A far-left activist group associated with Antifa has set up a fake website to trick Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) members into sharing private files. The website afdbund.de is a replica of the real AfD website (afd.de), using much of the same imagery as well as the party’s logo, and calls on AfD party members to upload files to the website that “could be misused for a prohibition procedure against our party.” A “prohibition procedure” refers to efforts to ban the AfD.
Claiming that the files will remain anonymous, the website states, “Here you can transfer screenshots, videos, documents, or other files that support your suspicions.”
While most of the links on the website transfer to the real AfD website, the imprint indicates that the site is actually managed by ‘AfD – Artists for Democracy GmbH’ run by Philipp Ruch.
Ruch is a notorious far-left activist in Germany and is the head of the Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Centre for Political Beauty), a group which has been raided by German police in the past for their actions against the AfD. Previous actions have included destroying AfD campaign material after lying to the party and claiming to be a distribution company.
The group was raided in early 2022 after destroying around five million political flyers ahead of the 2019 federal elections, an act the group passed off as ‘artistic expression.’
In 2018, the group created another fake website that tricked conservative activists and protestors in Chemnitz into searching for their own names and thereby identifying themselves to the group, with Ruch himself admitting the site was a ‘honeypot trap,’ also referred to as an ‘Antifa action’ by the far-left German newspaper Die Tageszeitung.
“This is the most relevant data currently available on right-wing extremism in Germany,” Ruch said at the time and offered to help the German security services saying, “If, for example, the Federal Minister of the Interior wants to know more and would like to have a coffee with us, then he should come by.”
The ‘honeypot’ came after protests lasting several days in the city of Chemnitz that year following the murder of Daniel Hillig who was stabbed to death by two migrants from Syria and Iraq, with the Syrian convicted of murder in 2019.
AfD supporters on X also claim to have received letters in the mail asking them to export their chat histories and contacts on apps like Telegram and WhatsApp, providing QR codes and links to the activists’ afdbund website. The letters carry AfD party logos and forged signatures by the leaders of the party, Alice Weidel, Alexander Gauland, and Tino Chrupalla.
Christian Braun, a supporter of the AfD, posted the letter on X saying, “The ‘Center for Political Beauty’ is committing crimes again, forging AfD designs and even signatures.”
On Tuesday, November 28th, the Centre for Political Beauty made headlines for publishing a deepfake video of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaring the AfD had been banned by the federal government, a ban that would come into effect in June of next year.
The German government, however, does not seem to be enthusiastic about the video. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit stated that the government would be looking into whether or not it would be taking legal action against Ruch and his group.
Along with the video, the Centre for Political Beauty launched a website named AfD Banned which lists around 350 members of the AfD and their alleged ‘speech crimes,’ something the group believes is justification for the party to be banned by the government.
The website is a replica of the Federal Chancellor’s website, and, like the afdbund site, calls on people to submit information to help get the AfD banned. The site also calls for donations, claiming to be currently funded into at least March of next year and lists Ruch and ‘Artists for Democracy’ as the owners of the site.
The projects from the Centre for Political Beauty come as many have called for the AfD to be banned. The party has skyrocketed in polls to become the second largest in Germany, behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) sister party.
Earlier this month, the magazine Der Spiegel, openly called for the AfD to be banned stating, “The AfD has become more and more radicalized. It is time to defend democracy with sharper weapons.”
CDU MP and former Eastern Commissioner of the Federal Government Marco Wanderwitz has even gone as far as drafting legislation in the Bundestag, the German parliament, to ban the AfD, claiming that to save democracy the party must be banned.
“We are dealing with a party that seriously endangers our free democratic basic order and the state as a whole,” he said and added, “That’s why it’s high time to ban them.”
Even if such a law were passed, however, only the German Constitutional Court has the ability to ban any political party, something it has been extremely hesitant to do in the past.