Report: The social media domination of the German far right

This report was written by Adrien Beauduin for the European Center for Digital Action in the lead up to the German election in February 2025. Adrien is a researcher currently studying politics in Poland and the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on nationalist political parties.

The purpose of this report is to examine how far-right parties—specifically the German AfD—use digital tools and platforms for campaigning, and what insights we can apply to our own digital organizing.

In the 2025 German parliamentary election, the far right party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, hereafter AfD) doubled its score and received 20.8% of votes. It is especially among voters younger than 24 that the party improved its score, going from 7% to 21%, a spectacular rise that can be linked to the party’s resonating success on social media, amongst others on TikTok. As this report lays out, the AfD owes its social domination to its understanding of the platforms; its capacity to adapt content and strategy to the algorithms; and its ability to mobilise a larger far right network. This report also addresses the party’s offline mobilisation, its attacks on opponents and its fundraising.

1. Understanding the platforms

Like many far right parties, the AfD faces more critical coverage than other parties in traditional media, and it has thus been an early adopter of many social media platforms. While most parties ignored TikTok, the AfD became an early and systematic presence on this platform. In October 2023, 4 of the 5 most followed German politicians on TikTok were from the AfD, with party leader Alice Weidel in third position and another AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund in first place.1

The AfD has understood that user engagement boosts most algorithms and it has fit its content and format to each platform.2 With short videos, lurid headlines, subtitles in capital letters, and strong statements, it has had huge success on YouTube and then more recently on TikTok. An AfD representative has even said that AfD deputies write and pronounce their parliamentary speeches to make them fit the short and emotional TikTok format.3 On Instagram, the party’s former youth wing Junge Alternative (Young Alternative, hereafter JA) took more advantage of the platform’s focus on images by posting slick pictures of its young members, especially young women.4

Views per TikTok post in 2022-20235 — ***Views per TikTok post in 2022-2023***5

Thanks to most platforms’ algorithms, pushback against AfD message only increases the posts’ engagement and reach. With ‘scandalous’ video content, the party seems to provoke the public on purpose in order to have media and, especially social media attention.6 Amongst other things, the AfD breaks ‘taboos’ with slogans reminding of the Nazi dictatorship or with radical ideas, such as mass deportations and ‘remigration’, i.e. sending back people with a migration background.

Interaction rate per post on Facebook and Instagram 2022-20237 — ***Interaction rate per post on Facebook and Instagram 2022-2023***7

The AfD has also been an early user of Telegram, which is unmoderated. In general, the German far right has often tried to attract users from other platform to Telegram in order to keep their following in case of the closure of its other social media channels and in order to post more radical content. The AfD has also used Telegram as an internal coordination tool and to communicate and organise with the wider far right scene, the Vorfeld.

2. Generating content: mass, not class

The AfD was the first party to build a video production studio in the German parliament and to take seriously the production of audio-visual material for social media, investing time and resources. The AfD has been attacking and rejecting mainstream media, and it has played an important role in creating an alternative media bubble. Thus, the party has invested in building its own media early on, such as the ‘AfD TV’10, a successful YouTube channel with over 330,000 subscribers that serves as both informative channel with longer ‘analysis’ videos and mobilisation channel with short campaign clips.

With the emergence of TikTok, the party has adapted to the new format and exigencies. AfD politicians have early on understood how the platform works and have acted accordingly. Not only have they adapted their parliamentary speeches to the platform, but they have also acted as content creators themselves in their daily life. Journalists following an AfD politician witnessed how he sat down, recorded, edited and posted a video in less than fifteen minutes.11 The politicians often use the ‘vlog’ format, the selfie mode, speaking directly to the users, giving a feeling of authenticity, often starting with a ‘provocative’ hook, then with a short emotional message, and then a call for action.12

The AfD has also understood that the most important on TikTok is not quality, but regularity and quantity, thus flooding the platform with videos.13. The AfD has pushed its politicians, collaborators, members and sympathisers to create content, amongst others setting up a shadow-army of accounts to amplify its message. For example, a research found about 60 accounts that looked like official AfD accounts and generated about 6 million likes. Those profiles often give a ‘personal’ touch to party messages and also tend to be more radical than official party communication.14

Although it is forbidden by TikTok guidelines to pretend to represent some personality or institution, the platform has not actively pushed back against those practices.15. The tactic has been so successful that an investigation showed that a new TikTok user showing interest for German politics would have 78% of their feed coming from pro AfD accounts.16

***Example of AI-generated content by the AfD and its amplifiers***

The party is not necessarily behind all those accounts and many genuine sympathisers are actively creating content, but the party and its activists follow and interact with all accounts, creating a powerful echo chamber. Some AfD politicians also get in touch with AfD fan accounts, and they encourage and advise them. For some time, there was even some coordination through a Telegram channel called ‘TikTok-Guerilla’ on which the AfD youth organisation JA provided detailed information on how to make successful social media content. On the channel, it distributed original videos of AfD leaders, with instructions on which politicians and messages to push forward. This approach led to a mass of pro-AfD videos online, some of which have become viral. Even some of the clips that would be deleted by the platform would appear again and again, posted by other users. The party enticed users to post by sending them a free t-shirt, or organising an iPhone raffle. After the dissolution of JA, the AfD and leader Alice Weidel have continued this practice more openly, making short videos available online and publicly calling on sympathisers to make videos with the material, rewarding them with t-shirts.17

The party and its network have taken advantage of the apparition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to mass-produce audio, video and image content. It provides an endless source of material to ‘spam’ TikTok with videos containing AI-generated images, videos and sound, often fitting well with the platform’s short, entertaining and emotional format. It can be some metaphorical images of the ‘sick eagle’ or ‘proud eagle’ (representing Germany), others demonising foreigners, especially Muslims, or glorifying leader Alice Weidel. AI also helps create ‘viral’ cultural elements of the far right scene, such as a ‘Deportation song’ that served as a soundtrack to AfD videos and was also played at AfD electoral events. Although we know that some of the AI content is generated directly by the party and the marketing firms that it is hiring18, we do not know how much comes spontaneously from sympathisers. An undercover journalist acting as a starting far right influencer was in touch with an account creating AI generated songs for AfD-related far right accounts and received her own personalised song. 19

3. The influencer network: the Vorfeld

In addition to mobilising party accounts, party collaborators and sympathisers to create social media accounts and posts amplifying the party’s message, the AfD has also benefitted from a wide range of alternative institutions, media, clubs, influencers and artists. They are called the ‘Vorfeld’, the front end, and build a form of far right vanguard that shapes a socio-cultural counter-hegemony to liberal democracy. They deal with different topics and do not always openly support the AfD, but they create a powerful network and ideological eco-system to amplify far right messages.

The Vorfeld: influencers, groups and institutions gravitating around the AfD20 — ***The*** **Vorfeld*: influencers, groups and institutions gravitating around the AfD***20

Among those, we find the Identitäre Bewegung (Identitarian Movement) led by Austrian activist Martin Sellner; the think tank-like Institut für Staatspolitik and its related Antaios publishing house; far-right media like Compact Magazine or Deutschlandkurier; marketing agencies like Tannwald Media, or STLZ.media; ‘active clubs’, martial arts clubs connected to the neo-Nazi scene; neo-Nazi organisations like Junger Tat (Switzerland), Blood & Honour, the Sachsischen Separatisten; and finally the far right music scene, like the rap label Neuer Deutscher Standard (NDS).

When it comes to social media influencers, some of them run media-like channels with interviews in the streets and ‘reportages’, such as the YouTube channel “eingollan,” (around 200,000 subscribers, also present on TikTok), run by Michelle Gollan. She voices her support for the AfD. Other online influencers are far right vloggers who spread the AfD’s views without being linked to the party. One of the most well-known is Naomi Seibt, a young woman who has repeatedly interacted with Elon Musk on Twitter and has called on to vote for the AfD.

Finally, the AfD is also open to the wider ‘alternative media’ scene that spreads disinformation or propaganda and draws from conspiracy theories about current events: the war in Ukraine, Covid-19, vaccination, etc. The AfD opens its doors widely to those YouTube channels or influencers, such as “Weichreite“ (168,000 subscribers), “Utopia TV” (66,000 subscribers) or “Björn Banane” (60,000 subscribers), and AfD leaders and politicians often give them interviews during AfD events. AfD events are thus often live-streamed and covered by a wide range of sympathetic alternative media on a series of social media platforms.

Another important online ‘subculture’ for the AfD is the ‘tradwife’ (traditional wife) movement, which is represented by women who defend traditional and unequal gender roles and help spread the party’s conservative ideology.21. The women's organisation 'Lukreta' is a good example, mixing ‘harmless’ images of women in flower fields with nationalist symbols and anti-migration messages, and it calls on to vote for the AfD. Her founder Reinhild Boßdorf has run for the AfD in elections and is a central figure in the online network of far right female influencers in Germany.22 Other examples include the tradwife influencer Anna Rupp, who openly supports the AfD, or the tradwife @candy.afd, who is a party member. In general, the AfD and the wider far right scene has been using real and AI-generated images of young stereotypically attractive women to spread its message, attract viewers, project a ‘youthful’ outlook and ‘soften’ its image, a strategy that activists have openly acknowledged.23

One of the ways in which the AfD ties its activities to the wider far right scene is through the use of nationalist ‘patriotic’ online mobilisation that involves the participation of AfD politicians and activists, far right activists, and also the general public. Thus, the AfD connects with others online through the use of general ‘patriotic’ message, sometimes with hidden far right and neo Nazis symbols, that are linked together by special hashtags like #heimatverliebt (#fatherlandloving) or #Heimatliebe (#Fatherlandlove).24. In 2023, the AfD itself launched an online political campaign linking offline and online mobilisation called #Stolzmonat (#Pridemonth), meant to mock the LGBT+ Pride Month, and counter it with a nationalistic patriotic message. These hashtags connect non-extremists and extremists and also allow sympathisers to participate, eventually pulling them deeper into the network.25

Many of the aforementioned activists and channels use the meme format to spread their ideas. Several meme pages claim to represent the AfD on several platforms and the German far right in general has widely used this communication tool and style. An analysis of the networking showed the central position of three meme pages between the AfD and other far right actors in Germany, Austria and other European countries: one ‘afd.memes’ which had 11,000 subscribers (and to which the party denied any link), the far right ‘patriotische.freiheit’ and the English-speaking ‘accelerationews’.

Meme network on Instagram 26 — ***Meme network on Instagram*** 26

4. Real life mobilisation

Both the party and the Vorfeld are also active in real life, beyond social media. The AfD has been able to convert its online following into membership and activism. In 2020, a local AfD youth activist estimated that about half of new members were won over through Instagram. In the last years, it is rather through TikTok that recruitment works.

The AfD has been quick to react to local events and to gain political capital, especially when there have been crimes or terrorist attacks committed by people with a migration background. Right after the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market on December 20, 2024, the AfD organised a meeting in the city with leader Alice Weidel, something that was widely spread on AfD social media. Real life mobilisation helps to provide images for social media mobilisation and sympathetic media and influencers are invited, with AfD politicians more than happy to talk to them.

The AfD has electoral stands on the streets like all other parties and there is no indication of any particular canvassing strategy. There has been a lot of opposition and even violence against the AfD, which might explain why they do not engage in more door-to-door campaigning.27

5. Attacking the enemy

Although there is no evidence of coordinated cyber-bullying attacks against opponents by the AfD, the party’s centralised messaging and its online amplifying machine, including meme pages, serve as powerful tools to target particular parties, politicians and activists. Moreover, the algorithm on a social media platform like TikTok tends to attract like-minded opponents, thus creating a flow of ‘haters’ as soon as a few like-minded people start to comment. This boosts the reach of pro-AfD posts when anti-AfD people react, but it also can create an effect of cyberbullying by pro-AfD users on anti-AfD posts.28 Among the far right scene, the existence of a Discord cyberbullying network named Reconquista Germanica supporting the AfD was active in 2017-2018, with about 5000 users coordinating attacks against opponents. It was later closed by the platform.29 It is possible that similar closed groups still exist today.

6. Fundraising

German politics are mainly financed by membership dues and public subsidies linked to electoral results. However, the party has recently received seven-figure donations from wealthy individuals ahead of the 2025 elections.30 It has also benefitted from donations from the public and it is estimated that about one quarter of its budget comes from small donations, but no particular fundraising strategy seems to exist. Party leader Björn Höcke has raised money online through PayPal by appealing to his fans on Telegram and Twitter to pay his legal fees when he was accused of using a Nazi-time slogan. 31

Footnotes