Political education from the far right
With the AfD's return to the Bundestag, its party-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation could be the first foundation close to the extreme right-wing to receive state funding. Our new study shows that the foundation could become a central building block for attempts by the New Right to achieve hegemony in public debates.
The AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (DES) could soon receive up to 70 million euros in taxpayer money annually after the party's return to the Bundestag.
As our new study shows, some of the foundation's key players have been extremely well networked and organized in the German New Right for decades. With millions in state funding, the DES could create permanent structures to strengthen racist, nationalistic and anti-feminist positions in society.
The foundation could benefit from the fact that the system of financing party-affiliated foundations in Germany has so far been virtually invisible to the public. Documents published by us for the first time show how non-transparent and informal the financing of party-affiliated foundations from the Left Party to the right-leaning CSU has long been.
In 2019 alone, German party-affiliated foundations have received almost 660 million euros from the federal budget - more than three times as much as their parties themselves. The foundations use the money to finance political education events and training courses in Germany, expand their network of currently 330 offices abroad, and award scholarships to young party members and other students.
State funding of the Erasmus Foundation can still be stopped if the Bundestag passes a law on foundation funding.
→ to the dossier (in German): "Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung: Political education from the far right"
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