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A massive scandal concerning allegations of espionage for and collusion with Russia and China overshadowed the campaign of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) for this year’s European Parliament elections. In April 2024, Petr Bystron, number 2 on the AfD electoral list, had to deny serious accusations that he allegedly received €20,000 for spreading Kremlin propaganda. The same month, an employee of the AfD’s top candidate for the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah, was arrested over claims he spied for China. Krah himself has been criticized for years for his pro-Chinese, for instance when he denied human rights abuses by the Chinese government against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In December 2023, Krah was even interrogated by the FBI due to suspicion of being on Russia’s payroll. The German far-right party is not an isolated case. Recent research on the influence of Russia on the European far right by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) shows that AfD is just the tip of the iceberg, highlighting so-called ‘toxic friendships’ between authoritarian regimes and far-right parties such as the French National Rally (Rassemblement national, RN).
The Alternative against Germany?
German media and political opponents from left to centre-right used the affair to criticize AfD, with its self-avowed patriotism. Der Spiegel ridiculed the party in a cover story as the’“Alternative against Germany’. Marco Buschmann, the Minister of Justice from the Liberals, stated that ‘those who love their country do not sell it’. Reinhard Bütikofer from the Green Party criticised Krah as the ‘loudest vasall of China’ in the EU parliament, and a representative from the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, CDU) attacked Krah and Co. as ‘traitors to the fatherland’.
Allegations of AfD’s ‘feigned patriotism’ weakens the party’s political credibility, leading to dissatisfaction among potential voters (as indicated by a negative trend in recent polls). Party resignations are another consequence. Joana Cotar, a Member of the German Parliament, resigned from AfD already in 2022, complaining that the ‘ingratiation’ with the ‘dictatorial and inhumane regimes’ in Russia, China and Iran is ‘unworthy of a patriotic party’. In May 2024, Sylvia Limmer, Member of the European Parliament, declared to leave the AfD, warning that the radical ‘Putin fanboys’ have ousted the moderate forces. Last but not least, the scandal is damaging the relationship between AfD and its European partners such as the French RN. After a series of AfD scandals this year, including Krah’s recent trivialization of the German Waffen SS, the party became a ‘pariah’ and was expelled from the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament.
The patriotic predicament
The AfD scandal points to a broader historical dilemma of the European far right, which I call the patriotic predicament. Allegations (true or not) of corruption, espionage and collaboration with foreign regimes hit far-right parties with a xenophobic, racist, ethno-, and ultra-nationalist agenda at the core of their self-representation as ‘true patriots’. Building on my research on fascist internationalism in the 1930s, I argue that this dilemma is a shared feature of historical fascism and contemporary far-right politics. The comparison underlines that there is a generic challenge for political organizations that base their ideology, propaganda and appeal on nationalism: their own credibility regarding international relations.
The patriotic predicament shaped many European fascist movements in the interwar period. On one hand, parties such as the Norwegian National Unity (Nasjonal Samling, NS) conceived of themselves as proud and loyal patriots, propagated a programme of national rebirth and foregrounded native roots while differentiating themselves from anything ‘international’. On the other hand, many fascist parties were profoundly inspired by the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism abroad. One example is the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Denmark (Danmarks Naionalsocialistiske Arbejderparti, DNSAP), which initially copied its entire programme from the German Nazi movement.
Thus, fascist parties all over Europe copied techniques, slogans, styles and ideas from foreign role models, in apparent contradiction to their supposed independence and native roots. Movements such as the Swiss Fascist Federation (Fédération Fasciste Suisse, FFS) were aware of this paradox. The FFS argued in an article from 1934 – tellingly called ‘Not copyists, but fascists’ – that fascism ‘wants to do justice to nationalism’ while hailing Benito Mussolini as ‘European savior’. In fact, many fascist parties supported Hitler’s and Mussolini’s regimes in their respective countries propagandistically, which was often secretly rewarded with financial backing.
Collusion, espionage and war propaganda in the 1930s
However, these international connections came at a price. Journalists and political opponents from the left to right repeatedly exposed fascist parties as ‘unpatriotic’ vassals and henchmen of foreign regimes. One example was the Swiss FFS, which not only copied Italian Fascism by name and programme, but also depended on its funding. The Neue Züricher Zeitung claimed that the party wanted to create a “Swiss fascist Branch” of Italy, after FFS leader Arthur Fonjallaz visited il Duce in Rome. In January 1935, Fonjallaz was briefly arrested for alleged espionage for Fascist Italy, and multiple press reports pointed to Mussolini as the party’s secret financier. The affair fostered the FFS’s reputation as Mussolini’s vassals and the unpopular party was dissolved when Italian funds were cut off in 1936.
The National Front (Nationale Front, NF) was another Swiss fascist party that suffered a similar political scandal in 1936. During the so-called Tödtli affair, several newspapers revealed that a former NF member, Boris Tödtli, had spied for the German Nazi organization Welt-Dienst. Even the New York Times reported on the ‘Swiss Convict Nazi as Spy-Provocateur’. Despite the scandal, NF leader Rolf Henne openly declared the party’s allegiance to Nazi Germany. This outspoken support for the Third Reich seriously damaged the reputation of the Swiss party, leading to discord and ideological disputes within the NF leadership. Henne had to resign as party leader and the NF subsequently fragmented into several splinter groups, and was dissolved in 1940.
Building connections with parties abroad was and still is a useful propaganda tool for authoritarian regimes. In the 1930s, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany used foreign fascist movements as mouthpieces to defend their expansionist policies. Several parties from Belgium, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland defended the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in their press after receiving instructions from Italy to do so at a secret meeting in Montreux in September 1935. They advocated ‘white’ and ‘fascist solidarity’ with Mussolini’s regime while ignoring the Italian army’s war crimes, which used sulfur mustard against both combatants and civilians.
However, the brutal war did divide European fascists, strikingly similar to how Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has divided the far right. Open support for Italy’s imperialist endeavour led to severe domestic setbacks. The connection between the Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling and Fascist Italy is one example. The national socialist Ragnarok periodical attacked Quisling as a traitor, and revealed the secret Montreux meeting to the public. This provoked massive objections within NS, resulting in numerous resignations from its moderate wing. The affair fueled the decline of the NS from a political party to a small sect. However, it was collusion with another foreign regime that saved the party from political insignificance. Like many other European fascist movements, Quisling’s NS collaborated with the Axis powers in the Second World War, catapulting the small movement into political power in occupied Norway in the years 1940-45. ‘Quisling’ even became a pejorative synonym in several languages for fascist collaborators and traitors all over Europe.
Collaboration during the Second World War
Wartime collaboration between occupying Axis powers and local fascist movements was a new, extreme variant of the patriotic predicament. On one hand, parties such as the Norwegian NS and the Croatian Ustasha were shaped by their ideological allegiance to the New European Order established by the Third Reich, based on shared racism, anti-liberalism, anti-communism and antisemitism. On the other hand, collaborationist parties still fought, at least in their own view, for the ‘interest’ of their own countries, no matter how fruitlessly. For instance, Vidkun Quisling repeatedly demanded Norway’s territorial sovereignty as an equal alliance partner of the Axis powers. Quisling, like many other ‘patriotic’ fascist leaders in their respective countries, was executed for high treason in the aftermath of the war.
A historical perspective underlines that the patriotic dilemma was as challenging for the political credibility of the fascists of the Twentieth Century as it is for the patriots of today, with serious consequences. Execution will not await the ‘Quislings of our time’, but the current AfD affair led to Maximilian Krah’s withdrawal from the party leadership. However, self-proclaimed patriots have found and will find numerous ways to navigate between nationalism and foreign allegiance for their own benefit, as a final example demonstrates. In the years before his ‘seizure of power’, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were challenged by allegations of having received money from Fascist Italy for pro-Italian propaganda. In 1932, Hitler won a court case for perjury against the journalist Werner Abel, who had made these accusations, and successfully exploited the public attention the case attracted for his own propaganda purposes.
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