Evan Williams: We started this film really looking at the rise of support for far-right nationalists or hard-right or new-right nationalist parties across Europe. And it's happening in multiple countries. And we started looking at trying to do something across Europe. And then, of course, Germany became of much more interest because of the work we'd done in the past few years on that forefront line. But then, of course, it emerged that during the course of our production they won an election. They did very well then in the federal election. They doubled their vote. They almost doubled the number of seats in federal parliament. They are very much on the rise. They've now probably equaled, if not beaten, the other main party in the polls since that election. So, there's a sense of a real wave of support for these far-right, hard-right nationalist parties. And we wanted to acknowledge or find out really, why that was. And then the more we looked at it, we started looking at the impact of social media. We discovered the impact of Russian disinformation. And of course, during our production period, a new administration was elected in the United States, which then started to voice support for this very far-right party. So, everything sort of came together during that period.
Patrick Center: Germany has a history, a post-World War II history. There’s a banning of Nazi symbols and slogans and criminalizing Holocaust denial. How is this playing into it when you've had a society that has had to reckon with the Holocaust and now, you're starting to see this taking place?
Evan Williams: Yeah, that's an absolutely critical point, Patrick. You're absolutely right. People outside Germany, we probably don't really understand what they call, they call it defensive democracy. And what it is after the experience of World War II. We've got to go back one step as we do in the film and realize that people voted for the Nazis to come into power. They didn't get a majority. They got a minority around 30 percent. They were then invited into a coalition and they then used legal means to ban all other parties. So, in the German way of looking at things, the Nazis used democracy to destroy democracy. So, after World War II, they set up a domestic intelligence organization, which is there to defend the constitution and democracy. And by that, what they mean is that they are protecting the dignity and rights of all German citizens, whether you're white Aryan or whether you're from a migrant background or whether you're a minority or anything else. It’s a very unique institution and experience, but they're using that mechanism to try and monitor and prevent a return of history, particularly in the German context. So, this organization, Domestic Intelligence, monitors extremism. They then take their findings to courts. They are then told whether or not they can then increase surveillance on these organizations, and then they go ahead and do that. And it is for the sole purpose of preventing a return to what Germany went through in World War II.
Patrick Center: Does this become an issue of what Americans would understand as a “deep state” and a violation of the right of free speech?
Evan Williams: Well, exactly. I mean, it cuts across exactly those issues. And as the political leaders from the far-right, from the Alternative for Deutschland, who have been declared an extremist organization by domestic intelligence, confirmed “extremist threat” to democracy is the way they term it. Of course, that finding has now been challenged under appeal. It's now reverted in German parlance to a “suspected extremist threat” until the courts make their findings. Now, these leaders say, well, we are the victims of extreme control by our government.We can't say what we want. There are controls on freedom of speech because of this. We can't say things that were Nazi slogans because they are now banned and illegal, even though in the view of the AfD leaders, these are things that merely state their support for strong Germany. So, they claim that this is a breach of freedom of speech. The German constitution would see it another way and say these are banned slogans because they were used by the Nazis and that led to the tragedies of World War II as experienced inside Germany. So, this is the territory we're in and it's extremely important for the Western world to, I think, look at the experiences of Germany. It's not, in my view, sufficient enough to say that everything should be, in a way, free, where it resonates with the history that it was experienced in Germany, because it means something particularly to people who may adhere to a more extremist view.
Patrick Center: You've interviewed a number of people.from those interviews, what are you finding is driving this popularity of hardline nationalist politics?
Evan Williams: Oh, there's a number of things. I mean, I think we're experiencing this and it's been experienced in the United States. There's a large number of people, first of all, particularly in the east of Germany, who feel disenfranchised and ignored by the mainstream parties. And let's put it together. They feel left behind by globalism. They feel like they're not getting the dividend of the reunification in Germany. There's been a series of quite disastrous attempts to impose quite high green policies in Germany. It would have cost people tens of thousands, possibly of euros and dollars. And they're buying in to the one thing that is really driving this, which is the AfD and the far-right parties are basically scapegoating immigrants, migrants, Muslims for all the problems and they are buying into this idea that the AfD has got it right. And when you get a high profile, say attack by an immigrant or an asylum seeker or a failed refugee, of course it gets to the headlines and of course everybody sees immigrant terror everywhere. The statistics do not hold out on that. They do not say that there's been an increased crime wave because of immigration, but the AfD and the far-right push this consistently. And so, you've got this collection of things. You've got a general anxiety in Europe. There's a war on the European continent. There's anxiety among young people that they can't afford a house. They've got no job security. There's a collection of things where they feel the mainstream has not been listening to them and don't have the solutions. The AfD has been very effective at pushing their message of pride and joy and ethno-nationalism in being German and forget about all the bad things that were being told about us. We can be proud again. And they're pushing it through social media, particularly with young people.This is what's happening at the moment. And that's one of the reasons I think they're surging so strongly in the polls.
Patrick Center: Then there's Russian influence online. We've had U.S. Vice President, JD Vance in Europe making comments. What roles are those two influences playing?
Evan Williams: Yeah, so in the course of our production, we discovered that the Russians have been actively involved in a covert campaign of support for far-right parties in Europe, mainly in France, in Holland, in Germany in particular. And they're using a very sophisticated or quite sophisticated process of impersonating legitimate media outlets with fake news and disinformation. They've got an army of fake accounts that is flooding social media with again, disinformation of fake accounts, highlighting and ramping up fear of migrants, close the borders, migrants in crime, stronger ethno-nationalism, this sort of thing. Tapping into legitimate fears that people have that things aren't quite as certain as they used to be. know, more money is now going to Ukraine than looking after the German unemployed. This sort of thing is being pushed out there by Russia. So, we discovered this covert campaign. of support for the particularly the far right in Germany. And then of course, in February, literally a couple of weeks before the federal election in Germany, Vice President JD Vance then basically the far right in Germany by saying there's no room for what's called a “firewall.” What he's referring to there is the firewall in Germany is a political convention that's been around since World War II, pretty much, that no mainstream parties will go into a coalition with the far right, with the AfD. And it was unprecedented, really, as we're told by analysts we interviewed for the film, that a senior member of the U.S. administration would in fact intervene in this way in the German election because he was saying there's no room for that anymore. And of course, German leaders fought back and they said, well, it's not really up to our friends in America to tell us how we should be running, you know, our relationships with a far-right party, a party which has been deemed officially suspected extremist by domestic intelligence. So that's how these two things came together. And what we've got now is basically sort of an ideological shared ground between the American administration and Russia on this particular point.
Patrick Center: What do you want American viewers to take away from this?
Evan Williams: I think we need to understand that there are potential costs.in supporting what we could call this surge in ethno-nationalist, new right, far right parties that extol the virtues of anti-wokeism and family values and the rights of people in these countries. We don't really know yet where that leads. And if you look at what these people in Germany are saying, for example, their true belief, and this is one of the reasons they're being declared an extremist threat to democracy, is that they want to start deporting not just hundreds of people, but literally than a million people, possibly even more, according to some of the intelligence that they gathered. So, we could be looking at real changes and ruptures in society as we're already now experiencing in the United States, of course, through the ICE arrests and detentions and deportations. I think we're seeing a major change, and we don't really know yet where that goes. So, I think it's a matter of looking at Germany's experience in the past. I'm not saying that that's where America's going or all these countries are going. I'm not saying that at all, but there are historical resonances, and Germany has gone through that experience where maybe we should take some lessons from them about what this could potentially mean if we don't keep close eye on things.
Patrick Center: Tonight (Tuesday, November 4, 2025) at 10 o'clock on WGVU Public Television, FRONTLINE premieres The Rise of Germany's New Right. Director, correspondent, Evan Williams, thank you so much for your time.
Evan Williams: Patrick, thanks so much for the interest.