's parliamentary elections, billionaire Andrej Babis is predicted to be the latest populist leader in Central Europe.

(streamers popping, cheers) >> A nationalist candidate backed by Donald Trump, Karol Nawrocki, has won Poland's presidential election in a neck and neck race.

>> In France, the far-right national rally is predicted, according to most polls, to get even more seats in Parliament.

>> (speaking French): >> WILLIAMS: Across Europe this year, hardline nationalist parties have been gaining ground or are on the brink of power in multiple countries.

>> More than 100,000 people took to the streets in what's believed to be the largest anti-immigration protest in British history.

>> Sooner or later we're gonna be the minority in our own country.

>> Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, even Sweden.

Basically, this is a turning point.

>> You either fight back or you die.

(cheers and applause) >> Today, Elon, I think we, I think the British public are telling the world that they're ready to fight back.

>> Honestly, I wish I could tell you where this is going to lead, I mean.

I'm not too optimistic at the moment.

if I look at the numbers.

>> Support for the far-right AfD is increasing.

A new poll shows the party just behind the chancellor's CDU party.

>> There's a very nice phrase which is considered to be Goethe's quote, but Goethe never said it.

It's, "if you sleep in a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship."

>> KRAH: >> WILLIAMS: Do you see a federal victory in years to come?

>> Yes, because there are troubles in front of us.

Germany is struggling.

The country is in decline.

People feel that the established parties will never get a turnaround.

We win because the others fail.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Go to pbs.org/frontline.

>> speaking German: >> Now we are the party of the future.

>> NARRATOR: To see our past films and reporting on the rise of the far right in Germany.

>> The image Germany portrays to the outside is that Germany has learned its lesson from the Second World War.

>> NARRATOR: Connect with FRONTLINE on Facebook and Instagram and stream anytime on the PBS app, YouTube, or pbs.org/frontline.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other "FRONTLINE" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ FRONTLINE's "The Rise of Germany's New Right" is available on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪