The AfD is divided. Donald Trump’s latest foreign policy adventures have split the Right-wing nationalist German party which, as Politico reports, is are now becoming increasingly sceptical of the US President’s agenda. This is clear from the response to Trump’s threat of further tariffs on Europe over Greenland, with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel suggesting yesterday that Germany should enter talks with the US to avoid a trade war.

Directly following the US military operation in Venezuela and the subsequent abduction of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, several prominent AfD figures posted messages of approval. MP Maximilian Krah wrote: “Trump is bringing about the change we have always described, demanded, and hoped for.” Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a high-ranking AfD parliamentarian in Saxony, added a Russia-friendly twist: “The intervention of the USA in Venezuela shows that a Großraumordnung, as once outlined by Carl Schmitt, is emerging. We should not be too quick to condemn it. But then the same applies to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine!”

But Weidel has previously been critical of Trump, saying that the US President “has violated a fundamental election promise, namely not to interfere in other countries, and he has to explain that to his own voters”. Her co-leader Tino Chrupalla, who has stressed that the US has a right to impose order in its own backyard, was nonetheless critical of the aggressive noises towards Greenland and Europe coming from the White House: “Wild West methods are to be rejected here, and the end does not always justify the means.”

With his concept of Großraumordnung (Order of the Greater Space), Carl Schmitt, the Nazi lawyer and political theorist, favoured the division of the world into geographic blocs around the great powers. Great nations, he wrote, could legitimately assert power over their sphere of influence. Unsurprisingly, Schmitt is popular with the architects of Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine”.

Russia and MAGA-friendly figures in the AfD favour this kind of geopolitical order: the US asserts power over the Americas; meanwhile, Russia controls its “near-abroad”. This attitude rejects the very idea of a “West” united by liberal values.

The comments about Greenland in recent days suggest the duo have been following the latest polls: 72% of Germans consider the US attack on Venezuela and Maduro’s arrest “unjustified”; only 12% feel Trump is doing a good job as president; and an all-time low of 15% consider the US to be a “trustworthy partner”. The AfD enjoys the support of roughly a quarter of voters, and it now doesn’t want to alienate the German mainstream by getting too close to a deeply unpopular US president.

This recent shift therefore builds on anti-Americanism that has been alive and kicking in Germany for decades. In the old Federal Republic, it took the form of Left-wing opposition to the Vietnam War or the stationing of Pershing II nuclear missiles at bases in West Germany. In the former East Germany, the communist establishment viewed the US as the motherland of out-of-control capitalism paired with rampant imperialism. More recently, Germans disapproved of the 2003 US invasion in Iraq — a war Trump himself says should never have happened.

Now the AfD is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Following US Vice President JD Vance’s thinly concealed endorsement of the party last year, the AfD surfed on a wave of MAGA love. This even led to several high-level meetings taking place between party officials and White House staff. The AfD found an ally in Vance on the topic of free speech — both oppose European hate speech regulations that affect the US platforms on which the AfD relies for its communication. This recent change in tone could end the AfD-MAGA love-in. Vance, it has emerged, has cancelled his appearance at this year’s Munich Security Conference. The US administration apparently has bigger fish to fry.

---

Maurice Frank co-founded the English magazine Exberliner and now co-writes the newsletter Update Germany.

mauricetfrank

---