The AfD wants to completely turn your life upside down – Column by Nikolaus Blome

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AfD politician Höcke

Photo: Patrick Pleul/ DPA

Bertolt Brecht is not considered a conservative poet or playwright. Instead, as an upper-left moral authority, he was excruciatingly broad in the German lessons of higher school classes, one shakes oneself at some memories. Nevertheless, a phrase by Brecht came to mind at the weekend, it comes from the Threepenny Opera. "First comes the food, then comes the morality." This can be worked with, with a view to the AfD.

So far, the other parties and many commentators have appealed to the morality of AfD supporters or those who want to become one. After all, it was taboo for decades to vote in droves for right-wing extremists. But since this no longer wants to get caught, it might be better to keep it with Bertolt Brecht: First comes the food. And indeed, the AfD wants to get people down to the nitty-gritty, while they believe that the party will protect them from exactly that. Deception and self-deception are sometimes one and the same thing.

A few days ago, Björn Höcke, the strong man of the AfD, gave an interview to the TV station Phoenix. The most interesting thing about it was not the phrase that was often quoted afterwards: "This EU must die so that the real Europe can live." That was Stefan George for poor people. The sentence before Höcke was more profound, when he said: "If you want to hear a populist statement from me ...". Which makes it clear that the man no longer wants to make his slang socially acceptable. No, he thinks he's already the salon.

Which in turn means that they are serious about it now. They believe they are "ready for more". And that's where you can grab them. "Pride comes before the fall," I called it in the podcast with Jakob Augstein.

What the Greens are accused of, not always justifiably, the AfD would put straight into action if it came to it: the ideologically driven reversal of all conditions in our country. The missionary superstructure is the rejection of everything foreign, the striving for the nationally pure space.

The strategic goals are therefore: away with this EU and probably also with this NATO, away with global climate protection. Clearly, this is a triple break with the system – with the past, with the present and with the future. For almost everyone in the country, almost everything would change quickly: money, job, pension, leisure, security, and so on and so forth. Neoliberalism and globalization would have been a mild breeze by comparison.

However, paradoxically, many voters and supporters of the AfD long for exactly the opposite. In a world that seems to be spinning faster and faster, they are looking for the stop button. You've had enough of the stress of adapting. They do not want to see the acquis they have achieved, both economically and socially, jeopardised. AfD voters want calm and stability according to their façon.

But they would get the opposite from their party: a revolution of all things, comprehensive disruption, maximum stress of change and adaptation.

The AfD could grab the conservatives in particular. Their aversion to revolution and disruption is the most credible.

At the weekend, the AfD leadership made a little effort on the European election program, but the list candidates and their godfather Höcke no longer held back.

"It's not like we're calling for an exit, and then nothing comes," said party leader Tino Chrupalla. This is either an outright lie or completely ignorant on the level of "a little pregnant". If a German government let Brussels know that it wanted to leave the EU, it would extinguish all the lights. And none of our children would ever see them shine again.

Those who want to position Germany as large and alone in the middle of the continent speculate on the short memory or weakness of the other nations, because they believe they can dominate them at any time.

For the British, things somehow went on after Brexit, because, after all, the EU was still there afterwards. But if Germany puts an end to it, there will no longer be an EU with which to continue trade.

What would France, Italy or small states fear if Germany decided on a hundred-billion-dollar special rearmament for the Bundeswehr without being in the EU? What alliances would they form to contain Germany, which would once again be too big for the balance on the continent?

The EU has diplomats clarify in conference halls what the rulers used to send armies to battlefields for. The historyless AfD denies this.

The problem with successful protest parties is that at some point their leaders believe that they are being elected to the program – that the Germans are now "ready" for the nationalist, the anti-European and all the brown snot. That is why the party leadership no longer hides its extremists, but puts them in the shop window.

Unlike far-right parties, the AfD does not move more to the center the greater the popularity becomes. She moves outwards. Will more and more people follow her or will they realize that the AfD is the biggest party-political fraud since 1945?