Dear Reader,
The AfD’s method of breaking taboos speaks primarily to young men.
At the 2025 federal election, crowds chanted “Alice für Deutschland” at speeches given by AfD leader Alice Weidel. The chant is a barely hidden reference to “Alles für Deutschland”, a slogan used by the SA, the Nazi paramilitary organisation whose members beat up Jews and political opponents on the streets of German cities in the 1920s.
AfD figurehead Björn Höcke was convicted of using the banned phrase during a speech he gave in 2021. He claims that he used it unwittingly. Since then, it has become a right-wing populist meme.
Ask the AfD and they will say that “Alles für Deutschland” is a harmless patriotic phrase caught up in the German obsession with tabooising everything that has the slightest whiff of a connection to the Nazis. And they will go further: they will say that the real intention behind banning the phrase is not to stop the spread of Nazi ideology, but to prevent people from using patriotic language.
In a Newspeak-like logic, the old elite are trying to extinguish patriotism by prohibiting the words that express it. The use of the phrase is much less an act of reverence for a 1920s paramilitary organisation than it is a statement of defiance against modern elites who disdain the idea of a nation.
Politicians from the old establishment see this taboo breach completely differently.
For them, it is part of an unmistakable pattern of trying to bring Nazi language – and the ideology those words express – back into mainstream culture. By rehabilitating Nazi vocabulary while abolishing the language and remembrance that were constructed as a dam against a Nazi revival, the party hopes to start an authoritarian revival.
Höcke, the man who popularised the use of “Alles für Deutschland”, is also the politician who decried Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame” and called for a “180 degree transformation” in how Germany looks at its past. Where the AfD has power at the local level, it has blocked the installation of new Stolpersteine, the small brass-covered stones that commemorate victims of Nazi persecution.
What is clear is that there is a generational divide.
The closer Germans are to the Nazi era by age, the more likely they are to see the taboo breach as a threat to cherished liberties; the younger they are, the more likely they are to see it as a subversive act in the name of a free nation.
A similar dynamic is evolving on the left of politics. It also sees the old taboos around language as detrimental to freedom. The difference is that, according to this narrative, linguistic taboos are maintaining a system of oppression with Germany as the perpetrator. And while AfD taboo-busting generally appeals to young males, the taboo-busting practised by Die Linke attracts a female audience.
In its victory in the Berlin state election, Die Linke learned a lot from the AfD playbook. Not only did it realise the attraction of offering people cheap food and mixing TikTok videos with food campaigns, it also discovered the benefit of deliberate provocation.
Building on the protests against the war in Gaza that have been a common feature of Berlin life since 2023, the party deployed the word Intifada at campaign events and in election literature. The word Intifada, synonymous in Europe with a campaign of terrorism that killed hundreds of civilians at the beginning of this century, literally means “uprising”. Asked why it had been shouted at a Die Linke event in the run-up to the election, a Die Linke lawmaker answered that the word does not have a violent meaning.
The use of the word Intifada builds on similar provocations such as the use of the chants “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”, “Free Palestine from German guilt” and the declaration by Die Linke party members that Zionism “must be destroyed”.
Die Linke has sought to explain the phrase “From the River to the Sea” as a simple call for liberation that in no way precludes the existence of a Jewish state. Being anti-Zionist, they say, is not the same as being anti-Semitic.
Once again, the attempt to enforce the taboos via prohibition provides the ultimate proof that the hated establishment is itself illiberal. State interior ministries have banned the phrase “From the River to the Sea”, saying it is a call for the destruction of the Jewish state. For the protest movement, the arrests are the ultimate proof that, behind the veil of liberalism, the German establishment is prepared to use violence to maintain a system of oppression.
Again, for the old establishment, the taboo transgressions are part of a deliberate strategy aimed at eroding the foundations on which post-war German morality is built. Implicit in the phrase “Free Palestine from German guilt” is the notion that the post-war moral framework is itself morally abject. The use of words such as Intifada and anti-Zionism is thus an attempt to replace that system of thought with language that morally justifies violence against Israel, and by implication against Jews in Germany too.
In an enlightening debate on the issue in the Bundestag this week, SPD lawmaker Helge Lindh expressed his horror at the fact that the word Zionism has been turned into a form of insult.
“This ignores what the origin of Zionism is – the persecution and expulsion of Jews here in Germany,” he said. “If there is a taboo to uphold it is saying neve again to antisemitism and neve again to anti-Zionism — we owe that to the Jews in our country.”
Just like in the AfD, the normalisation of language so offensive to post-war sensibilities has led to bitter power struggles inside Die Linke. Katharina König-Preuss, a lawmaker in the Thuringia state parliament, is one of several senior figures to have quit, complaining of a “big antisemitism problem” in the party’s ranks.
Ironic in the whole discussion is the fact that Die Linke has been loudest in trying to prohibit the AfD for its taboo breaches, while the AfD has now taken the lead in condemning Die Linke’s transgressions. The state, it seems, should only be liberal when confronted with one’s own use of ambiguous language.
Since Die Linke’s victory in Berlin, there has been much talk of erecting another Brandmauer, this time to the left. The election result means that Die Linke could theoretically form a left-wing coalition with the Greens and the SPD. Influential members of the Social Democrats have warned their party against entering coalition talks with “an anti-Semitic party”.
An alternative centrist coalition is possible. The CDU, despite its losses, could still form a state government with the SPD and Greens as its junior partners.
One suspects that, if Die Linke were to be locked out of power, we would see a repetition of the dynamic that the Brandmauer to the right unleashed. Such policies cement the view that the old establishment is prepared to resort to undemocratic measures to protect its claim to guardianship of German morality.
The Brandmauer imbues the taboo breaches with even more poignancy.
Hi, great article. Please could I republish this as a guest article on Guerre and Shalom, today if possible.