AfD Leak: What 421,179 Hacked Emails Show about the German Far Right

stratocumulus0

Nothing speaks more about the quality of your newsletter than forcing people to sign up for it.

yreg

Article without wall: https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/20/hackers-steal-421000-ema...

Markoff

"Give us your email to read the full story" no thanks

camillomiller

We had to make them illegal while we could, but we went too soft on these Russian assets. Now we gotta deal with the consequences

nylonstrung

That they are rabidly pro-Israel while simultaneously glorifying Hitler and indulging in conspiracy theories of Jewish domination certainly lends credence to the idea that anti-Zionism ≠ antisemitism

rudolftheone

Sounds interesting, but this put me off: "You've read 21% Give us your email to read the full story"

Tostino

Anyone have the full article?

endangeredhuman

The timing of the release is rather sinister

alkonaut

Article text: A vast archive of hacked emails from the AfD was published online on Monday: 281 GB containing 421,179 internal party emails. And, for anyone who might have grown confused about claims of antisemitism while it was plastered over the German news media in the weeks following the Berlin election: here you can see what it really looks like. In email after email, party supporters use racist slurs and share antisemitic theories of Jewish world domination; there are jokes about turning refugees into handbags and boots, discussions of whether refugees should be shot at the border, a Christmas card sent with a swastika and “Heil Hitler”, and an email thread signed off with “Heil und Sieg”. The entire archive is available online – though it may be a criminal offence in Germany to torrent the material or distribute it online. Yet the journalists who’ve been able to examine parts of the hack consider it authentic. The methodology behind the leak is also quite interesting: the vast archive has not been published directly on the site. Instead, it is available via a series of AI summaries, which have been filtered according to severity (CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW) and type, with categories including “racism_xenophobia”, “corruption_money”, “leadership_feud”, “conspiracy”, “violence_threats” and “antisemitism_extremism”. The party itself has confirmed the hack to Bild: “In September 2026, a hacker attack targeted one of our party’s hosting service providers, during which portions of a few email accounts – most of which had not been used for years – were apparently illicitly copied.” Many of the summaries are the party’s own internal disciplinary proceedings, with emails sent to party boards to decide whether to open expulsion proceedings against members. Here, what is shocking (though perhaps not surprising) is the depth and breadth of racist feeling from party members: slurs, fantasies of violence, and antisemitic statements appear commonplace. One email from 2016 appears to show Weidel forwarding a member’s antisemitic material to the federal board as the party weighed his expulsion, while including a warning to her colleagues that the Verfassungsschutz – Germany’s domestic intelligence service – might be reading. There are some cases which do not appear to have drawn the ire of the party, including one Bavarian official urging party leaders to chant “Merkel croak” every day, or another thread in which staff at the party’s federal office apparently discuss luring a photographer to a party event and removing him by force. The anonymous hackers claimed their motive behind the leak was to show the “degeneracy and hypocrisy” of the AfD. Among the countless acts of hate speech, there are also allegations of embezzlement and financial misconduct, according to DDoSecrets, a transparency collective which republished the archive: the site’s software flagged 34 documents for misuse of funds, 23 for off-the-books payments, 14 for undisclosed donations and seven for embezzlement. The AfD party is currently polling at 29% nationally – even while they fight a designation by the Verfassungsschutz as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party in court. That designation has already been made by state intelligence offices for some state branches, such as Sachsen-Anhalt — though it did not seem to hurt their electoral success. The party achieved 43.8% of the vote there in September.

dudefeliciano

> there are jokes about turning refugees into handbags and boots, discussions of whether refugees should be shot at the border, a Christmas card sent with a swastika and “Heil Hitler”, and an email thread signed off with “Heil und Sieg”. > The AfD party is currently polling at 29% nationally – even while they fight a designation by the Verfassungsschutz as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party in court. The system is working

SigmundurM

The entire leak is available here: https://www.hexane.cc/

on_the_train

This submission is against the guidelines. And several comments are illegal. But no one cares of course.

keiferski

I am no fan of the AFD (especially because I live in Poland) but mostly because I don’t like having opinions on political parties in countries where I don’t live and don’t speak the language. But I think this kind of moral approach is precisely why right wing parties have been winning globally, in the US and elsewhere. For many voters, the overwhelmingly important thing is individual economic security and personal/familial safety. Full stop. And so if you force them to choose between a morally off putting party that at least claims to care about their problems, and one that is ostensibly morally less bankrupt, but hand waves away those problems – they’re going to hold their nose and vote for the former. Shame and outrage doesn’t work in a society that is uncertain and scared about its future. It seems like a handful of candidates are beginning to understand this, in the US at least, but for some reason this level of realpolitik is just beyond many center and center-left parties.

hypfer

This somewhat worries me, because I am not sure if the trade was worth it, strategically speaking. They're right-wing extremists. We know that for a fact and have known that without commiting cybercrimes. So what is there to learn? Maybe embezzlement or similar, but. We have to keep in mind that they have in fact become the victim of a crime, which they (best case) will spin to their advantage. Worst case they will use it as a justification to commit such and other crimes themselves.

leothetechguy

this discussion is gonna escalate quickly I fear. But I hope any mods here can unflag as much as possible to not skew the discussion.

alejoar

These comments are getting spicy... sad.

_ink_

Just start the process to ban this party already. There is enough evidence that they are enemies of our constitution.

grandchild

Some context: There are ongoing efforts to ban the party (through constitutional instruments created specifically after 1945 to prevent a second NSDAP or other similar anti-constitutional extremists) and there is an argument to be made that this is strategical assistance for evidence-gathering. There has been another effort [0] collecting _public_ statements that can be used in a potential future Constitutional Court case. Depending on your stance this leak complements the ban effort or undermines its legitimacy. Note, Germany has no fruit-of-the-poison-tree evidence provisions! [0] https://afd-gutachten.de/

belorn

Sweden is fairly well know for its public access to official records, and any email sent to an official position in government is part of the public accessible record. Politicians however all have private emails and are users of instance messages services that are not part of the public record. Public access is also only for the public role in government, not for example the role of being the party leader. Would it be a good thing or bad thing if this was scaled up so email servers and instance messages services was all public if the message involved a member of a political party, without allowing any back channel or ways to avoid the public record?

vovavili

Article without the e-mail wall: https://vovavili.github.io/afd-leak-article/