Standing in front of a crowded room at the New York City Young Republicans Club annual gala, the Vice-Chairman of the far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was hailed as a guest of honor.
Standing behind the podium at the historic venue Cipriani Wall Street in New York on December 13, 2025, Markus Frohnmaier thanked a cheering crowd and “honorable and less honorable representatives from the media.” In his short and curt acceptance speech for the Allen W. Dulles Award—given to those who embody the “virulent anti-Marxist spirit” of the first civilian CIA director—he promised to work for “preservation of the greatest civilization in the history of mankind.”
AfD is the second largest single political party in German Parliament and is fighting a classification by its national security service as a far-right extremist organization due to its history of Islamophobia, ethnic definition of German people, and egregious statements by its leadership, among other reasons
Frohnmaier was already in the U.S. as part of a 20-person AfD delegation visiting Washington D.C. to meet with U.S. lawmakers, the latest move in a charm campaign aimed at the White House. Having spent Trump’s second term courting favor and allies within the administration, the AfD has emerged as a foreign darling and rising ally of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
Calling out “globalists” in “Berlin, in Brussels and in DC,” Frohnmaier told the crowd in December, “The days of apologizing for our heritage are over. We will not apologize for having borders, we will not apologize for believing in God.”
He closed his talk with a call for unity among the Make America Great Again and his party’s supporters. “My fellow American friends, the alliance between American and German patriots is the nightmare of the liberal elites and it is the hope of the free world. Let us stand shoulder to shoulder… Let us reclaim our culture. Let us reclaim our nations and let us make the West whole again.”
The annual gala held by the New York City Young Republicans Club often courts controversy, and this one was no different. The December 2025 event featuring Frohnmaier hosted a cadre of polarizing and overtly white nationalist figures. Attendees included white nationalist leader Jared Taylor, whose racist, pseudo-intellectual American Renaissance annual conference brings together members of the international far-right each year; antisemitic Instagram star Hayden McDougall, who makes racist content under the name “Woman Propaganda;” livestreamer Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, better known as Sneako, a “Manosphere” influencer, akin to Andew Tate, who has espoused antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric; and Jack Posobiec, the anti-immigrant, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist and far-right pundit close to the Trump administration.
Some attendees were there amid recent public scandals, including former One America News Network producer Vish Burra, who lost his job in November after posting a video depicting Jews as cockroaches to his social media. Another attending influencer, who goes by “Empathchan” online but has been identified as Chloe Power, went viral recently for posting a video of her wearing Black face and using racial slurs on Halloween.
Screen capture of a video posted by Empathchan to X showing her in Black face. (Source: X)
Two elected representatives of the Republican Party also attended the event, including Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) who gave an address where he attacked political enemies and accused Islam of being incompatible with American values.
Ogles called New York an “occupied city” and accused now–Mayor Zohran Mamdani of leading a “coalition of communists, jihadists, and globalists on the move to destroy our way of life.”
The rant featured blatant Islamophobia and conspiracies, as Ogles accused Democrats of orchestrating an agenda to “replace the common American with an uncommon alien.” His rhetoric is akin to the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that a globalist plot exists to replace European-descendant Americans with non-white migrants.
“America first means limiting immigration to people who are from compatible nations who love our history, who worship our God,” Ogles continued. “Those who don’t fit the mold should make their own countries great and get the hell out. But it gets worse. The importation of Islam into this nation undermines our communities, our cities, our nation. Christianity is the answer always.”
Also in attendance from the GOP was Rep. Mike Collins from Georgia, who used his speech to praise the event organizers and Trump as the greatest president in living memory, potentially in the country’s history.
Frohnmaier’s call for an alliance between the AfD and the MAGA movement was well received as the GOP and the German far-right party have been growing closer, a relationship the AfD has been courting since before Trump’s return to the White House.
Additional controversy for the club includes the recent dissolution of the separate New York state chapter after a scandal revealed a private group chat in which leaders joked about sending their political enemies to gas chambers, referred to Black people as “monkeys” and expressed pro-Nazi views like “I love Hitler.”
Leaders from Young Republican chapters in Arizona, Kansas, and Vermont were also reported to be in the chat.
Building Networks in Washington
The NYC Young Republican’s gala honoring the AfD made headlines, but it was not the vice chairman’s only stop while in the United States as Frohnmaier had traveled to the nation’s capital with a delegation from his party.
Frohnmaier posted a picture of his meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers only hours before gala. According to social media posts by Frohnmaier, the two discussed Trump’s National Security Strategy made public in November 2025, which claimed in its text that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” as a result of mass migration. The same document offers support for “patriotic European parties,” said the goal should be to help “correct” Europe,” and questions European allies’ commitment to NATO as they “become majority non-European.”
“Within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
Picture posted to X by Markus Frohmaier on December 16, 2025 showing his meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers. (Source: X)
“Washington is looking for a strong German partner who is willing to take on responsibility,” Frohnmaier wrote in an online post following the meeting. “Germany should re-establish itself as a capable leading power through a decisive shift in migration policy and the independent organization of European security.”
Frohnmaier praised Trump’s national security strategy when it was released, unlike EU leaders and European heads of state who denounced it.
“The AfD and Trump team are finally speaking plainly, instead of dodging the topic,” he said in a November statement. “The new U.S. National Security Strategy now states it in black and white: Europe is threatened with ‘civilizational annihilation’ – and mass immigration is explicitly named as the main cause.”
Meetings with Republicans included Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), a vocal anti-immigration Trump-supporting representative, who has been an outspoken supporter of the AfD. Pictures released in the days before the NYC gala show Luna meeting with Frohnmaier and several others. In a post to X, Luna said she planned to meet with “dozens” of AfD delegates.
It was Luna who claimed in a November interview to be bringing a 40–person delegation from the AfD to Washington D.C. She had earlier met with Afd members during a trip to Germany in October 2025, where she posted footage with party deputy spokesperson, Anna Rathert, who was also part of the AfD’s December delegation.
Luna also attempted to orchestrate a visit from AfD’s senior leadership to Washington. In October 2025, she publicly extended an invitation to AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, who responded positively but did not travel with Frohnmaier and the other AfD members.
Possible future visits have not been announced.
At the meeting with AfD’s 20-member delegation was Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, who faced widespread criticism after he repeatedly claimed during the 2024 Presidential Election that Kamala Harris was selected as a “DEI hire.”
Since returning to power, the Trump administration has made efforts to support the international far right, aligning with and endorsing parties it sees as unfairly targeted by the same globalists that Frohnmaier mentioned in his speech. The AfD has been on the receiving end of a significant amount of that support, not to mention Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
In November 2025, a Trump political adviser credited with the president’s election social media strategy, Alex Brusewitz, met with AfD leaders in Berlin. He argued that the MAGA movement and the AfD are both fighting a “spiritual battle” against their ideological enemies.
Vice President JD Vance met with AfD leadership in February 2025. Vance has not been shy about signaling support for the party. He took to the stage at the Munich Security Conference to lambaste what he saw as the “retreat” of free speech in Europe and urged German politicians to work with the AfD.
Despite being the second largest party in the German parliament, the Bundestag, other parties, the right-leaning ruling CDU among them, refuse to work with AfD in a practice often referred to as a “firewall.”
None of these barriers exist for the Trump administration, who have welcomed the AfD with open arms. Tino Chrupalla, the party’s co-chair since 2019, attended Trump’s inauguration in January, rubbing shoulders with far-right world leaders like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s President Javier Milei.
Weidel had originally been invited but declined due to commitments in Germany, where she had been nominated for the role of chancellor.
Ideological Bedfellows
The AfD and the MAGA movement share similar ideological worldviews when it comes to nationalism. Aligning on immigration, identity, and social issues, both movements share a perspective that frames politics as a fight to preserve a narrow vision of “Western culture,” often used as a shorthand for “white culture.” Immigration is portrayed not as a policy challenge but as an existential threat to national identity and unity.
The movements cast non-Europeans as literal and cultural outsiders, whose values are incompatible with the “true” population. Immigration is blamed as the cause of crime and national decline, dismissing any evidence that counters these claims. Enemies are seen as an influence seeking to infiltrate and subvert.
Within the MAGA movement, immigration policy has centered on mass deportation, militarized border enforcement, and expanded internal policing. Trump has repeatedly promised the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, which has resulted in national ICE raids and the retasking of federal or National Guard forces for immigration enforcement.
These policies are reinforced by appointments and alliances with figures and organizations connected to nativist and white-nationalist thought.
The AfD pursues a similar strategy at home. AfD leaders use campaign advertisements and social media to routinely target Muslims and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, portraying Islam and its followers as inherently incompatible with German society. Asylum seekers are framed as security threats, a drain on social services, and part of a cultural “replacement,” a concept closely related to the “Great Replacement” theory—which claims white people are being deliberately and systematically replaced by immigrants.
Trump’s rhetoric and policies have demonstrated a similar pattern of targeting Muslims and some foreign populations as incompatible with American values. The president has also repeatedly used inflammatory language about immigrants, and invoked isolated violent incidents to justify broader asylum restrictions. After the November 2025 killing of a National Guard member in Washington D.C. by an Afghan national, his administration increased the scope of travel restriction which now impacts people coming from 39 different countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti, and Somalia. The restrictions disproportionately impacted Africa, as full or partial travel restrictions have been placed on 26 countries inside the continent.
The movements have converged around the concept of “remigration.” A term that’s origins come from European far-right and refers to forcing even legal immigrants and their descendants to be forcibly removed through ethnic cleansing. The concept has been promoted by AfD figures and has increasingly appeared in the Trump administration’s social media messaging surrounding mass deportation.
The AfD and MAGA are also united on social issues, particularly a fierce opposition to anything labeled as part of the “woke ideology.” This includes resistance or opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, addressing gender equality , and policies that tackle racism or hate speech. The movements see these issues as social projects designed to tear down traditional religious and families values, as well as national identity. Attacks on transgender rights and minority protections are presented as part of the fight to resist foreign influence and reclaim national sovereignty.
AfD Might Be Too Extreme for Germany, But Not The GOP
AfD is battling an extremist designation from the German government in court and the refusal by other lawmakers to work with the party. German law holds provisions that can ban regional and national groups that pose threats to its democracy. It was assessed to be a “confirmed right-wing extremist,” group by the German intelligence agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in May 2025.
In response, the Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence Tom Cotton called for a pause on “all intelligence sharing” with the BfV in a letter to the Director of U.S. National Intelligence.
“German intelligence can now eavesdrop, monitor, and infiltrate Germany’s main opposition party and its second-largest vote-getter in the recent elections,” Cotton wrote.
Only days after the announcement of the designation, AfD challenged the decision in court, which resulted in the BfV suspending the designation.
The national courts will ultimately decide the fate of the party.
AfD Saxony, a local chapter of the party, was declared a “confirmed far-right extremist organization” by regional authorities for the first time in 2023. The Saxon Higher Administrative Court upheld the decision in January 2025. Branches in Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Thuringia have also received similar regional designations.
Similarly, Junge Alternative, AfD’s youth group was classified as an extremist organization in 2023 finding the organization held an “ethno-nationalist view” and would target “ethnic foreigners.” The AfD fought the classification in court, ultimately losing the fight. Junge Alternative was dissolved by the AfD shortly after, before it could be officially banned by the government. Their new official youth organization, “Generation Deutschland,” launched in December 2025.
A Far-Right Party Ascendant
Despite these accusations, support for the AfD has risen significantly since its foundation in 2013. The party earned about 20 percent in the second round of voting in 2025, making it the second largest party in the Bundestag.
AfD has likely benefited at the ballot box and in court from the support offered to it from the Trump administration. Its rise from a fringe party only a few years ago to a powerful populist force as the German official opposition has also propelled its efforts to network within Europe. After the AfD’s federal electoral victories, Weidel gave a speech at a May 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Hungary.
The AfD often rejects the idea that it is an extremist party and that the attempts to limit or curtail the party’s reach by German authorities are a politically motivated attempt to silence them. Despite this, there have been numerous members of the AfD who have made statements or been found to have links to neo-Nazi movements.
Björn Höcke, an AfD leader in the Thuringia region, has repeatedly been involved in controversies tied to Nazi‑era language. He was fined in 2024 after it was found during a speech in Merseburg in May 2021 that he used the phrase “Everything for Germany.” The phrase traces its origin as a slogan of the Nazi paramilitary force Sturmabteilung or “Brownshirts.” Leaked emails from 2014, show Höcke arguing against legislation that outlawed symbols like the swastika.
In 2018, AfD state chairman of Saxony-Anhalt, André Poggenburg, vilified the Turkish people living in Germany calling them “caraway dealers” and “camel drivers” during an Ash Wednesday speech. He was suspended from the party which he chose to quit.
None of these incidents, nor the AfD’s policies, have managed to slow its growth in a meaningful way. Rising to be the second most popular federal party, the AfD’s will is only held back by the refusal of other parties to work with them. Outside of Germany, the MAGA movement has found an ally that is increasingly unable to be ignored at home or abroad.
