AfD internal dispute over Höcke's East-West theses: Criticism from CDU, FDP and the party's own ranks

According to observers, the template for the quote likely comes from Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian state broadcaster RT, who had written in 2023 in the context of German tank deliveries to Ukraine: "in East Germany, Germans live, but in West Germany, predominantly German-speaking Americans." The sentence was later disseminated via, among other channels, the pro-Russian blog milieu, Telegram, and Jürgen Elsässer.

Origin of the quote

Within the AfD Bundestag faction, defense politician Rüdiger Lucassen, a former high-ranking Bundeswehr officer, responded with sharp distancing. He can no longer explain "what has gotten into him," Lucassen said of Höcke. He called the characterization of West Germans as "in truth disguised Americans" "absolutely false and foolish" and assessed the choice of words as "SED-speak."

Criticism from the party's own ranks

The new FDP chairman Wolfgang Kubicki also sharply attacked Höcke on the platform X. "Björn Höcke is operating at the level of the SED when it comes to Germany policy. There are no first- and second-class Germans. What is needed now are not politicians stuck somewhere in the 19th or 20th century," Kubicki wrote.

Response from Thuringia and the AfD leadership

The Thuringian CDU likewise rejected the theses. The parliamentary managing director of the CDU state parliamentary group, Andreas Bühl, declared: "It is not Björn Höcke who decides who is German." With Höcke, it is always about division, exclusion, and sorting people into supposedly real and less real Germans. CDU General Secretary Niklas Waßmann called Höcke a "divider with a tape measure" and added: "The people of Thuringia decided for themselves in 1989 that they wanted a united Germany." Waßmann also pointed out that Höcke himself was born and raised in West Germany and, with his thesis, was denying himself German-ness.

From the party's own ranks, however, there was also defense. AfD vice chair Kay Gottschalk, who according to his own account had recently taken part in a so-called "remigration summit," described himself as "a healthy product of what was then still an intact West German school system, which made independent thinking and independent conclusions possible." He assessed German reunification as a great opportunity for Germany to act in the future as a mediator between Russia and the USA.

Bernd Baumann, First Parliamentary Managing Director of the AfD Bundestag faction, sought to defuse the dispute. The matter belongs in the realm of election campaigning and exaggeration, he told journalists. In the West, one had received a different upbringing, "so of course there is this approach of a certain denationalization." Baumann also pointed to AfD co-founder Alexander Gauland, who once described Höcke as a "national romantic."

AfD faction vice chair Beatrix von Storch emphasized the unity of the nation to the portal "The Pioneer": "We are an indivisible German nation. The completion of Germany's inner unity is our highest goal. We do not divide it — neither politically, intellectually, nor culturally."

Outlook

According to available information, Höcke was born in North Rhine-Westphalia and grew up in Rhineland-Palatinate — that is, in West Germany himself. The controversy comes at a time when the AfD is strongly positioned in polls in eastern Germany and is internally disputing its future course.

The reactions from the ranks of the CDU, FDP and individual AfD politicians show that Höcke's East-West differentiation is not going unchallenged even within his own party. It remains unclear whether the controversy will have consequences beyond this episode for the party's internal handling of the Thuringian state chairman.