Publisher Holger Friedrich wishes the AfD “all the best” for its takeover of power

At the end of June, publisher Holger Friedrich was supposed to speak at the AfD’s “Democracy Congress” in the Bundestag. He cancelled at short notice. Now he has subsequently published his speech manuscript.

Publisher Holger Friedrich is looking forward with interest, presumably even benevolently, to the emerging AfD takeover of power in Saxony-Anhalt. This is evident from the manuscript of a speech that Friedrich actually wanted to deliver at the end of June at a so-called “Democracy Congress” of the AfD in the Bundestag in Berlin. In his undelivered speech, Friedrich predicted that the AfD would “probably assume governmental responsibility for the first time in its party history,” directly or indirectly. “I wish you all the best for this. It is an opportunity for you. And perhaps it also offers Germany the opportunity to find a way out of its political agony.”

Friedrich has now published the speech manuscript himself after the fact on the website of “Projekt Halle,” where the East German Media Holding documents the development of the “Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” (OAZ), launched at the beginning of the year.

Participation in a far-right congress as a “duty”?

Friedrich’s announced participation in the congress had sparked some discussion. Friedrich himself had described his participation in the congress as a “duty” in the OAZ and in the “Berliner Zeitung.” Bridges were needed, not firewalls.

At the time, Mandy Tröger criticised this in “Freitag”. She wrote that the AfD needed actors like Friedrich “not as party supporters, but as credible voices from outside who confirm a central narrative: that the actual threat to freedom and democracy does not come from the far right, but from an authoritarian establishment of politics, the media and civil society.” Friedrich provided this narrative with “journalistic credibility.”

Historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk said: “Holger Friedrich is where he belongs. Among enemies of democracy, among those who want to erode the fundamental values of our democracy and deny the universality of human rights.” “nd” reported on the planned “Democracy Congress” under the headline “Freedom of Hate Speech.” Friedrich wanted to speak out against the ostracisation of the AfD – while also emphasising that he did not agree with all the positions of the right-wing party.

AfD sees no change of conviction in Friedrich

This tightrope walk between proximity and distance between Friedrich and the AfD is also reflected in the congress speech manuscript now published. Friedrich writes on the homepage of “Projekt Halle”: “I have not appeared at any AfD congress or any political event. These are outright falsehoods.”

But nobody had claimed that Friedrich had appeared at the congress in the Reichstag building. Merely that he had wanted to appear there. The AfD itself had cited “compelling private reasons” for the publisher’s cancellation: The fact that the “highly anticipated guest” had ultimately not come had “nothing to do with a change of conviction” on Friedrich’s part, the conference chair explained. “We assume that he will make up his visit to us sometime soon. So, it has no political significance.”

Those who criticise Friedrich for wanting to make the AfD socially acceptable and normalise right-wing discourses receive a rebuttal. “Reality is being distorted to a considerable extent,” the publisher writes, “which bears propagandistic traits.” Anyone who ascribes sympathy for the AfD to him is engaging in “rather crude manipulation of opinion under the protection of freedom of the press and freedom of expression.”

“Probability of fascism marginal”

On the homepage of “Projekt Halle”, Friedrich asks himself the question: “Which central political positions of the AfD do you share, and which do you explicitly reject?” To answer himself: “I cannot provide any information on this – I have never dealt with it.” He then concedes that a strengthening of the political fringes could lead to fascism, but that this would not necessarily happen: “I consider the probability marginal and also rather exaggerated for reasons of vested interests.”

The first OAZ issue, published in February, featured a highly favourable portrait of AfD leader Tino Chrupalla under the headline “A Man Behind the Attributions”. Media scholar Volker Lilienthal wrote about it at t-online: “It is very humanised, it is an unparalleled political appeal for sympathy. […] And then publisher Friedrich wonders why his main paper, the ‘Berliner Zeitung,’ is already considered open towards the AfD and lacks critical distance.” Friedrich is now hitting back; he does not understand Lilienthal’s “various ‘classifications’” – he sees in them “West German normative texts in which indignation over East German emancipation in the media shines through between the lines.”

Trivialisation of the dangers posed by the far right

Meanwhile, Holger Friedrich is systematically playing down the dangers to democracy posed by the far-right AfD. In his undelivered speech for the “Democracy Congress,” he calls the CDU, FDP and AfD “bourgeois parties” without making any distinctions. He attributes what he considers an ugly politics of fear to both the AfD and its competitors: The other parties “mobilise people to defend your privileges by using fear of the AfD – just as the AfD mobilises votes for the conquest of power by using fear of foreign infiltration and loss of identity.”

And then he assumes the role of adviser: According to the manuscript, Friedrich wanted to say that the AfD must not become an “imitation of a power that is both corrupting and corrupt,” but must summon the courage and institutional strength “to invite extremism to your doorstep.” If it succeeded in doing so, “the AfD would certainly be an opportunity for renewal for democracy.” Renewing democracy with enemies of democracy, seriously?

Among the parallel media

At the beginning of June, Holger Friedrich assured “Zeit” in an interview that he was “not an AfD supporter, quite the opposite.” Within the party, however, expectations of Friedrich and his publications are pronounced. In its “blue circular letter,” the AfD district association of Bautzen recommends that its members use, alongside party-owned channels, exclusively parallel media such as the internet radio station Kontrafunk, the rowdy portal “Nius,” “Apollo News” or the YouTube channel “{ungeskriptet} by Ben,” which gained greater renown in April through a four-hour video podcast by Benjamin Berndt with far-right AfD politician Björn Höcke. When reading newspapers, the Bautzen AfD recommends the “Ostdeutsche Allgemeine.”

Advertising for a right-wing book fair

This weekend, the right-wing book fair “Seitenwechsel” is taking place for the second time in Halle (Saale), organised by bookseller Susanne Dagen, a leading figure of the New Right from Dresden and the AfD’s spokesperson for cultural policy on the city council there. Although the “Ostdeutsche Allgemeine” does not have its own stand at the fair, it is accompanying the right-wing gathering, as it did last year, with favourable coverage.

The Z-word in a report about Susanne Dagen

At the end of October, the OAZ published a report in which Dagen is celebrated as a “free spirit” already in her youth. In the early 1990s, Dagen moved to Rostock for a while. And she experienced the racist riots in Lichtenhagen, as she recounts. In the report, Dagen is quoted as saying: “Every weekend we drove to the beach in Warnemünde, always through Lichtenhagen.”

The atmosphere had become “increasingly uncomfortable, increasingly loud.” It continues verbatim: “In her perception, however, it was not about the Vietnamese at all, but about people who were referred to as ‘gypsies’ at the time. Without housing, without toilets. ‘Of course, that caused trouble in the neighbourhood.’” Journalists then “created those images, wrote those lines, […] right-wing extremist attacks on foreigners. ‘That will never leave the collective memory.’”

Dagen says that she experiences the book fair, which she conceived as an alternative to the established fairs in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, as a “great high.” In an interview with the OAZ, published a few days after the report, Dagen explains that framing it as a “right-wing book fair” is “a deceptive package.” Some of the exhibitors are “completely apolitical.” The organiser is allowed to state without contradiction that AfD politicians Tino Chrupalla and Hans-Thomas Tillschneider will be guests in Halle “as authors,” “not as party representatives.”

Right-wing networking event – Holger Friedrich is amused

Funke Medien report from a note by the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution on last year’s “Seitenwechsel” book fair: “In summary, it can be said that the book fair in particular provided actors from the ‘New Right’ with a platform that served to reinforce themselves and advanced networking both with known right-wing extremists and with the bourgeois centre.”

Holger Friedrich is evidently unconcerned by all this. Neither does Ms Dagen represent extreme political positions, nor does she call for violence, he writes on the homepage of “Projekt Halle.” “Her specific humour about parts of the political spectrum may provoke, but should rather amuse than frighten.”