Pro-AfD Cartoon Shows Far-Right Cynicism and Delusion
A recent cartoon supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party offers insights into how reactionaries cynically distort history and their own ideology. Credited to SKS Cartoon, whose Twitter feed reveals the artist to be a fervent worshipper of Donald Trump and Elon Musk—the latter has publicly endorsed the AfD—the artwork shows how right-wing populists try to publicly distance themselves from Nazism even as they maintain a similar worldview.
The cartoon depicts AfD co-leader Alice Weidel tearing down a poster featuring the black, red, gold colour scheme of the German flag. The three coloured bands respectively depict “Communism” with an image of Karl Marx; “Nazism” with Adolf Hitler; and “Globalism” with Klaus Schwab, founder, longtime executive chairman, and now executive of the board of trustees for the World Economic Forum. “There is a century-old curse that made Germany the villain of the world,” Weidel says, adding, “Time to break that curse!”
As the saying goes, there’s a lot to unpack here. The portrayal of communism, Nazism, and “globalism” as the three main foes of the AfD say much about how right-wing populists see themselves and the world, and how they wish to portray themselves. Let’s look at each of these targets in turn.
Communism
The idea that communism made Germany the “villain of the world” could only come from anti-communists. An alternative view comes from Angela Davis, who before she was a liberal academic and reliable voter for the capitalist Democrats was something of a radical. “Yes, I am a communist,” Davis said. “And I consider it one of the greatest honours because we are struggling for the total liberation of the human race.”
Communists seeks to free the working class and all of humanity from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Anti-communists—whether liberal, conservative, reformist, or fascist—defend the capitalist system, which has long outlived its usefulness and now threatens the very survival of the human race as capitalist governments accelerate the climate crisis. All oppression—racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.—ultimately flows from capitalism and its need to maximize profits and divide the working class. If you oppose communism in 2025, it’s time for you to ask: “Are we the baddies?”
Karl Marx, so villainized by the bourgeoisie, was a genius whose only “crime” was to explain the actual basis of society and class struggle as the motor force for historical change. Historical materialism holds that before human beings can do anything else, we need to provide the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, etc. The mode of production and distribution becomes the economic base upon which society’s superstructure rests. Marx explained that profit comes from surplus-value produced through exploitation of the working class. He showed that the contradictions of capitalism lead to periodic crises of overproduction. The capitalist class has no answer to this. They can never forgive Marx for revealing the truth of their system.
From a working-class perspective, far from making Germany the “villain of the world”, Marxism was one of the greatest gifts any country could offer humanity. The First World War showed the full extent of capitalist barbarism, as millions of workers slaughtered each other for no purpose other than the further enrichment of “their” national capitalist class. It was the German Revolution that ended the First World War. Had the German workers’ councils retained power, Germany would have superseded the Soviet Union as the global bastion of socialism and workers’ power. The world would have been spared the horrors of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Sadly, the German workers turned power back to their traditional reformist leaders in the Social Democratic Party, who in turn handed it back to the bourgeoisie. The subsequent history of Germany was one of revolution and counter-revolution until Hitler’s victory in 1933 crushed the German labour movement. It’s impossible to understand fascism and Nazism without reference to the working class movements of the time. Fascism was the bourgeoisie’s last resort against the threat of socialist revolution: a mass movement of the ruined petty-bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat, backed by big business to physically destroy the workers’ movement.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known as East Germany, owed its existence after the Second World War to the presence of Soviet troops. Despite its Stalinist deformations, characterized by the rule of a parasitic bureaucracy, the GDR’s nationalized planned economy allowed it to provide guaranteed housing and full employment. Since the collapse of the GDR in 1989 we’ve seen the phenomenon of “Ostalgie”, or nostalgia for the east, as former residents of East Germany promised a wonderland of riches under capitalism became disillusioned with the bitter reality of annexation by the capitalist West, feeling life was better under “communism”.
Of course, East Germany only existed due to the world-historical failure of the fascist regime that preceded it—the very regime that the AfD are most eager to distance themselves from. Let’s look at…
Nazism
Who do these AfD clowns think they’re kidding? Right-wing populists believe virtually everything Hitler did, yet desperately try to dismiss any association with the Third Reich because they know Hitler is seen as the embodiment of modern political evil. You don’t see this with any other figure on the extreme right. Memes about throwing leftists from helicopters, for example, are inspired by the actions of the Pinochet regime in Chile. Unlike Pinochet, in the case of Hitler most of the far right are too cowardly to acknowledge how much of his views they share.
The AfD in particular is guilty of this charge. A 2019 poll by the Forsa Institute found that while just two per cent of the German population agreed with the statement that “the Holocaust is propaganda of the Allied Powers”, among AfD supporters that figure was 15 per cent. To be sure, like much of the far right, the AfD has abandoned the traditional antipathy towards Jews—at least openly—in favour of demonizing Islam as the source of societal ills, combined with staunch support for Israel. Though it seems counterintuitive, there is a long history of collaboration between antisemites and Zionists, both of whom share the belief that Jews will always be rejected by “gentile” countries and should therefore leave.
While there are plenty of fascists in the AfD, the AfD itself is not a fascist party. We need to be clear on our definitions, since the word “fascist” constantly gets thrown around as a generic political insult. Leon Trotsky defined fascism as a mass movement of the ruined middle classes and lumpenproletariat. The AfD is a right-wing populist party which, like Trump in the United States or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, has gained support by giving voice to anger against the political establishment that all other parties have tied themselves to.
Because these parties and politicians support capitalism, however, when in power they quickly reveal themselves as a bulwark of the same establishment they claimed to oppose. We only have to look at Trump’s new cabinet, which includes no less than 13 billionaires. Alexander Kalabekov outlines how the AfD’s policies are in reality little different from those pushed by Germany’s traditional capitalist parties:
Despite its anti-establishment posturing and the attacks it has faced from the more ‘traditional’ capitalist parties, the AfD is just as much in favour of austerity, armament and tax breaks for the rich. It also wants to reach deep into the pockets of the working class in order to pay for the crisis of German capitalism.
While its demagogic calculus leads it to reject the Ukraine war, the AfD is in favour of NATO’s two percent [military spending] target and would even like to exceed it. It has also spoken out in favour of rearming the Bundeswehr and the special fund that Scholz established to finance it. Moreover, it stands behind Netanyahu and Israel's genocide in Gaza. In this way, this party is participating in the arms race and the imperialist crimes of the West.
The AfD also has nothing to offer the masses in terms of social policy apart from agitation against migrants. While it wants to abolish wealth, inheritance and business taxes, it wants to cut social benefits for the poorest, i.e. reduce the welfare state to benefit the profits of capital.
All these parties defend capitalism. The function of fascism in the interwar period was to serve as the last defence of capitalism against the threat of socialist revolution. Today, the working class in countries like Germany has barely begun to move. The German bourgeoisie burned their fingers badly when they gave power to Hitler’s gangsters, and will only throw their support behind a genuine fascist party again when they see no other option. We’re still a long way from that.
That said, the idea that the AfD oppose Nazism is laughable when you consider that this party and its supporters are at the front of efforts to rehabilitate Nazism: from their staunch German nationalism and repudiation of Germany’s “culture of shame” for its Nazi past, to Thuringia AfD leader Björn Höcke—who regularly extols the virtues of Vaterland and Volk, the latter term having strong racialist connotations—criticizing the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, whining that “Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital.”
The AfD can’t claim to oppose Nazism when it usually takes the side of Nazis. Genuine anti-fascists don’t defend fascists. Speaking of Nazi-esque ideas…
Globalism
The far right uses “globalism” as a vague catch-all term they rarely define (see also: “woke”). Typically it’s used as an antithesis to nationalism: Trump in August 2020 gave a speech in which he declared, “We’re fighting for Main Street, not Wall Street. We have rejected globalism and embraced patriotism.”
Stop me if this sounds familiar: many on the right believe that a shadowy elite of international financiers secretly controls the world through their control of the banks, media, and education. Paradoxically, this wealthy global elite also allegedly funds radical left-wing movements as part of a long-term plan to destroy the nation, Christianity, the family, and traditional values. The most prominent “globalists” targeted by the right, such as George Soros, happen to be Jewish.
“Globalism” is really just the classic right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the world, with some tweaks and plausible deniability. While many in the far right are antisemites, society for the most part no longer tolerates open antisemitism. Hence the need for dog whistles like “globalists”. The far right has also largely become Zionist and pro-Israel. Many white nationalists see the Jewish ethnostate as a model. Finally, Islam has largely replaced Judaism as a focus for right-wing fears, with many of the same tropes once directed against Jews: an enemy across borders, supposedly unwilling to assimilate into European and North American societies once identified as Christian, now as Judeo-Christian.
We can further refine how AfD supporters see “globalism” by their choice of whom to identify this foe with: Klaus Schwab. Along with his leading role in the WEF, Klaus Schwab is author of the book The Great Reset, which lent its title to economic recovery efforts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Right-wing conspiracy theorists have since run wild with the idea of the Great Reset, believing it to be a decisive phase in the imposition of a globalist New World Order.
In fact, far from being some left-wing revolutionary idea, Schwab put forward the “Great Reset” as a conscious response to the threat of revolution. Alarmed by growing class anger, Schwab sought to defuse working-class rage through Keynesian policies that, as Niklas Albin Svensson put it, would restore political equilibrium at the expense of economic equilibrium—using deficit spending to mollify workers, even as the resulting debt increase set the stage for greater inflation.
What is the Great Reset, really? At the end it’s nothing but one influential capitalist warning that his class needs to make concessions to workers to avoid revolution. Instead we’re now seeing the rise of right-wing populists who gain power by claiming to oppose the establishment, yet who once in power rule more nakedly on behalf of that same establishment by squeezing the working class further. Opposition to “globalism” is the opposition of libertarian billionaires like Musk to more far-sighted representatives of their class, who argue concessions must be made to the working class to save the capitalist system as a whole.
Conclusion
Right-wing populism is a contradiction in terms. These parties and politicians claim to oppose the establishment. Yet by defending capitalism, they become the most vociferous defenders of that establishment, attacking workers and the oppressed with a renewed vigour that ensures mass uprisings in response.
The only real way for working people to advance their own interests is through a mass revolutionary communist party that can conquer state power for the working class, allowing workers to democratically run the economy based on social need.