Leading up to Germany’s 2025 federal election, many people in the country’s southwest opened up their mailboxes to see something startling. Inside, they found fake tickets for a one-way flight out of Germany on election day, designed to look like real airline boarding passes. In the field where a passenger’s name would ordinarily appear, the fake tickets read instead: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT.
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As this video drawn from the new FRONTLINE documentary “The Rise of Germany’s New Right” explores, the “deportation tickets” were part of an ad campaign by Germany’s far-right, nationalist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. Tens of thousands of the flyers were distributed in mailboxes and at election campaign stands — sparking accusations that the AfD, known for its polarizing use of rhetoric, was promoting racial hatred and echoing a grim Nazi-era history in which fake one-way tickets to Jerusalem targeting Jewish people were reportedly distributed as propaganda.
“It has been reported that this particular type of ticket was very reminiscent of what the Nazis did with the Jews,” FRONTLINE correspondent Evan Williams says in the video to Marc Bernhard, the AfD official behind the campaign. “This hasn’t come from nowhere in the German context. How do you respond to that?”
“Yeah, well, I’m not familiar with these actions,” Bernhard responds. “To be honest, I don’t know them, nor was I aware of them.”
For the full story, watch “The Rise of Germany’s New Right” Nov. 4 on @frontline’s YouTube channel, in the PBS App, at pbs.org/frontline and on PBS stations. The documentary investigates how far-right leaders in Germany have risen to the brink of power, looking at the reasons behind the surge in support for their brand of hardline nationalist politics, and the roles of Russia and the U.S.
“The Rise of Germany’s New Right” is a FRONTLINE production with Mongoose Pictures in association with Evan Williams Productions. The correspondent, reporter, producer and director is Evan Williams. The producer is Hannah Congdon. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
Explore additional reporting on ”The Rise of Germany’s New Right” on our website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-rise-of-germanys-new-right/
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