With thousands of sombre-hued concrete slabs representing the millions that were massacred during the Holocaust, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin is also a reflection of post-war Germany’s penitence for what happened. The regret is ingrained in the educational system, and in the ethos of a society that swore never to allow the rise of the kind of ultra-nationalist sentiments that Hitler’s Nazi regime brought. But the leader the of right-wing Alternative for Deutschland(AfD) wants the Berlin memorial gone.

“Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital,” Bjorn Hocke told a rally in Dresden in January, calling for an end to a policy of “atoning for Nazi sins”. Mr. Hoecke’s words were received with shock even within his own party, that voted to expel him, but is yet to do so. The fact that Mr. Hoecke made the speech in Dresden, the scene of the worst allied bombing in 1945, was significant, as the sense of injustice from the bombing that came after the war had ended has lingered. Out of the rubble, say analysts, this East German capital of Saxony has become fertile ground for movements like PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), the Neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, and the AFD, which won its first seats in the State Parliament of Saxony in 2014.

“Fear is part of the reason people vote for us,” Alexander Wolf, State Parliamentarian and Chairman of the Committee for European and International Affairs in the AfD in Hamburg, told The Hindu. “ “When we started, we were the party of intellectuals, academics and economists.” Since they began four years ago, mainly on the anti-euro platform, the AfD has moved to the Right, from being an economically conservative and politically liberal party to one that is conservative on both trade and tradition, merging their demand for a referendum on the euro currency with a rejection of Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. Above all, its manifesto pitches a reclaiming of nationalism with its opening slogan, Mut Zu Deutschland: Courage to stand up for Germany.

Palpable optimism

Most Germans one meets don’t view the AfD as a serious challenger to Ms. Merkel’s CDU, which appears to be heading for a win in the September elections. Opinion polls predict only 8% vote for the AfD. However, at the AfD’s new office in Hamburg, where we met Dr. Wolf, the optimism is palpable. Most volunteers are young, and political incorrectness, like a poster portraying a turbaned man made of pork products posted on a washroom wall, is de rigueur. Since 2013, the AfD has sent seven members to the European Parliament, entered 13 of 16 German State Parliaments, and is widely expected to enter the Bundestag, or German Parliament, this year.

Along with with right wing groups across Europe, the AfD shares some traits of populist movements. Long before “fake news”, “newstraders” and “presstitutes”, Germany’s Nazi party used “Lugenpresse” or Lying press, to characterise Jewish and Communist journalists. The term has gained new traction from the AfD’s leadership, who frequently ban the press from events, and accuse them of biased coverage. “Most journalists tend to be left wing and therefore portray right-wing movements in a negative light,” said Dr. Wolf. When asked about whether he stands by the views of his party leaders like Frauke Petry (in picture), who called refugees “compost”, or Mr. Hoecke, whose comment on the Jewish memorial caused his party a loss in popularity, Dr. Wolf said they had been “quoted wrongly” and that extreme views didn’t define the party.