Germany: “Green” Politician Files Legal Complaint Against Björn Höcke for Liking a Song

Bernhard Stengele

Hitler also liked a song.

Politico:

Bernhard Stengele, a regional environment minister from the German Green party, filed a legal complaint against the leadership of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Thuringia on suspicion of incitement to hatred.

Stengele accused the two leading AfD politicians — Björn Höcke and Stefan Möller — of referring to a song written by accused Nazi sympathizer Franz Langheinrich in their party program for Thuringia. Since the end of World War II, the use and distribution of Nazi symbols has been illegal in Germany.

“Franz Langheinrich was, to put it briefly, an enthusiastic ethnic-racist National Socialist, a passionate admirer of Adolf Hitler,” Stengele said in a video posted on X on Monday. “The work cannot be separated from its author.”

The song is called “Do you still rustle, you old forests?”

It’s a song about the Thuringian landscape.

The case was filed to the Erfurt public prosecutor’s office on Friday and then made public on Monday.

Möller has denied the accusations, German media report. Thuringia’s AfD branch called the legal complaint “an abuse of the legal system.”

Stengele is one of the two Green leading candidates for the state election in September. Asked by POLITICO whether he expects a court ruling before the election, Stengele said he was not “expecting a quick decision, but I’m hoping for one.”

Höcke has repeatedly been fined for using Nazi slogans in violation of German law. In July, he had to pay nearly €17,000 for using phrases that Hitler’s SA storm troopers also used.

…

But the bad press doesn’t seem to be affecting the party’s chances at the ballot box in eastern Germany. Recent polls show that the AfD is on track to net about 28.6 percent of the vote in Thuringia and as much as 31 percent in Saxony — topping the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany for first place in both states.

Yeah, “just keep calling them Nazis over and over again, and demonstrate massive state repression of them” was never a good strategy.

If the German state was serious, they would just arrest everyone in AfD and claim they’re a terrorist group. This is likely what they will eventually do. That’s what the Greeks did when the “far right” party started winning. It’s really easy to do in a democracy. You can just arrest anyone and call them a terrorist. There is no legal defense to that accusation in a democracy.