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Germany’s AfD on TikTok: The political battle for the youth

Maximilian Krah is not your typical TikToker. He’s a middle-aged white man, wears a suit with a handkerchief tucked into the pocket, is Catholic, has eight children and is a politician. His short video clips feature him doing nothing more than delivering short statements.

And yet he is very successful, reaching hundreds of thousands of people on TikTok, making him one of the most successful German politicians on the platform.

Krah also happens to be the lead candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the upcoming EU elections. And he is one of the party’s most radical figures.

AfD aiming to reach younger audiences

In one YouTube video, Krah expressed his enthusiasm for the Taliban’s fight against LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan. TikTok also restricted his channel in March 2024 and blocked some of his videos.

In response to a written request, a company spokeswoman told DW: “Due to repeated violations of our community guidelines, we informed the user that any future videos he posts will not be recommended for the “For You” feed for a period of 90 days, in compliance with our guidelines for political accounts.” In other words, TikTok put Krah on probation.

The politician has strategically tailored his short clips to the platform. They are short, easy to understand even without sound and have lots of quick edits. The titles and messages are provocative and emotive — using language aimed at younger audiences: “The government hates you,” “Your mother will end up poor in old age,” or “Don’t watch porn.”

Krah isn’t the only active AfD politician on TikTok. Party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla also post short videos with a wide reach. In the past, the party hasn’t been very popular with young people, but it’s determined to change this.

TikTok videos are influencing elections
In an interview with DW, political and communications consultant Johannes Hillje said he is convinced that the far-right party’s strategy is working.

“There is no correlation between TikTok use and voters’ choices, but they cannot be completely separated either,” he said. In two major regional elections in Germany in 2023, the AfD saw the biggest gains among young voters. “TikTok played a role in that,” said Hillje.

One of the main reasons the AfD is able to reach young voters is that the major German parties have limited presence on TikTok. While politicians in other countries, such as Barack Obama, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Argentina’s President Javier Milei, Poland’s President Donald Tusk and many others have been very successful in publishing short videos, nothing much comes from Germany’s political elite. Hardly any well-known politicians and very few politicians from the governing parties are active on TikTok.
Hillje has found that each video posted by AfD parliamentarians generates around 458,000 views. Lagging far behind is the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the parliamentary group led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with just 72,000 views per video. But Scholz recently indicated that he intends to create his own account very soon.

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