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I don’t like drawing attention to AfD politician Björn Höcke but I trust that Update Germany’s readership is unimpressed by his brand of snake oil.

It’s important to try to understand what we’re up against.

Höcke, as everyone knows by now, is one of the most extreme voices within an extreme party. A court even ruled that it’s okay to call him a fascist. The Verfassungschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) categorises the Thuringia branch of the AfD, of which Höcke is the leader, as a “confirmed right-wing extremist organisation.” You can read up on all the nasty Nazi or Nazi-adjacent things Höcke has said and done on Wikipedia.

His track record of racist, anti-semitic, xenophobic statements is well-known. But in a video interview with the Swiss newspaper Weltwoche, Höcke revealed some of the weirder ingredients of the ideological stew cooking in his warped brain.

He said, for example, that West Germans weren’t real Germans.

He said West Germans had “allowed themselves to be completely overwhelmed by American culture”.

In case you were wondering where the real Germans still live:

“In the east, people are still German. In the west, they have developed a substitute identity over the decades.”

Quoting “something he had read somewhere”, Höcke said in western Gemany you have “German-speaking Americans” while the East is populated by “German-speaking Germans”.

One imagines millions of people attending baseball games, gathered around tables for Thanksgiving, driving Dodge Ram pickups or just being super-friendly to complete strangers. While speaking with a Hessian, Hamburg or Bavarian accent. The odd thing is that Höcke himself is a West German who moved to the east to lead the AfD in Thuringia.

Of course, the Wessis are more influenced by American culture than the Ossis. That goes without saying. After World War II, the cultural influence of the US, British and French occupation of what became West Germany was hugely positive following the military, societal and moral collapse of a country that had perpetrated the Holocaust and caused unspeakable suffering and destruction across Europe.

Thanks to the Federal Republic’s integration into “the West”, basic notions of democracy, human rights, personal freedoms, racial and gender equality, sexual liberation became more or less ingrained in West German society.

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In the 1950s and 1960s, West German youth embraced American pop culture but also American rebellion and radicalism. The Vietnam War, in particular, woke German youth up to the fact that the western hegemon wasn’t just benevolent, and that capitalism had its dark side.

To this day, Germans continue to be largely influenced by US culture and US political discourse (#metoo, #blacklivesmatter, to name two recent examples). Only now, in the Trump presidency, are things beginning to shift.

Höcke sees behind everything coming from the US a grander strategy of domination on all levels, a plan to control the world. For him, the destruction of Germany as a nation is a byproduct of that plan.

According to Höcke, the US’s geostrategic aim has been to control central Europe (and, after the Cold War, eastern Europe) so it could control the “heartland” of the world. Here, he cites an obscure theory put forth by British geographer Halford John Mackinder in 1904.

Germans, according to Höcke, are powerless pawns within this grand strategic game. And American soft power — from Elvis to Tailor Swift, from Casablanca to Instagram — provided Germans a new layer of cultural identity, a “new suit” in Höcke’s words, so that they would play along in the American power game.

He, and the AfD, want to “rebuild” German identity “before it’s too late”. Before “finis Germania” — short-hand for “when white people become the minority”.

A few more Höcke morsels:

• The “winners wrote the history books” after the war.

• Germans are living in an American-built “digital prison”.

• Transatlantic elites like “Blackrock-Merz” don’t represent the interest of real Germans, but of Wall Street. Merz is, of course, is still working for his former employer.

And yes, it all sounds like a thinly veiled antisemitic conspiracy theory coming from that point of the horseshoe where the far-right meets the far-left.

Like all conspiracy theories, it’s an apocalyptic narrative which feeds on real concerns and anxieties. Yes, the super rich are getting richer. Yes, the dominance of the US tech industry is frightening.

But it totally downplays or ignores the disastrous places Germany can go if it abandons its cultural and political ties to the West and re-embraces the enthnonationalism Höcke believes in. It denies that post-war West Germany and unified Germany after 1990 have been the most prosperous, most peaceful, most democratic and most just Germanies that have ever existed. Thanks, in no small part, to Germans being “Americanised” or “westernised” or whatever you want to call it.

If West Germans are Geman-speaking Americans, then what are the East Germans? German-speaking Soviets or German-speaking Russians? East Germany, a satellite of a continent-spanning authoritarian, communist empire, was “democratic” in name only. And why is that part of the country the “real Germany”? It makes no sense at all.

Höcke’s pseudo-intellectual musings are riddled with half-truths and fallacies. Not unlike Donald Trump, he floods the zone with craziness but with the sternness of a history teacher in the 1950s.

It’s one more reminder that if Höcke gets anywhere near real power we’re in big trouble. For now, he’s just the AfD’s Thuringia party boss but this guy is extremely well networked. He’s the glue between the national leadership of the AfD and even more extreme movements in the base. If the AfD ever joins a national government coalition he will demand a key ministerial post. This shouldn’t ever happen.

Thanks for reading!

Maurice

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What else happened this week?

✈️ How Germany turned a fighter jet failure into an opportunity

🤖 Landmark German ruling declares Google’s AI Overviews are Google’s own words and makes it liable for false answers

🫣 Sex doll art at German president’s residence

🛏️ Germany’s most expensive hotels

💰 Money-Saving Tip of the Week from Smart Living in Germany

Discounted gift cards are one of the most overlooked ways to pay less. For instance, when Payback runs a 20x or 30x points promo on a retailer’s gift card – Zalando, MediaMarkt, IKEA and Douglas come up regularly – a €100 voucher effectively costs around €85-90, and you can spend it like cash later.
The real trick is stacking. Pay with the gift card during a sale on the retailer’s site, apply a checkout code if there’s one running, and you’re combining three discounts on one purchase. For a full breakdown of which stores work best and how to make the most of it, check out this gift card guide from Smart Living in Germany, and subscribe to their newsletter for more tips.

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Germanpedia

When I was a German expat teenager growing up in the United States, my first car was an ancient VW. I spent hours tinkering around on the engine, following the How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive repair manual. It kept me busy and focused during a different period of my life. I never achieved any kind of technical excellence but I loved everything about that hobby, from scavenging for parts at the junkyard to cruising around town with the knowledge that I had once more fixed the engine by myself.

A few times, I raced my friends through back streets. Me in my 1973 VW, them in their Honda Civics or whatever. Dangerous and stupid. Luckily, no significant damage occured.

In 2026, car culture is a different thing. Around the world subcultures of young men obsess over pimped up, ultra-powerful rides. From Saudia Arabia to Germany, it’s a culture of tuning, racing and showing off your lowered BMW or growling AMG Merc in front of your friends and social media. The Germans call these guys Autoposer.

At its best, it’s a way for young men to bond with friends, form communities and gain technical knowledge. And a way for people who might come from a disadvantaged, perhaps immigrant family to obtain status in a society where the odds are stacked against them.

“You’ve come up from the gutter and are now trying to make your way toward paradise.”

- Andre Messing, Forty Seven Cars, a luxury car rental company in Berlin

At its worst, it’s a lifestyle soaked in Andrew Tate-style toxic masculinity. A culture of illegal street racing, which causes a high number of pointless injuries and deaths every year.

In Berlin, Ku’damm is Autoposer central. On Saturday afternoons, it’s packed with G-Wagons, Porsches, Lambos and Bentleys, complete with carspotters whose passion is snapping pics of the 500 horsepower coupés and SUVs cruising by.

It’s a counterpoint to those parts of Berlin inhabited by vegans and bike riders. While a lot of the cars are owned by rich people, some are rented for the day by 18-year-old kids who got their license two weeks ago.

It was right here on Ku’Damm that, in 2016, two young men raced through several red lights at a speed of 160 km/h. One of the cars hit a Jeep, instantly killing a 63-year-old. Both Marvin N., whose car hit the Jeep, as well as the other racer, Hamdi H. were sentenced to life in prison for murder. In practice, a life sentence means a minimum of 15 years behind bars. Marvin N. later received another 13 years for attempted murder.

The Ku’damm case triggered new legislation in 2017: up to two years in prison just for taking part in races; up to 10 years for racing that results in death or injury.

Harsher penalties don’t seem to have had the desired affect. The news is full of stories of races in cities, on autobahns and country roads.

In April, a court sentenced a young man to 13 years. In a race through the streets of Ludwigsburg, he hit and killed two young women at the entrance to a gas station.

While there are no national statistics on the phenomenon, some states have begun tracking it. In North Rhine-Westphalia, 19 deaths could be attributed to illegal races in 2025. An estimated 2,384 illegal races were reported in the state last year, resulting in 663 accidents. Cities like Cologne have set up special police prevention units to monitor for illegally tuned cars and give educational talks to susceptible young people.

Hamburg has a SOKO Autoposer unit that cruises around town scoping for illegally tuned cars.

Traffic psychologist Wolfgang Fastenmeier, sees little hope when it comes to preventing these men from doing what they do:

“Their personality structure suggests that they are highly impulsive and aggressive individuals. They have little self-control, a weak sense of responsibility and poor social skills. Essentially, they are indifferent to others and are therefore willing to accept that they may cause them harm.”

“They live in their own little bubble and often have no school qualifications, so they have no prospects either. I don’t see how one could achieve anything with standard preventive measures, that is, educational measures aimed at raising awareness of risks and encouraging risk avoidance. Nor do I believe that harsher penalties, which is often the first instinct of politicians, are effective. Convictions may be a source of satisfaction for society, but they are merely a drop in the ocean...”

One option for petrolheads to scratch their itch is to visit the Nürnbergring, where they can push their cars to the limit on “tourist drives” at the legendary race track. But that’s expensive and obviously not going to fully satiate their craving.

Germany is not even the worst country when it comes to illegal street racing though the massive car industry, with its focus on performance and luxury, definitely feeds into the Autoposer culture. The fact that long stretches of the autobahn still have no speed limit surely normalises driving at ridiculous speeds. Speed freaks from around the world come to Germany to legally drive at 400kph.

This behaviour says something about our times: lost young men clamoring for community, acknowledgement and status while risking their own lives and the lives of others for a kick. Unless we commit massive resources to addressing the wider negative impacts of social media, educational failure, and exclusion, there’s no reason this car culture won’t continue to thrive.

Weirdly, the obsession with tuned, loud combustion engines comes at a time when the Chinese electric car industry is beginning to have German brands for lunch. Just yesterday, I noticed at least ten BYD SUVs in town. When all cars are self-driving EVs, will anybody want to race them?

Thanks for reading!

Maurice

What else happened this week?

💥Pentagon likely to cancel missile deal with Germany over fears of Russia

😔 Reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century

🕷️ Nosferatu spiders reach the Baltic coast

🎨 Max Ernst: The Surrealist and the Fascist Monster

🎞️ Klaus the forklift driver: This German short (splatter) film from the 1990s is hilarious

💰 Money-Saving Tip of the Week from Smart Living in Germany

Loyalty to a service provider is rarely rewarded: most companies offer their best prices to new customers and keep long-term customers on older, pricier contracts. The result is that staying put often means paying more than someone who just signed up.

That means that it's worth reviewing your ongoing contracts every year or two – phone plans, home internet, electricity, and insurance all have competitive markets with regular new-customer offers. And you don't even always have to switch: sometimes calling your current provider and mentioning that you found a better price elsewhere is enough – they may offer a discount, an upgrade, or better contract conditions to keep you. To stay on top of the best deals in Germany, subscribe to the Smart Living in Germany newsletter.

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