The Alternative for Germany (AfD) sets out its views on immigrants clearly in its program: "The AfD views the ideology of multiculturalism as a serious threat to social peace and to the continued existence of the nation as a cultural entity."

And yet multiculturalism doesn't appear to be a serious threat to the AfD itself: In the past few months, more and more of the far-right's messaging has been aimed at voters from Germany's many immigrant communities — with some success.

Born in Turkey, 55-year-old Ismet Var has lived in Germany since his childhood, been a German citizen since 1994, and a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) since it was founded in 2013.

Var works as a delivery driver in the German capital, and his work was directly hit by the rise in fuel prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now he can't understand why so much money is being "thrown away" on economic and military aid for Ukraine. His main concerns, he says, are that taxes are lowered and criminal immigrants get deported.

The latter is already happening — latest statistics show that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left government increased deportations in the last year. "Now! Now they're deporting people!" says Var over a coffee in the international Kreuzberg district of Berlin. "But they didn't used to." He believes that it took the AfD's intervention in the German political scene for the government to act.

As an Alevite, he also feels that Germany has become too tolerant of what he calls "strict Muslims." "I've got nothing against them when they pray at home, but when they do propaganda, then I'm against them," he said.

Var experienced racism as a new arrival in Germany in the 1970s: He remembers a janitor in his building telling him that he and his family wouldn't be there if Hitler were still in power: "But it didn't bother me. I was little," he says.

Refugee children for the AfD

Anna Nguyen has also experienced plenty of racism in Germany. Born near Kassel in 1990 to Vietnamese refugees, she is now an AfD representative in the Hesse state parliament. But, she insists, it isn't Germans who are racist towards her — it is mainly people she thinks are Arabs.

"During COVID, it was always people with an immigrant background, presumably Arabs, who shouted 'corona, corona' after me and my Chinese friend," she said. "It's true that on the internet I get flooded with racist comments — but from the left, even though they call themselves anti-racists."

Nguyen insists that her party, meanwhile, is indifferent to race and is not strategically seeking out voters like her. "It's not about immigrant background," she says. "It's about the fact that all the sensible people in this country want to prevent this green ideological madness. It's about: Can I afford a good life? Is it safe? Do we have a safe electricity supply?"

Targeting new voters

Voters with an immigrant background are a demographic reality in Germany: Official statistics from 2023 show that some 12% of the German electorate have a non-German background — some 7.1 million people. As recently as 2016, some 40% of voters of migrant background voted for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), and another 28% for the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But those loyalties appear to have eroded.

According to the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), which is releasing a study on voting habits among migrants at the end of January, there is little difference between voting behavior with or without an immigration background. As late as the general election in 2017, 35% of German Turks voted for the SPD, while 0% voted for the AfD. Now, according DeZIM, immigrant voters don't vote for the AfD any more or less than non-migrant Germans do.

DeZIM's Jannes Jacobsen, who co-authored the upcoming report, said the AfD appears to be becoming more attractive for people from different backgrounds. He also pointed out that these voters are German citizens — and see themselves as German. "So it's maybe not such a big surprise that these people don't vote very differently to people who have no immigrant history," he told DW.

In 2023, Robert Lambrou, also an AfD state parliamentarian in Hesse, founded an organization named "With Migration Background for Germany" for immigrant AfD supporters. The organization's website says it has 137 members from over 30 countries, and that it is open to anyone "who professes their belief in German culture as the dominant culture and work for the continued existence of the nation as a cultural entity."

"My experience of the AfD is that it makes no difference whether one is of immigrant background or not," the 55-year-old Lambrou, whose father was Greek, told DW. "I don't see the party as xenophobic — we want a sensible migration policy."

But that is hard to square with statements like that of AfD Bundestag member René Springer, who, in the wake of revelations early last year that AfD politicians were part of a meeting planning mass "remigration" of immigrants and non-white Germans, who wrote on X: "We will send foreigners back to their home countries. By the million. That isn't a secret plan. That is a promise."

Lambrou agreed that some statements are not helpful if they are not properly founded in facts or express important nuances. "When we notice statements by party members that we don't think are ok, then we try to seek out internal party dialogue," he said.

No problem with racism?

Nevertheless, there do appear to be more and more pro-AfD TikTok videos made by non-white people in the past few months.

Özgür Özvatan, CEO of the political consultancy Transformakers, and author of an upcoming book on the political impact of Germans of immigration background, said that the AfD has been actively seeking out the attention of immigrant voters for at least the last year — particularly people with Russian and Turkish roots — mainly because those communities are more likely to have voting rights. According to Germany's official statistics, there are over 2.9 million people of Turkish background in Germany, of whom nearly 1.6 million have German citizenship. The post-Soviet diaspora, meanwhile, also runs into the millions, and includes several nationalities and ethnicities — including German. Many of these are also likely to feel attracted to the AfD's pro-Russia stance on the Ukraine war.

Özvatan argues that this all part of the AfD's larger strategy to expand its voter base. "Its potential voters in the non-immigrant landscape are of course finite," he said. "They might have a potential vote-share of around 20-25% there — but if they want to get towards 30-35%, then they need to expand their portfolio, and that will mean creating content and promise policies for immigrant communities."

"People who immigrated earlier are not automatically in favor of immigration," Özvatan told DW. "They can be immigrants and hold anti-immigration positions."

Nguyen insists that immigrant voters aren't deterred by the racism and contradictions "because they know who is meant by that — that's the illegal immigrants, especially those since 2015. It's those that are criminal — and people of immigration background suffer just as much from those as anyone."

Özvatan thinks many immigrant voters simply aren't aware of the racist statements, and even when they do hear overt racism, they quickly dismiss it as secondary to their main perception of the AfD — that they don't mean them. "The main feeling is, 'they are friendly towards us,'" he said, "And the AfD tries to engender that feeling."

Edited by Rina Goldenberg

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.