Is Germany’s far right really attracting Jewish voters?

Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, claimed in early February that her party was attracting Jewish members in the “four-digit range.”

The AfD is a major political force and is running second in the polls ahead of an election on Sunday, but is Weidel’s claim of Jewish support really true?

If so, that would be remarkable development in a country with Germany’s Nazi past and a Jewish community of approximately 125,000.

Like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, the AfD is positioning itself as a defender of Jewish interests and argues that rising Muslim migration — rather than the far right itself — poses the real threat to Jews. The party has also sought to leverage growing concerns over antisemitism to present itself as an attractive option for Jewish voters.

“Our goal is to become the strongest party among Jewish voters [in Germany],” Beatrix von Storch, the AfD’s deputy leader, told POLITICO, adding her party was hoping to follow in the steps of the National Rally.  

Yet the actual number of Jews associated with the AfD remains small.

Artur Abramovych, head of the AfD’s Jewish wing, dismissed Weidel’s claim, saying: “Mathematically, that’s not possible.” His group, “Jews in the AfD,” has just 22 full members. 

There are many reasons that Jews might doubt the German far right has really changed its antisemitic spots. The AfD’s former leader, Alexander Gauland, sparked outrage in 2018 by downplaying the Nazi era, calling it “mere bird shit” in Germany’s thousand-year history. Another former member of the state parliament in Baden-Württemberg called Jews the “domestic enemy” and dismissed the Holocaust.

Given that heritage, it’s small wonder that Nils Lange, spokesperson for the Central Council, the main representative body for Germany’s Jewish community, downplayed the significance of the “Jews in the AfD” group, claiming it has no effect on the Jewish community in Germany. “I don’t think there will be much talk about Jews in the AfD,” he said.

“The question is how to tackle this party and all that it stands for.”

A conservative community

Abramovych, however, argued that the politics of Germany’s Jewish community are often poorly understood. He emphasized that Jewish voters — primarily from Russian and Ukrainian backgrounds — may increasingly lean toward the AfD given its conservative outlook. “The perception that Germans have of Jews often has little to do with reality. Nowadays, Jews are much more conservative, much further to the right than Germans on average,” he said. 

That shift was confirmed by Wolfgang Fuhl, co-founder and former member of the AfD’s Jewish group. “German Jewry, as it once was, barely exists anymore and is shaped by these newer communities. This transformation will continue in the coming years. You will soon see this shift reflected in the composition of the Central Council of Jews in Germany,” he said.

The AfD is a major political force and is running second in the polls ahead of an election on Sunday. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

But Lange suggested that highlighting the AfD’s Jewish members could be a tactic to weaken Germany’s commitment to Holocaust remembrance.

Germany’s far right has long urged the country to discard its war guilt, and the presence of Jews among the AfD membership could be used to legitimize a shift in how Germany reckons with its past. Abramovych himself supports such a shift, saying he wants German society to “engage more with other parts of their history” rather than the Holocaust. “Today’s culture of remembrance does nothing for Jews,” he said.

Abramovych also said the presence of neo-Nazis and antisemites within the AfD should not be a concern, noting that Jews in Germany are increasingly shifting to the right: “That’s why there’s actually no reason for a … Jew or Zionist to be worried about a few neo-Nazis.” The “real danger,” he added, came from German politicians on the political left that “have connections to Islamist groups and they protect them.”

But Lange and the Central Council told POLITICO they won’t deal directly with the AfD, saying: “There is no point in it, because [the AfD’s Jewish group] is just a fig leaf.”

The AfD is widely known for its hardline stance on migration, which poses a paradox for Germany’s Jewish community, the majority of whom are migrants. Nearly half of the country’s Jewish population has roots in Ukraine, while an estimated 90 percent trace their origins to the former Soviet Union, according to Hanna Veiler, president of the German Union of Jewish Students. 

“Their narrative is that ‘We are the only ones who can save the Jews because the biggest danger the Jews are facing is the Muslims,’” said Veiler, who believes the AfD’s “racist discourse” will also harm Jewish migrants.

Both Lange and Veiler emphasized that “Jews in the AfD” was neither representative of Jewish political views in Germany nor relevant to the wider community. Antisemitism is rising in Germany, they argued, but the AfD is not the answer. “The AfD will not save us. The AfD is only instrumentalizing Jewish concerns for its own will. And unfortunately for some people, it works,” Veiler said.

Guy Katz, an Israeli-German professor at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, told POLITICO he knew of Jewish voters who planned to vote AfD to protest the failure of mainstream parties to take a clear stance on immigration.

“Their reasoning is primarily based on frustration with current immigration policies and insecurity. They perceive the AfD as the only party addressing concerns about the rise of antisemitic attacks, many of which are linked to Islamist extremism within Germany’s migrant population,” Katz said. 

Despite the AfD’s own history of antisemitism, Fuhl said the party was instrumental to combating the recent rise of antisemitism in Germany.

“Jews are living in fear … And this issue will continue to spread like a cancer within and with the old parties. The only party that can stop this, fight back, and reverse this trend is the AfD.”

Veiler said he believed it wasn’t so much the Jewish community moving toward the political right as Europe as a whole.

“A lot of us are concerned about how this is going to develop in the future, because all across Europe, everyone is moving to the right, so of course all the Jewish communities will be moving to the right. Every trend that affects the general population also affects us.”