Germany’s far-right party has sparked outrage after posting flyers designed to resemble plane tickets for deportation through the letterboxes of households in immigrant communities.
Elon Musk-backed Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is under investigation by the police after people living in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe found the flyers in the mail.
They feature an AfD logo, a QR code linking to the website of the party’s local chapter and the purported destination of a “safe country of origin”, with a tagline below that reads: “Only remigration can still save Germany.”
The flyers strongly resemble the fake plane tickets distributed by the neo-Nazi NPD party in 2013 in a racist bid to discourage immigrant candidates from standing for parliament.
Both campaigns recalled chilling Nazi-era appeals to Jews to leave Germany offering “free tickets to Jerusalem … never to return” with a design that also mimicked actual travel documents.
On Saturday, AfD laid out their ambitions to close Germany’s borders, resume buying Russian gas and, in effect, dismantle the EU.
German media reported that party’s agreed manifesto includes plans to quit the Paris climate deal, exit the Euro currency and create a new confederation of states.
Elon Musk recently live-streamed a conversation he had with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor via his social media platform X on Thursday, in which he urged German voters to get behind the party.
“People love to censor things they don’t agree with,” said Musk, who insisted that Weidel was proposing “nothing outrageous”.
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