BERLIN, Germany: Germany’s far-right AfD party on Wednesday greeted the new US national security strategy and announced plans to visit MAGA Republican allies on a trip this week.
“The AfD is fighting alongside its international friends for a conservative renaissance in North America and Europe,” said the party’s foreign policy spokesman Markus Frohnmaier.
Frohnmaier said he would head to the United States on Thursday with meetings planned in both Washington and New York.
About 20 other AfD lawmakers from German parliament, the European Parliament and regional assemblies are also joining Frohnmaier on the trip, an AfD parliamentary source, cited by AFP, said.
The visit comes as US President Donald Trump seeks to bolster far-right European political forces, including with the new security strategy released last week that hails the “growing influence of patriotic European parties”.
The 33-page paper commits the US government to “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”.
The AfD has been actively seeking to forge close ties with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Frohnmaier told AFP that the “AfD is building strong partnerships with those forces that advocate national sovereignty, cultural identity and realistic security and migration policies”.
Among Frohnmaier’s appointments in the United States is as a guest of honour at the New York Young Republicans Club’s black-tie gala.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla attended Trump’s second inauguration in January, while several close Trump confidantes have become outspoken supporters of the German far-right party.
Billionaire Elon Musk, a major Trump donor and prominent advisor, actively campaigned on behalf of AfD candidate Alice Weidel ahead of German elections in February.
US Vice President JD Vance attacked other German political parties for refusing to work with the AfD in a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.
In the address, which stunned many European leaders, Vance denounced what he claimed were limits on “free speech” in Europe and bristled at attempts to exclude right-wing anti-immigration populists from power.
The Trump administration’s national security strategy delivered a similar broadside against European politics, alleging that the continent faces a “real and stark prospect of civilisational erasure” because of immigration policies, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”, among other reasons.
