AfD lead candidate in EU election attacks western ‘paranoia’ on China

The far-right Alternative for Germany’s lead candidate in next month’s EU elections has attacked the west’s “complete paranoia” about China and defended his controversial support for Beijing’s policies.

Maximilian Krah was speaking to the Financial Times a month after his staffer Jian Guo was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing. Krah, who is standing for re-election as a member of the European parliament next month, said Guo’s arrest was part of a “campaign” by the authorities to discredit his party, the AfD, ahead of the vote.

“These days every Chinese person is suspected of being a spy,” Krah said. “It’s complete paranoia.”

He said Europe should stop lecturing China on human rights and its domestic politics. “The west should realise that it doesn’t rule the world,” he said.

With its hard line on immigration, anti-Islam rhetoric and war on “wokery”, the AfD has established itself as the most successful far-right party in Germany’s postwar history.

It is polling at about 16 per cent nationally, ahead of all the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition, and is on course to come first in three regional elections in eastern Germany this September.

But its approval ratings have dipped in recent weeks amid a drumbeat of negative headlines. In January it was reported that AfD officials had discussed plans to deport large numbers of people with immigrant backgrounds, including German passport-holders.

Last week, German police raided the offices of Petr Bystron, one of the party’s MPs, as part of a corruption and money-laundering investigation. He is alleged to have received money from Voice of Europe, a pro-Russian media outlet based in Prague that Czech authorities say was at the centre of a Russian disinformation campaign ahead of the European elections. Bystron denies any wrongdoing.

Two days before the raids, Björn Höcke, the AfD’s leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, was found guilty of using a banned Nazi slogan at a rally and fined €13,000.

But much of the recent criticism of the AfD has focused on Krah, a flamboyant lawyer who has served as an MEP since 2019 and is a linchpin of the party’s radical right.

Krah has a large following on TikTok where he has posted provocative videos, including one, entitled “Our ancestors weren’t criminals”, telling young Germans they should be proud of their forefathers.

In the interview, Krah acknowledged German history was “dark and complicated” but said Germans should not feel guilty for what their forebears did in the second world war, even if they served in the SS, which ran Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps.

“One million soldiers wore the SS uniform,” he said. “Can you really say that because someone was an officer in the Waffen-SS they were a criminal? You have to establish individual guilt.”

Krah, who has been suspended twice from the far-right Identity and Democracy Group in the European parliament, once on suspicion of fraud, though no charges resulted, and for expressing support for French rightwing commentator Éric Zemmour, is well-known for his closeness to China.

In 2021 he posted a video congratulating the country on the 70th anniversary of its occupation of Tibet. He told the FT the video, which he has since deleted, was in retrospect a “mistake”. But he defended a parallel greeting to Beijing on the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic as a “diplomatic courtesy”.

Germany’s media have reported extensively on a business trip he took to China in November 2019, where his hotel bills were paid by three Chinese municipalities and some expenses were covered by electronics group Huawei. Some western governments have banned the Chinese company from parts of their networks over fears it helps Beijing conduct cyber-espionage and technology theft.

Krah said there was nothing unusual in his trip. “If you ask every politician about meals Huawei paid for them five years ago, there won’t be any politicians left,” he said.

He also has a pro-China voting record in the European legislature, where he has consistently opposed resolutions condemning Beijing’s human rights abuses. “To me it was always clear he was a lobbyist for Chinese interests,” said one AfD MEP.

But Krah defended his stance. “It’s not the European parliament’s job to resolve China’s legal issues,” Krah told the FT. “The times when the west decided how the whole world should be governed are over.”

The MEP said there was nothing wrong with fostering strong ties with China: “They have 1.4bn people, they’re hard-working, innovative and economically strong, and it’s better to have good relations with them.”

He was “shocked” by Guo’s arrest, after which he was summoned for crisis meetings with the AfD top brass in Berlin. Some in the party called for him to be dropped as lead candidate but it was decided he would simply pull back from the party’s election campaign until the controversy eased.

However, attitudes changed after it was revealed Germany’s domestic intelligence agency had kept Guo under observation for a long period, he said. “A person [they’ve] been watching for four years and not taken out of circulation can’t be a top spy,” he said. “The mood in the party switched in my favour.” He also noted that no charges had been brought against Guo.

Krah has recently returned to the campaign trail.

The main parties in Germany have seized on the latest scandals to question the AfD’s patriotic credentials. Anton Hofreiter, a senior Green MP, said earlier this month that the party was a “band of traitors”.

Krah rejected that label, arguing: “Germany has massive political problems, and without wanting to play down espionage, it’s politicians, not spies, who are to blame for the deep crisis this country is stuck in.”

Untold: Power for Sale is an upcoming podcast series from the Financial Times looking into Qatargate, an alleged corruption scandal that exposed major flaws in how European democracy works. 

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