How the AfD Sells Its Own Voters for Stupid – Maximilian Krah, Lies on an Assembly Line

There is propaganda that does not just leave you speechless - it reveals a deep cynicism toward its own voters. Anyone who follows the public statements of Maximilian Krah, one of the leading heads of the AfD, these days can see a strategy based on brazen stupefaction and deliberate disinformation. Krah and his followers rely on the fact that their fans no longer open a newspaper, no longer watch Tagesschau or online news, and ignore even the simplest news situation. And they make no secret of it. While in Beijing and Brussels the most important climate protection agreement in years is being concluded, Krah in his parallel universe claims unabashedly that China and the United States have long since buried climate protection and that the EU is the last fool on the schoolyard. Remarkably, Krah spread his falsehoods about China supposedly exiting climate protection on the exact day that the new EU-China climate protection agreement was officially announced. Not a word that China and Europe are sending a joint signal for global climate protection, pooling investments, and positioning themselves at the forefront of international cooperation for the coming decades. No, in Krah's world, Germany is already left behind - supposedly due to "immigration" and "overregulation," two terms that serve as scapegoats in each of his slogans.

Krah raves about a "Party of the Future" with three "dance floors" - demographics, technology, world order - and sells his followers the fairy tale that Germany has to get past the bouncers immigration and overregulation. But the real kicker comes at the end, when he openly announces: "The future will be right-wing." That is the ideological goal: not renewal, not solutions, but the open prophecy and invocation of an authoritarian, right-wing rollback - as if there were a natural law according to which history always ends in the AfD's favor. What is meant is easy to see: an authoritarian, nationalist, socially backward course. It is about the abandonment of human rights, international solidarity, and climate protection. What is sought is a return to an ethnically or culturally homogeneous nation-state, as völkisch ideology propagates. Press and freedom of expression are to be curtailed in favor of an authoritarian guiding culture, and instead of a pluralistic, open society, the goal is "law and order" - at the expense of all democratic achievements since 1945.

Not a word that Germany's innovative strength, its export economy, and its technology sectors have long been relying on the international partnerships that Krah sells as a doomsday scenario. Not a syllable about the actual economic challenges, the real solutions - only the same old tune about looming loss of control, "overforeignization," and the supposed dictate of a climate and technocrat elite. What is particularly perfidious about these statements is that they are already refuted at the moment they are published. The real news situation no longer matters. Anyone who listens to Krah is served a world in which the United States and China are racing against Europe and climate protection is mocked as "madness." That China - black on white, with a signature and an international stage - commits itself to more climate protection, to the Paris goals, and to multi-billion-dollar investments, interests no one here anymore. This technique has a method: what does not fit the picture is omitted, while every step of the United States that leads to deregulation and departure from climate standards is sold as a global trend. That there was never a nationwide ban on combustion engines in the US that is now supposedly "abolished," or that California, New York, and many other states continue to adhere to strict climate goals and that the political dispute is far from over, remains unmentioned. Federal reality is ignored in favor of a grand narrative: "The EU stands alone and destroys itself." It is the calculation of systematic disinformation: Krah relies on his voters no longer checking facts, staying maximally in their own fan cosmos, and dismissing every noise of reality as "lying press." With this strategy, any discussion is pointless - and that is exactly the goal. Anyone who turns the facts upside down every day does not want debate, but an audience that swallows everything as long as it confirms their own prejudices.

Der größte Skandal bzw. blinde Hörigkeit ist jedoch, wie bereitwillig die eigene Anhängerschaft diese Lügen und Verachtung hinnimmt. Die AfD erzählt ihren Wählern offen, dass sie sie nicht ernst nimmt – und diese danken es ihr mit Applaus. Es ist die Inszenierung der eigenen Uninformiertheit als Stärke, die Lust an der Unterwerfung unter ein erfundenes Weltbild. Wer so spricht, will keine Mitbürger, sondern eine Gefolgschaft – und nimmt billigend in Kauf, dass am Ende nicht die „Lügenpresse“, sondern die eigene Partei ihre Anhänger zum Narren hält. Auch wenn man Krah selbst nicht ernst nehmen möchte, sind seine Aussagen brandgefährlich. Rund ein Viertel der Bevölkerung ist bereit, solchen Erzählungen zu glauben – und genau das macht selbst einen politischen Clown zu einer realen Bedrohung für eine freie Gesellschaft.

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