2024-08-06 14:12:51
State elections in Brandenburg
Left-wing politician files complaint over AfD election poster
30.07.2024Reading time: 3 min.
Is it a roof or the Hitler salute? An AfD election poster in Frankfurt (Oder) provokes harsh reactions. A Left Party politician files a complaint.
An election poster of the AfD city association in Frankfurt (Oder), Brandenburg, has sparked outrage among the city’s residents. Now even the law enforcement authorities are said to be taking action against the poster. According to her own statements, the district chairwoman of the Left Party, Anja Kreisel, filed a criminal complaint on Sunday. The politician announced this on Tuesday on the Instagram platform.
The suspicion: The poster could be a violation of Section 86a of the Criminal Code. This regulates the “use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations”. But what happened?
The AfD district association and its state parliament representative Wilko Möller have put up a poster in Frankfurt (Oder) with a motif that evokes dubious associations. In the front, three children can be seen sitting on a couch. Behind the piece of furniture stand a man and a woman, each of whom is stretching an arm up in the air to form a roof.
Above it is written: “We protect your children.” But the man is particularly eye-catching: he stretches his right arm upwards in such a way that the pose looks at least similar to the so-called Hitler salute.
What’s interesting is that the photo used appears to come from an image database. The original image in the database is mirrored, however: Here the man is raising his left arm and the woman is raising her right arm, which is slightly bent. According to the local broadcaster “Oderwelle”, the editorial team received several outraged reactions to the poster. The main question is how the AfD can deal so openly with the imagery of National Socialism.
Left-wing politician Kreisel also expresses the suspicion that the use of the image may have violated licensing agreements, “since the image material used is apparently not approved for political purposes,” the post on Instagram states.
The chairman of the AfD Frankfurt (Oder), Wilko Möller, denies this: “We bought the photo through an advertising company that created the posters for us,” Möller wrote in response to a request from t-online. The photo has “been on the market for some time.”
The symbolism of the election poster also shows that the AfD wants to look after children. “What better way to show this than with a roof over their heads, which the adults symbolically represent with their arms to protect the children,” Möller continues. A safe home is a human right and applies to all people in Germany, he adds.
Möller describes associations with the Hitler salute as “absurd”. He rejects the accusations: “We rule out provocation,” writes the AfD state parliament member. “Using the same logic, every Mercedes driver would have to be called a provocateur, because the Nazi bigwigs also drove Mercedes or were driven in Mercedes.”
It is not the first time that a poster from the AfD city association has sparked outrage. As the local broadcaster “Oderwelle” reports, the AfD in Frankfurt (Oder) had advertised for the local elections with the slogan “Everything for Frankfurt”. At the time, the slogan triggered associations with the banned SA slogan “Everything for Germany”.
In May and later in July, the head of the AfD’s Thuringia regional association, Björn Höcke, was sentenced to a fine twice by the Halle regional court for allegedly using the SA slogan at party events on two occasions. Both verdicts are not yet final; Höcke’s defense attorneys have appealed.
Both cases were reported in the national media – especially during the court hearings in early May and early June. During this period, the Brandenburg parties were also campaigning for the local elections.
On September 22, a new state parliament will be elected in Brandenburg. According to surveys, the right-wing populist AfD could become the strongest party. You can read the results of a current survey here. There is a risk of difficult government formation.