Björn Höcke, the most feared man in German politics who wants to bring extremists into regional government | International

With its little over two million inhabitants, Thuringia is one of the smallest states in Germany. Despite its size, it is home to a population of over 100,000. land This Sunday the eastern region could become the epicentre of an earthquake that could bring down the government in Berlin. A charismatic 52-year-old politician, a former high school teacher, is now the most feared man in the country. His name is Björn Höcke, he is the most radical representative of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and wants to become the next prime minister of Thuringia.

If the polls are correct, he will be the most voted candidate. His party has 30% of voting intention, ahead of the CDU’s Christian Democrats with about 22%. Höcke leads the party in Thuringia, which is second only to Saxony land The former German Democratic Republic, which renews its parliament this Sunday, is officially classified as “right-wing extremist” by Germany’s internal intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Haken is rarely seen in Berlin. His domain is in Thuringia, where his supporters welcome him like a rock star in small town squares. Although he has never held key party positions, he is the party’s best-known figure. He appears smiling in jeans and a white shirt at rallies, and rails against “the parties” Establishment”, an “elite” that is “destroying Germany”. “The German people”, “the homeland” “are in danger of death”, he repeats in front of an audience of several hundred people who applaud and nod at the promises to deport all illegal immigrants or to prevent equality and sexual diversity taught in schools.

More popular and at the same time more mysterious than the party’s co-chairs, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, Höcke hardly gives interviews and avoids debates. One was scheduled to be held this Wednesday, but a few hours before he announced through a spokesman that he was withdrawing from campaign events “for health reasons”, a rationale which the German media immediately questioned. A few hours later he announced on social networks that he would attend a public event on Friday.

In Sömmerda (19,000 inhabitants), this weekend, he used the jihadist attack in Solingen to once again ask for votes. “The city celebrated its 650-year history with a so-called diversity festival. The man who killed three people with a knife obviously had no interest in such diversity,” he sarcastically added.

While Höcke’s followers waited for him on the square, protesters who usually counter-schedule his appearance gathered a few metres away. One banner read, “Björn Höcke is a Nazi.” In the centre of Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, posters appeared last week with an image of him and Adolf Hitler on a black background and a message: “He’s back.” Political scientists, far-right experts and journalists are trying to unravel the mystery of Höcke these days. What would he do if he came to power? Is he a pawn of a wider movement, the so-called new right?

Recently two major German magazines have dedicated their covers to him. Der Spiegel It shows him alongside far-right French leader Marine Le Pen and United States presidential candidate Donald Trump and says: “This is how fascism starts.” Harsh He holds up a black-and-white photo of himself and looks into the camera, asking, “Who votes for this man?” A public television report this week asked, “How dangerous is this man?”

“Höcke is not a pragmatist, but quite the opposite. He is an ideologist,” explains journalist Ulrich Sondermann-Becker, who follows the AfD for public television MDR. “We saw this from his first interventions in the state parliament. “He did not look for meeting points with other forces, but rather behaved aggressively with all of them, and especially with the CDU.” When Germany welcomed more than a million Syrian refugees in the winter of 2015-2016, Höcke stepped up as a leader, and fiercely attacked Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel. “You saw how he enjoyed himself on stage like a messiah, showering the crowd with adoration,” the journalist recalls.

Höcke is known for leading the most extreme, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist wing of the party. At first he was a fairly marginal voice and there were attempts to push him out, such as when he sparked an intense debate across the country by calling the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in the center of Berlin a “monument of shame”.

Over the years he has managed to impose his ideology and through his actions has expelled the most moderate members of an increasingly radical party. Höcke has been involved in controversies over the years with xenophobic statements or calls to review Germany’s historical memory policies. Although he usually calculates to the millimetre what he says and how he says it, so that he can limit the limits of legality without actually crossing it, in recent months he has faced several trials for using Nazi slogans in his public speeches.

If in the last election campaign in Thuringia, when the AfD got 23.4% of the vote, he used the slogan “Multiculturalism means multi-criminality”, this time he has moderated his speech. He has not repeated the phrase that cost him two sentences: “Alles für Deutschland” (All for Germany), a famous motto of the SA, the paramilitary formation of the Nazi regime, which its members inscribed on their regulation knives.

Being the most voted force in Thuringia on Sunday would mean a qualitative leap for the AfD, on which the rest of the structures impose a – so far – unbreakable cordon. The party is beginning to come to power, but it has only managed to keep its representatives in city councils and rural districts. Höcke is unlikely to be able to govern; a partner will be needed, and no one is willing to go along with, or even tolerate, an alternative to Germany.

Not even the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a populist left-wing formation that shares the militants’ anti-immigration slogans and proximity to Russia and which, with 17% of voting intentions, can mathematically boost Höcke. Nobody wants a repeat of the situation of 2020, when the election of the moderate candidate with AfD votes unleashed an earthquake that ended the career of Merkel’s successor, the then-CDU chairwoman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

If the surveys are correct, a period of uncertainty will begin on Monday with negotiations to form a viable government. Without Hock. The BSW candidate in Thuringia, Katja Wulff, was very clear in front of a group of foreign correspondents in Erfurt last week: “There will be no cooperation with the AfD.”

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