On October 11, Kanye West devastated the mainstream media when he professed his love for President Donald Trump. Just two days before, another event of equal devastation took place in Germany: German Jews professed their love for Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), which the German mainstream media has long peddled as a neo-Nazi party much in the same way they have peddled Trump as a “racist” (or worse, the second coming of Hitler).
Media analysts came out against Kanye West with as much passion as the German Jewish establishment came out against the “Jews in the Afd” (JAfD). As I reported in my JNS article covering the inaugural conference of JAfD, 17 Jewish organization united against the AfD, baffled at how Jews could join such a party, which they labeled as “antisemitic,” “racist” and “no party for Jews.” While the German Jewish establishment considers its anti-Islam stance as “racist,” JAfD views it as position that will guarantee their safety. An oft-refrain at the conference was “Judaism belongs to Germany”—Islam, not so.
The AfD is the only party whose platform strongly criticizes Chancellor Merkel’s policy to open the borders to over one million refugees (and their opportunistic piggy-backers) since September 2015. Illegal asylum seekers were responsible for murders of two Jews on German soil (although not antisemitic in nature): Dalia Elyakim at the Christmas market truck-terror attack of 2016 and, earlier this year, 15-year-old Susanna Feldmann from Mainz (who was also brutally raped).
Defying Jewish warnings, about two dozen Jews finally came together to say: our political home is the AfD. They allege that the German Jewish establishment tows-the-line of the Merkel government since it receives government funding and is essentially a public institution.
The founding of the AfD caused a political earthquake in Germany, with almost every major international outlet covering it, in part because it breaks the narrative of the AfD as a neo-Nazi party. So too, the literal warm embrace that Kanye gave to Trump has damaged the narrative of “Trump is racist.” The mainstream media rely upon entrenched narratives and talking-points to push a left-wing agenda. No wonder the similar venom against Kanye (with CNN analysts going so far as to call him a “token Negro”) and JAfD alike, with accusations they’re being “instrumentalized.” If Republican blacks liken leaving the Democratic party to “leaving the plantation,” Jews joining the Afd could be likened to Jews “leaving the ghetto.”
The ridiculousness of calling AfD a Nazi-party is best illustrated in this satiric video filmed at the event, originally published with German subtitles on the German political blog, Die Achse Des Guten (The Axis of Good). Watch with English subtitles below:
