With # GrünerMist, an AfD-affiliated company is launching a dirt campaign against the Greens. Posters with discrediting content can be seen in numerous cities.
Frankfurt – A company close to the AfD has started a hate campaign against the Greens around Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock. Six weeks before the federal election in 2021, posters with discrediting slogans are displayed in numerous German cities, including Frankfurt and Düsseldorf.
On large-format green areas, behind withered sunflowers, terms such as “paternalism”, “prohibitions”, “eco-dictatorship” and “expropriation terror” as well as the campaign title # GrünerMist can be read.
On a website of the same name, the initiators are clearly rushing against the politics of the Greens. “Green in power means ‘climate protection’ planned economy and eco-socialism, management of shortages and the destruction of industry, prohibition regimes and state control down to the most personal areas of life,” it says there. And further: “Green rule means ruined state finances, tax usury and mass immigration and the final dissolution of the democratic nation-state”.
# GrünerMist: AfD-affiliated company launches smear campaign against Greens
In a video, activist and platform operator Hagen Grell brings the Greens closer to China. Under her government, among other things, there could be a restriction in child policy, said Grell. Taxes on children are conceivable, following the example of China’s one-child policy, with which Green politicians sympathized. He also brought the Greens closer to communist dictators such as Pol Pot and Stalin.
Grell speaks of a “repressive, communist” policy. The Greens wanted to introduce a “climate points system” based on the Chinese social credit system, claims Grell. For example, anyone who has traveled too much or has too many children is no longer allowed to travel or own a car according to the Greens’ plans, according to Grell.
Politicians are also explicitly denigrated. Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock is listed under the tab “People” as “impostor” and “copyist”. Claudia Roth is described as an “anti-German multicultural and Turkey enthusiast” and “Mullah friend”, Cem Özdemir as a “career migrant of the first hour”.
Smear campaign against Greens: Annalena Baerbock is called a con man
Conservare Communication GmbH, based in Hamburg, is behind the smear campaign. This is also the editor of the AfD supporter magazine “Deutschland-Kurier”. Numerous MPs and AfD employees write for this. The managing director and sole shareholder is David Bendels, who in the past has repeatedly made appearances with top politicians from the AfD such as Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland.
Bendels also appears as the spokesman for the # GrünerMist campaign. In 2016 he left the CSU after a dispute during an appearance at the AfD. There he was one of the founders of the conservative awakening. The 36-year-old is also chairman of the “Association for the Preservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties”, which was founded in September 2016. Research by WDR, NDR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung” had shown that there are close links between the association and the AfD. According to a report by t-online.de, the association had put millions of euros into posters and spots as well as a newspaper-like “extra sheet” to advertise the AfD.
# GrünerMist: How the campaign against Greens is financed is unclear
It is still unclear where the money for the current “citizens’ campaign” against the Greens comes from. It is “independent” and “non-partisan”, it says on the website. The website and large posters are financed by donations from medium-sized companies and “committed citizens” who “have set themselves the goal of preventing another large-scale socialist experiment on German soil”, writes Bendels, who is soliciting donations for further campaigns. However, no bank details are given on the website, only an email address.
According to t-online.de, David Bendels also spoke of numerous individual donations in 2016. Lobbycontrol had stated, however, that the association was initiated by anonymous large donors and that the activities were “probably largely financed by large donors”. At that time, the association cooperated with the Swiss agency Goal, which had also supported AfD spokesman Jörg Meuthen with campaigns. Because of this illegal party donation, the AfD had to pay a fine of 270,000 euros.
