{"id":22392,"date":"2025-12-25T16:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=22392"},"modified":"2025-12-25T16:18:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:18:50","slug":"esn-partys-und-wie-rechtsextreme-mit-studentenpartys-junge-leute-koedern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/esn-partys-und-wie-rechtsextreme-mit-studentenpartys-junge-leute-koedern\/","title":{"rendered":"ESN Parties and How Far-Right Extremists Lure Young People Through Student Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Berlin, the same invitation has been circulating in some feeds for weeks: \u201cEurope Vibes\u201d, \u201cfirst ESN student party\u201d, champagne glasses, young faces, an EU lawmaker giving a greeting. Anyone who studies or is here for an exchange semester automatically thinks of what \u201cESN\u201d has meant for years: Erasmus Student Network, international contacts, buddy programs, parties where Spanish, Polish, German and many others celebrate together. This is exactly the strategy behind the new \u201cESN student party\u201d \u2013 only that it is not Erasmus behind it, but the European far-right party \u201cEurope of Sovereign Nations\u201d and a milieu in which the AfD plays a key role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To understand how perfidious this trick is, it is worth looking at the original. The Erasmus Student Network has been an honorary student network since the late eighties that brings exchange programs to life: help with arrival, paperwork, finding housing, language evenings, city tours, excursions, parties. The groups at universities work closely with universities, student councils and international offices. Anyone going to an ESN party does not expect a hidden party headquarters but a diverse crowd that makes Europe tangible in daily life \u2013 with all its languages, biographies and conflicts, but without a recruitment campaign for any party.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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t is precisely this trust that has now become a target. Under the same abbreviation \u201cESN\u201d, the party \u201cEurope of Sovereign Nations\u201d has been appearing since 2024 \u2013 an alliance of right-wing and far-right parties from several EU countries, including the AfD. The party was founded after the European elections, sits with its own parliamentary group in the Parliament and sees itself as a rallying point for forces that want to reverse European integration and make national isolation their program. That it deliberately uses \u201cESN student party\u201d for its \u201cEurope Vibes\u201d evenings is no coincidence. The name sounds like Erasmus, exchange and campus culture \u2013 but what is delivered is a stage for a party whose goal is to destroy precisely this open European idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ESN student party in Berlin on November 3, 2025<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The concrete process is always similar. In the invitations to the \u201cESN student party in Berlin\u201d, there is talk of guests from Poland and the USA, of \u201cEurope Vibes\u201d, of an apparently international mix. At the same time, the greeting of an EU lawmaker is proudly announced: Dr. Alexander Sell, AfD politician and leading figure of the ESN party. Where previously students from different countries would have organized an Erasmus party in student self-administration, there now stands a far-right functionary with a microphone, using the opportunity to anchor his structure in the environment of first-year students, Erasmus students and young Berliners. Anyone who only reads \u201cESN\u201d may not realize until inside the venue that they have ended up at a party event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ESN student party in Berlin on November 3, 2025<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This interplay of appearance and reality becomes even more alarming when looking at which figures are currently being pushed forward in the AfD\u2019s environment. Jean-Pascal Hohm, a state legislator from Brandenburg, is the new chairman of the AfD youth \u201cGeneration Germany\u201d. He has been considered well-connected in the far-right spectrum for years, appears repeatedly in reports by the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution and is cited there with ethnic-nationalist and anti-migration positions. He formulates his goal openly: a \u201cmigration turnaround\u201d that ensures \u201cGermany remains the homeland of Germans\u201d. This line is clearly reflected in the imagery of his campaigns \u2013 and it is visibly aimed at young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ESN student party in Berlin on November 3, 2025<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Anyone scrolling through his social media channels or looking at his posters sees a consistent pattern. Sometimes Hohm warns of alleged \u201casylum fraud\u201d that the Federal Office for Migration supposedly tolerates. Sometimes he demands \u201cbenefits in kind instead of basic income\u201d for young Ukrainians whose number in Germany has \u201cincreased tenfold\u201d. Then he claims that German cities are on the brink of collapse and must be saved by ending \u201cmass migration\u201d. On other materials, he says \u201cthe majority\u201d no longer feels safe at Christmas markets and that \u201csecuring borders, protecting citizens\u201d is the only answer. Added to this are slogans like \u201cconsistently combat leftist terror\u201d or \u201cstop exploitation of our social system\u201d, garnished with the claim that every second basic-income recipient does not have a German passport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anyone checking these statements soberly quickly sees how selective and dishonest the use of numbers and terms is. Yes, roughly half of basic-income recipients currently do not have German citizenship. But among them are several hundred thousand people from Ukraine who fled a war of aggression, as well as refugees from Syria, Afghanistan or other war and crisis regions. Many of them are children, many others attend integration courses or work in jobs that alone are not enough to live on. Anyone talking about \u201cexploiting our social system\u201d deliberately hides these facts and turns a protective measure with which a wealthy country responds to war, flight and displacement into an alleged fraud against the \u201cGerman taxpayer\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Pascal Hohm<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hohm proceeds similarly with issues like asylum and internal security. That administrative procedures are overloaded, that authorities react too slowly or make mistakes \u2013 all known and legitimately criticized. But turning bureaucratic shortcomings into \u201casylum fraud\u201d and \u201ccapitulation to abuse\u201d strikes at the fundamental right to asylum and portrays those seeking protection as perpetrators. When Hohm claims that cities and municipalities are on the verge of collapse because too many refugees are coming, he systematically ignores that these municipalities are also struggling with housing shortages, years of budget cuts and low wages. Problems that existed long before his time \u2013 and that cannot be solved by talking about \u201cmass migration\u201d and nurturing deportation fantasies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Pascal Hohm, ESN Student Party, November 17, 2025<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This propaganda pattern makes the connection between the ESN party, the AfD and \u201cGeneration Germany\u201d so dangerous. On one side, there are seemingly harmless student parties with international flags and Erasmus flair. On the other side, a youth organization whose chairman demands the abolition of humanitarian standards, portrays refugees as fraudsters and maintains the image of a threatened nation supposedly saved only through isolation. In between stand thousands of young people who are new to university, living in a big city for the first time, looking for connection \u2013 and who may not know in detail who Alexander Sell or Jean-Pascal Hohm are and what they stand for politically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n