AfD leak: Pazderski warned Weidel in 2018 about Identitarian "submarines"

Leaked AfD emails show that current party co-leader Alice Weidel was alerted back in 2018 to staffers' links to the Identitarian Movement, according to research by the newspaper taz. Georg Pazderski, then leader of the party's Berlin branch, wrote to her about four staffers with close contacts to the group and called them "submarines." Pazderski left the AfD in 2024. One of the four, now a member of an AfD city council group in Saxony-Anhalt, denies involvement in the Identitarian Movement, taz reported. Another, who now advises an AfD member of the European Parliament in Brussels, did not answer the newspaper's inquiry but posted it on X.

According to taz, the material also shows that AfD European politician Hans Neuhoff justified attending events of the Institut für Staatspolitik, which Germany's domestic intelligence service has classified as "confirmed right-wing extremist." At the same time, he reportedly proposed suspending formal cooperation with publisher Götz Kubitschek. Weidel is already under pressure from the leak on another issue: according to ZDF and Der Spiegel, internal emails suggest she personally organized the receipt of campaign donations from Switzerland in 2017. Her spokesperson said there was no reason to correct earlier statements; prosecutors in Konstanz had closed their investigation into Weidel for lack of sufficient suspicion.