What They Write When They Think Nobody’s Reading
Internal WhatsApp chats from members of Alternative für Deutschland—Germany’s far-right party, known by its initials AfD—leaked online in June 2017, and the content read less like political strategy than like a pub conversation between people who’d stopped pretending. Party functionaries and rank-and-file members wrote openly about what they’d do once they reached power. The phrase Machtübernahme—seizure of power—appeared without irony.
One entry, written by a district board member who also works as a federal police officer, laid out a plan for the press: a committee would review and purge all journalists and editors after the takeover. Chief editors fired immediately. Outlets deemed hostile to "the people" banned outright. The same message invoked "the little doctor"—a reference to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister—as someone who understood where real power lay. The chats also included what journalist Till Eckert at ze.tt described as violence fantasies targeting people of non-German origin, met not with pushback but with general agreement from other group members.
Other messages called for expanding national borders and for members to attend workshops in "terror defense and self-defense." Lars Wienand, reporting for the Berliner Morgenpost, noted that the chats also revealed an unresolved closeness to the Identitarian Movement, Pegida, and the neo-Nazi splinter party III. Weg—groups the AfD officially distances itself from while apparently depending on their volunteers to run flyer campaigns and protect party materials at night across the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
People still insist the AfD is a legitimate centrist protest party—frustrated taxpayers, sensible border hawks, nothing sinister. I’ve never bought it, and this is why. The mask doesn’t slip in these chats so much as it never existed. They’re citing Goebbels approvingly in internal group messages, describing systematic purges of the free press, fantasizing about ethnic violence and collecting thumbs-up reactions. This isn’t a fringe element; it’s the soil the party grows in.
Russia, China, Turkey—we watch those countries and reassure ourselves it couldn’t happen here. But "here" has been moving. Trump proved that lying your way to the top is not just possible but a workable strategy. Erdoğan proved that democratic institutions can be dismantled in plain sight while the international community expresses mild concern. The AfD is watching those case studies closely. So am I.