Author: Vojtěch Berger, HlidaciPes.org
While in Czechia, the SPD parliamentary movement is fighting in court against its inclusion in the Interior Ministry’s reports on extremism, the counterintelligence service in neighboring Saxony does not beat around the bush: “Svoboda a přímá demokracie (Freedom and Direct Democracy) is a right-wing extremist party in Czechia,” states its report for last year, which mentions the SPD’s contacts with extremists in Germany. These ties were also praised by one of the former German neo-Nazis whom the SPD invited to Czech parliament last year.
HlídacíPes.org contacted the Saxony branch of the German counterintelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) to ask what specifically the SPD’s designation was based on. “Publicly available information sources on the internet,” replied spokeswoman Patricia Vernhold.
At first glance, such a simple answer from the intelligence service may seem surprising, but on the other hand, public sources do offer sufficient grounds for concluding that the SPD has extremist contacts abroad, including in Germany. The only ones who refuse to see this are the SPD officials themselves.
Praise from a former neo-Nazi
A good example is the excursion and seminar in the Czech Chamber of Deputies, where the SPD invited representatives of several affiliated parties from various countries last September. HlídacíPes.org described this meeting shortly after it took place.
The Alternative for Germany party (AfD) was represented by its youth wing, the Junge Alternative. The German counterintelligence service has considered this group to be extremist for two years. Under internal party pressure, the youth association dissolved itself in March 2024 as a result of increasing extremist scandals.
However, a successor youth organization to the AfD, more closely linked to the party, is expected to be established by November. According to German media, there is currently an internal struggle among radicals from Junge Alternative over how to maintain decisive influence in the new organization.
But let’s return to the Czech Chamber of Deputies in September 2024. In group photos, which still hang on the SPD’s profiles, young (and almost exclusively male) faces unknown to the Czech public can be seen alongside Okamura’s party officials. One of them belongs to Benedikt Kaiser, a former neo-Nazi who is currently considered the leading ideologue of right-wing radicals in Germany.
It is not difficult to find his biography on the internet, including his years on the neo-Nazi scene and photos of him surrounded by young men raising their right arms at an angle that leaves little doubt as to the meaning of this gesture.
„Friendly to Germans“
It is practically impossible that the SPD did not know about all this. Especially since Kaiser wrote a laudatory text about his trip to Prague, in which he described the hosts from Tomio Okamura’s movement as “without exception friendly to Germans” and praised their impeccable German and how well he got along with the SPD:
“Not a trace of mutual resentment or historical reservations,” Kaiser wrote. He probably hadn’t heard about Okamura’s demand for German WW2 reparations, which the SPD leader brings up from time to time.
However, an unpleasant surprise awaited Kaiser – according to his own account – when he asked the SPD about the German minority in Czechia. Today, it numbers about 25,000 people and is gradually shrinking. However, Okamura’s supporters clearly do not know much about the German minority:
“To my surprise, none of my SPD partners were aware of the German minority as an organized group. They generally agreed that they are, in principle, favorably disposed toward (Czech) Germans, provided they notice them.”
Kaiser’s interest in the German minority in Czechia is not accidental. The entire AfD has long presented itself as the protector of the interests of Germans expelled from Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War. However, due to extremism within the party, the Sudeten German Association (Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft) led by Bernd Posselt has distanced itself from the AfD.
Benedikt Kaiser himself writes as an author for the magazine Eckart, published by the “Austrian Landsmannschaft”, which, on the contrary, has strong ties to the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) with its strong extremist wing. This also shows that, in addition to criticizing Posselt’s moderate Landsmannschaft, the SPD is deliberately choosing German nationalist radicals as its partners.
Incidentally, Kaiser published his laudatory blog about his trip to Prague for the SPD event on the website „Sezession“, which until last year was published by the Institute for State Policy, an association that has also been classified as an extremist organization by the German authorities since 2023. This organization also dissolved itself last year, but the Sezession website continues to operate.
Terrorism suspect at party event
Let’s summarize: The SPD movement, which is fighting in court in Czechia against the authorities mentioning it in reports on extremism, invites former German neo-Nazis to parliament and has long cooperated with organizations and individuals monitored by the German secret service for extremism.
In June 2023, Kurt Hättasch, who was arrested by German police a year later on suspicion of terrorism, also attended a meeting between the SPD and the Saxon Junge Alternative in Ústí nad Labem in Czechia. As part of a group of so-called „Saxon separatists“, he was alleged to have been involved in preparations for an armed coup in eastern Germany based on the Nazi model.
In his glowing review of last year’s trip to Prague, Benedikt Kaiser writes: “The AfD youth (…) has the best ties with Czech right-wingers.”
However, ties with German extremists are not holding back the Czech SPD in the polls. The party aspires to participate in the government after the October elections. The AfD alternates between first and second place in German polls.
