Abstract

This paper examines how and to what extent the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) used the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacks to advance its Islamophobic rhetoric. The theoretical puzzle arises from the party’s simultaneous history of antisemitism and its current strong pro-Israel positioning, a stance seemingly in tension with its radical-right profile. Using qualitative text analysis of the AfD Bundestag speeches in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks, the study identifies how the party incorporated the crisis into its existing discursive patterns. The findings show that the AfD made relatively few direct references to Hamas or the October 7 attacks, but extensively framed rising antisemitism in Germany as the product of migration and policy failure. The party positioned itself as the bulwark against antisemitism and portrayed Muslims as an inherent threat. The analysis demonstrates that the attack of October 7 served less to introduce new narratives than to legitimise and intensify longstanding Islamophobic claims.

Introduction

Far-right parties in Europe typically position themselves along a pro-Israel or pro-Palestine line. Extreme right parties such as the People’s Party Our Slovakia often adopt anti-Israel positions, while radical right parties like the AfD and the Freedom Party of Austria tend to present themselves as pro Israel because antisemitism is seen as a “toxic issue” that risks alienating voters (Wondreys & Zulianello, 2024, p. 486). This creates a central puzzle: despite a long-established history of antisemitism and ties to neo-Nazi currents, the AfD simultaneously promotes a pro- Israel stance (Wondreys and Zulianello, 2024; Burchett, 2025). Existing scholarship demonstrates that the AfD combines assertive Islamophobia with selective support for Israel to legitimise anti-Muslim narratives (Wondreys & Zulianello, 2024; Shroufi, 2024; Hafez, 2014), yet it is not yet known how this dynamic evolved after the October 7th 2023 Hamas attacks, a moment of heightened political sensitivity in Germany given its historical relationship with Israel.

This paper addresses this gap by examining the following research question: To what extent, and how, did the AfD use the October 7th Hamas attacks to advance Islamophobic rhetoric in the Bundestag? I analyse how the party framed the attacks and how it strategically linked them to broader narratives about Islam, security, and the defence against antisemitism in Germany.

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of AfD parliamentary speeches between October 12th and December 12th 2023, I argue that the AfD used the October 7 attacks to leverage rhetoric against antisemitism as a mechanism for advancing Islamophobic claims. I show that the party does this primarily by portraying itself as the bulwark against antisemitism in Germany, framing Muslims as a threat to Jewish communities, and attributing rising antisemitism to failures in German migration and integration policy, especially regarding immigrants from Muslim backgrounds. These findings support Hafez’s (2014) argument that Islamophobia enables far-right actors with historical links to Nazism or fascism to redirect their racism toward Muslims, and they extend Shroufi’s (2024) claim that the AfD’s pro-Israel stance is embedded within its Islamophobic strategy by demonstrating how the party uses the rhetoric of being the bulwark against antisemitism to legitimise anti-Muslim narratives.

Literature Review

Scholarship on the European far right widely agrees that the AfD has developed an assertive and consistent Islamophobic discourse, though explanations differ regarding how this discourse is framed and how it interacts with the party’s ties to antisemitism.

A first strand of the literature interprets the AfD’s Islamophobia through a civilisational-conflict lens. Mudde and Kaltwasser argue that populist parties broadly frame Muslims as the “enemy of the people” (2013, p. 165). By attacking Muslims and what they consider to be Islamic values, these parties attempt to portray themselves as defenders of liberal values. This argument is extended in the European context by Oztig and colleagues, who find that Islamophobic populism is used by far-right parties in Europe to portray Islam as incompatible with European values and as a threat to European societies (2021). Betz further argues that these parties do not merely frame Islam as incompatible with Western values, but also present themselves as the “defenders of the core values of Western civilisation”, rooted in Judeo- Christian culture, against the alleged “Islamisation” of Western society (Betz, 2021, p. 527). Burchett (2025) builds on this argument in relation to the AfD, finding that the party claims to defend Jews from Muslim-Arab antisemitism in order to refute accusations of antisemitism. In doing so, the AfD portrays itself as pro-Israel while shifting its racism toward framing Islam as a socio-civilisational threat to European society.

Building on this work, scholarship also offers a “supply-side” explanation, arguing that the AfD’s rhetoric responds to political opportunities arising from the increase in Muslim migration to Germany. Hansen and Olsen (2022) find that the AfD acts as a populist issue entrepreneur, instrumentalising existing cleavages around migration. This ultimately aligns with Mudde and Kaltwasser’s argument that populist parties adjust their rhetoric in order to benefit from growing public perceptions of Muslims as a threat (2013). Taken together, this literature suggests that the AfD frames Islam as a threat to Germany’s “Judeo-Christian” society within the context of growing discontent toward migrants, while positioning itself as the defender of German society and its values. If this explanation is correct, we would expect the AfD to use the October 7 Hamas attacks to reinforce claims about Islam’s incompatibility with Western civilisation and to position itself as the defender of German society.

A second strand of the literature connects the AfD’s use of Islamophobia, alongside its historical ties to antisemitism, to its pro-Israel positioning. This research shows that parties such as the AfD combine Islamophobic rhetoric with a nominally pro- Israel stance in order to maximise their electoral appeal. Wondreys and Zulianello (2024) suggest that radical-right and extreme-right parties tend to direct their ‘hate’ either toward Israel and Jews or toward Palestine and Muslims, with the AfD, given its radical-right profile, expected to support Israel. Selent and Kortmann (2025) show that the AfD uses a combination of pro-Israel and antisemitic statements to appeal simultaneously to radical-right voters with antisemitic prejudices and to more moderate conservatives who reject hostility toward Jews. Hafez (2014) argues that Islamophobia enables parties with historical links to Nazism or fascism to obscure past antisemitism by redirecting racist rhetoric toward Muslims. This strategy is particularly relevant in Germany, where antisemitism is highly sensitive, and far-right parties must avoid associations with Nazism in order to retain moderate voters (Kahn, 2022). Taken together, this literature suggests that the AfD maintains an official pro-Israel stance while tolerating instances of blatant antisemitism among its politicians, allowing the party to appeal simultaneously to relatively moderate and more extremist supporters. If this explanation is correct, we would expect the AfD to use October 7 to advance Islamophobic narratives through a pro-Israel or pro-Jewish framing.

Across these strands, the literature offers several alternative explanations for how the AfD might respond to the October 7 attacks. The civilisational-conflict literature leads, and the supply side argument would expect the party to use the attacks to reaffirm claims that Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation, and position itself as the defender of German society. The scholarship linking Islamophobia to pro-Israel positioning suggests that the AfD would emphasise its support for Israel as a way to legitimise anti-Muslim narratives while distancing itself from antisemitism. These strands provide clear, testable expectations about the AfD’s post-October 7 discourse, which the subsequent analysis evaluates by examining how the party operationalised its Islamophobic discourse in the months following the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Research Design

This study analyses the AfD’s Islamophobic rhetoric in the Bundestag following the October 7 2023, Hamas attacks. To do so, I conducted a qualitative text analysis of 18 publicly available AfD parliamentary speeches delivered between October 11th and December 12th 2023, in which the keywords identified in my coding framework appeared. The analysis begins with the first plenary session after the attacks, on October 11th, and ends with the final session of the year on December 12th 2023. Focusing on this period captures the immediate discursive response to the attacks, when parties rapidly sought to frame their positions and define the nature of the threat.

Germany constitutes a particularly interesting case to analyse the tensions between antisemitism and Islamophobia, and their respective deployment by the far right. Because antisemitism carries such significant historical sensitivity, far-right actors face reputational and electoral constraints that differ from those in many other contexts (Kahn, 2022). This makes the AfD’s simultaneous use of pro-Israel rhetoric and Islamophobic framing especially revealing. Following Seawright and Gerring’s (2008) typology, Germany can therefore be understood as a most likely case for observing the strategic endorsement of pro- Israel rhetoric by a far-right party seeking to legitimise and advance Islamophobic narratives while avoiding antisemitic stigma. If Islamophobia is framed as a defence of Jews or of Israel in this highly constrained environment, it provides strong evidence of a deliberate discursive strategy rather than incidental rhetoric. The post-October 7 period offers a particularly revealing window, as the attacks intensified public debates on security, migration, Islam, and antisemitism, thereby making rhetorical positioning especially salient.

I developed a coding framework based on expectations derived from the literature on the AfD’s discourse around ‘Islam,’ ‘Hamas’ and related topics, including ‘Muslim’, ‘Israel’, ‘October 7’. I extracted all sentences referencing these key terms, along with surrounding context, and coded them following the qualitative analysis principles used by Dilling and Krawatzek (2024). In line with this framework, and informed by the literature, I coded each extract according to (1) topic, referring to the thematic content; (2) modus, referring to how the claim was advanced; and (3) justification frame, referring to why the speaker claimed the argument was valid. The coding scheme was iteratively refined as new patterns emerged in the data. After coding the extracts, I completed a frequency analysis across the topics, the modi and the justification frames in order to examine how often the AfD used each. I also completed a pattern analysis in order to examine the AfD’s dominant rhetorical strategy.

Operationalising search terms for coding

Code	Topic Label	Definition / Inclusion Criteria
A	Islam/Muslims as Security Threat	Islam or Muslims framed as dangerous to German people; portrayals of Muslims as terrorists; references to Islamist extremist groups operating in Germany.
B	Civilisational Incompatibility	Islam, Muslims depicted as incompatible with German or Western culture values; claims that Is;am threatens Judeo Christian identity; arguments that Islam has no place in Germany/the West; depiction of Israel as defender of “the West.”
C	Equating Muslims with Terrorism/Hamas	Claims that all Muslims are terrorists, supporters of Hamas, or equivalent to Hamas; rhetorical generalisation of Hamas onto the entire Musilm population.
D	Islam/Muslims as threat to Jews	Depiction of Muslims as inherently antisemitic, claims that Islam threatens Jewish people in Germany or abroad: portrayals of Islam as a threat to Israel.
E	Protecting Jews/Israel to Attack Islam	Claims that the AfD uniquely protects Jews in Germany: use of Jewish safety as a justification for anti-Muslim rhetoric or policy positions.
F	Gender, Women, and Sexual threats	Claims that Muslims or Islamic norms threaten German women, portrayals or Islamic gender norms as incompatible with German society, references to sexual violence.
G	German Domestic Failure	Arguments that German migration or integration policies have failed: claims that antisemitism has been. “imported” via Muslim migration; blaming other parties or rising antisemitism or violence: references to left-wing extremism.
H	Security, Splicing, and Deportation Responses	Calls for policing, surveillance, deportations, bans, or other security responses directed at Muslims or Islamic organisations; proposals presented as necessary due to Muslim threat.
I	Use of October 7 as Evidence	October 7 framed as proof of Islam’s extremism or inherent violence: claims that the attack demonstrates Islam’s threat to Western civilization or Germany.

Modi

Modus	Label	Definition / Inclusion Criteria
1	Intensification	Use of October 7 to escalate or amplify existing Islamophobic claims; linking Hamas → Islam → Germany to suggest that the threat abroad reveals the threat at home.
2	Generalisation	Universalising Hamas’s violence to all Muslims; portraying all Muslims as violent, dangerous, or inherently supportive of terrorism.
3	Instrumentali-sation	Using Jews or Israel as a rhetorical tool; invoking pro-Israel statements as justification for anti-Muslim policies or narratives.
4	Blame-shifting	Attributing the perceived threat to failures of the German Governments – e.g., migration policy “importing” danger, German financial aid benefiting Hamas, or inadequate government action against antisemitism and Muslim threats to Jews in Germany.
5	Policy Activation	Using October 7 to argue for or claim the AfD would implement, policies such as deportation (“reimgration”) of Muslims, ban on Islamic/Islamist groups, ending aid to Palestine, increased surveillance, or strengthened border control.
6	Civilisational Antagonism	Framing Islam as fundamentally incompatible with Western or German society portraying Muslim values as opposed to Western norms and civilisation.

Justification Frames

Justification Frame	Definition / Inclusion Criteria
Security (terror, Islamists)	References to terrorism, Islamist extremists, or Muslims as a security threat to Germany.
Cultural threat	Claims that Islam or Muslim values threaten German or Western cultural norms.
Demographic threat	Statements suggesting population change or demographic decline caused by Muslims.
Gender threat / threat to women	Claims that Muslims endanger women or hold gender norms incompatible with German society.
Antisemitism / threat to Jews	Portraying Muslims as inherently antisemetic or as a direct threat to Jews in Germany or Israel.
Pro-Israel signalling	Statements emphasising support for Israel or position the AfD as pro-Israel.
German policy failure	Claims that German government policies have failed to protect society or manage security threats.
Migration policy failure	Claims that migration or refugee policies have “imported” antisemitism or increased insecurity.
Threat of left-wing extremism	References to left-wing actors as a danger or contributing to insecurity.
German historical responsibility	References to Germany’s historical relationship to antisemitism or the Holocaust as justification for political positions.

This research design has both contextual and methodological limitations. Contextually, the analysis focuses exclusively on parliamentary speeches. The Bundestag is a formal, institutional setting with a different audience and rhetorical style than social media, rallies, or internal party communication, which may influence how Islamophobia is expressed, as the formal setting may somewhat restrain speakers. Methodologically, qualitative coding carries inherent subjectivity. As such, my interpretation determines what counts as Islamophobic rhetoric. To mitigate this, I documented my coding decisions transparently and provided a record of each extract, speaker, date, and assigned codes.

Analysis

Analytical Approach

The analysis below evaluates these competing expectations by examining how the AfD integrated the aftermath of October 7 into its rhetoric in the 104 coded units across the 18 Bundestag speeches analysed. While the research question assumes that the attacks may have served as a discursive opportunity for the AfD, the empirical findings indicate that direct references to the attacks were relatively rare. Instead, the party relied more heavily on the political aftermath, particularly on debates about rising antisemitism, pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and perceived failures of German migration and integration policy. The analysis, therefore, focuses on what the AfD did emphasise: narratives portraying Muslims as a threat to Jews, claims that German policy has “imported” antisemitism, and attempts to legitimise anti- Muslim positions through a self-presentation as the bulwark against antisemitism.

Limited Direct Use of October 7

One of the clearest findings is that the AfD only rarely referred explicitly to the October 7 attacks. Topic I (“October 7”) appeared in only three extracts (5% of the sample), making it one of the least frequent topics. When referenced, the attacks were typically invoked through Modus 1 (intensification) or Modus 2 (generalisation), either to escalate existing claims about the inherent danger of Islam or to universalise Hamas’s violence to Muslims more broadly. However, these instances were limited and did not constitute a sustained discursive focus. This low frequency requires a cautious interpretation regarding the extent to which the attacks themselves shaped the AfD’s rhetoric. The party did not construct a detailed narrative about Hamas, nor did it anchor its argument in the specificities of the attacks. Instead, October 7 functioned primarily as a discursive trigger, an event that heightened the salience of themes the AfD was already advancing, particularly claims about rising antisemitism and domestic insecurity linked to Muslim migrants. In this sense, the attacks appear to have been used opportunistically rather than substantively. Rather than focusing directly on Hamas or the details of the attacks, AfD speakers used the aftermath to reinforce existing claims about Muslim migrants in Germany. In particular, they referenced protests in Germany against Israel’s response as evidence of rising antisemitism and blamed Germany’s migration policies for this development, while also using the attacks to advance claims about what they portrayed as the inherently violent nature of Islam and the supposed threat that the presence of Muslims in Germany poses. This finding is significant because it shows that the AfD did not rely on repeated references to Hamas to sustain its narrative. Instead, it drew on the broader political and social reactions following October 7, such as the protests that emerged in Germany following the attack, to reinforce and extend its existing Islamophobic framing.

German Policy Failure and Blame-Shifting

The dominant theme in the data is the portrayal of German domestic policy as a failure. Topic G (“German domestic failure”) accounted for 50 occurrences, representing 82% of all extracts (Figure 4, appendix). This makes it by far the most frequently invoked topic, significantly overshadowing all direct references to October 7. Correspondingly, Modus 4 (“blame- shifting”) was the most common modus (41 occurrences; 67%) (Figure 5), and justification frames referencing German policy failure appeared 33 times, with “German migration policy failure” appearing in 14 extracts (Figure 6, appendix). This indicates that the AfD used the post-October 7 environment chiefly to criticise the German government, rather than Hamas or Palestinians. The central narrative was therefore that the government had “imported” antisemitism through its migration policies and had failed to prevent resulting security threats and extremist mobilisation. This argument drew on narratives portraying Muslims as inherently threatening to Jewish people and used this framing to claim that the German government had enabled the rise of antisemitism in Germany by allowing Muslim migrants into the country. Extracts frequently linked pro- Palestinian demonstrations in Germany to alleged policy failures, suggesting that German authorities had enabled “Islamist” or “antisemitic” actors to operate freely. For example: Hordes of unqualified migrants have descended upon our homeland […] We are experiencing progressive Islamization. Knife attacks and gang rapes are already commonplace. Islamist mobs are rampaging through German streets. […] They are calling for the establishment of a caliphate in Germany and want to kill Jews. What a disgrace for Germany!”¹ This pattern directly supports the literature’s expectation that radical right parties act as issue entrepreneurs by reframing the rise in antisemitism in Germany as a result of the violence and antisemitism of Muslims in order to legitimise their Islamophobia and anti-migration position.

Muslims as a Threat to Jews and the AfD as the Bulwark against Antisemitism

A second strong finding concerns the framing of Muslims as a threat to Jewish people. Theme D (“Islam/Muslims as a threat to Jews”) appeared 24 times (39%), and Theme E (“AfD as protector of Jews”) appeared 15 times (25%) (Figure 4). The justification frame “antisemitism/threat to Jews” was the single most common frame in the dataset (36 occurrences, 59%) (Figure 6, appendix). Together, these results show that Muslims were frequently depicted as the primary source of antisemitism in Germany. Extracts describe Muslim migrants as bringing antisemitism into the country and as posing security risks to Jewish communities by generalising from those who carried out the Hamas attacks to Muslims more broadly. In this way, AfD rhetoric suggests that the presence of Muslim migrants in Germany is fundamentally incompatible with the country’s responsibility to protect Jews. For example, “[…] it is precisely people
like the murderers of Gaza whom the established parties have allowed to enter our country unhindered for years. At the same time, they have slandered the only party that has taken a clear stand against the immigration of Jew-haters and mass murderers. Only the AfD never wanted these people in Germany. […] This Islam does not belong in Germany.”²

As seen in this extract, the AfD positioned itself as the only party willing to acknowledge and confront this threat of Muslim antisemitism. Other parties were framed as negligent or complicit due to their support for migration. This is where Modus 3 (“instrumentalisation”) plays a central role. With 30 occurrences (49%), instrumentalisation was the second most frequent modus (Figure 5, appendix). It captures how the AfD uses its pro-Jewish position rhetorically, primarily to legitimise anti-Muslim policies. The empirical pattern here aligns with the theoretical expectation that pro-Israel or pro-Jewish claims can serve as discursive tools in the construction of Islamophobic narratives. This provides clear evidence that the AfD used the post-October 7 context to strengthen its portrayal of Muslims as a threat to Jews, and portrayed itself as the sole actor prepared to combat this antisemitism, in order to justify its broader Islamophobic agenda.

Islam as a Security and Civilisational Threat

The portrayal of Islam as a broader security and cultural threat remained a prominent component of AfD rhetoric. Theme A (“Islam/Muslims as a security threat”) appeared 25 times (41%), and Theme B (“civilisational incompatibility”) appeared 14 times (23%) (Figure 4). Correspondingly, the justification frame “security threat” was highly frequent (31 occurrences; 50%) (Figure 6), and Modus 6 (“civilisational antagonism”) accounted for 13 instances (21%) (Figure 5). These themes were often invoked alongside, rather than separately from, the narratives about Jews and German policy failure. Rather than discussing October 7 directly, the AfD framed the attacks as confirmation of its broader claim that Islam represents an existential danger to German society and civilisation. Drawing on nativist narratives, the party portrayed Islam and Muslim people as inherently violent and dangerous to Germans, arguing that Islam is therefore fundamentally incompatible with German society. Combined with the intensification and generalisation modes, these themes worked to universalise Hamas’s violence to Muslims more broadly. The empirical pattern shows how the AfD used October 7 not to introduce new categories of threat through references to Hamas and October 7, but to legitimise and reinforce existing ones. The data therefore shows AfD used the aftermath of October 7 to advance Islamophobia by using it to justify and legitimise existing narratives.

Secondary Themes: Gendered and Demographic Threats

Secondary but noteworthy themes include gendered and demographic threats. Theme F (“gender/women/sexual threats”) appeared 7 times (Figure 5, appendix), and justification frames relating to gender threat appeared 10 times, while demographic threat appeared 11 times (Figure 6, appendix). These themes typically appeared in conjunction with civilisational antagonism, reinforcing portrayals of Islam as culturally incompatible with Western norms. Although these themes were not dominant, their presence demonstrates the AfD’s continued reliance on common far-right talking points. Importantly, however, they do not appear central to the party’s mobilisation in response to October 7. Their inclusion in the dataset reflects broader Islamophobic discourse patterns rather than targeted reactions to the attacks.

Co-Occurrence Patterns

The analysis also reveals several recurring co-occurrence patterns that illustrate how the AfD fused topics, modi, and justification frames to produce coherent rhetorical narratives (Figure 7). The most common pattern combines German policy failure + blame- shifting + security threat, demonstrating that the AfD’s primary strategy was to use the crisis to criticise the German government. A second dominant pattern involved Islamic antisemitism + AfD as protector of Jews, often expressed through instrumentalisation. A third pattern paired security threat with policy activation, presenting the AfD as ready to implement stronger deportation, policing, and surveillance measures. These patterns highlight how the AfD strategically used the October 7 attacks through the integration of the event into a broader narrative centred on Islam as a threat, the failed policies of the Government, and the AfD as the only credible protector against Islamic extremism and antisemitism.

Conclusion

This study examined the question: To what extent, and how, did the AfD use the October 7 Hamas attacks to advance its Islamophobic rhetoric? Germany provides a revealing context for analysing the intersection of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and far- right discourse, as the historical sensitivity surrounding antisemitism places unique constraints on far-right actors. Through qualitative text analysis of AfD Bundestag speeches delivered between October 11th and December 15th 2023, the analysis showed that the party used the aftermath of the attacks to position itself as a bulwark against antisemitism. It articulated this stance through Islamophobic framing that cast Muslims as a threat to Jews and criticised the government for having “imported” antisemitism into Germany through failed migration and integration policies. In doing so, the study addressed a gap in the literature on the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by demonstrating that the AfD exploited the political context created by October 7, rather than the event itself, to advance its Islamophobic rhetoric.

These findings contribute to existing scholarship by showing that the AfD used the political aftermath of October 7 to present itself as a defender against antisemitism while attributing the antisemitic threat to Muslim communities, a pattern consistent with expectations in the literature. Research on civilisational- conflict narratives and the “supply-side” argument suggests that the AfD would use the October 7 attacks to reinforce claims about Islam’s incompatibility with Western civilisation and to position itself as a defender of German society. The finding that the AfD portrayed itself as a “bulwark” against antisemitism adds nuance to Mudde and Kaltwasser’s (2013) argument that radical- right parties attack Muslims and Islamic values in order to portray themselves as defenders of liberal values. In the German political context, where antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment are broadly condemned as right-wing, the “liberal values” invoked by the AfD took the form of pro-Jewish and pro-Israel stances.

The findings also support Betz’s (2021) claim that radical-right parties frame themselves as defenders of Western civilisation. They align closely with Burchett’s (2025) argument that the AfD claims to defend Jews from Muslim-Arab antisemitism in order to refute accusations of antisemitism against the party itself. By attributing rising antisemitism in Germany to Muslim communities, the AfD was able to redirect blame toward the government and its migration policies. The findings also extend Hansen and Olsen’s (2022) argument that the AfD acts as a populist issue entrepreneur by demonstrating that the party not only adapts its rhetoric to benefit from public perceptions of Muslims as a threat but also capitalises on specific events, such as October 7, to reinforce these claims.

Furthermore, the literature on the AfD’s Islamophobia and its historical ties to antisemitism, which suggested that the party would use October 7 to advance Islamophobic narratives through pro-Israel or pro-Jewish framing, is supported by these findings. As expected, the AfD combined Islamophobic rhetoric with a pro-Israel stance to maximise its electoral appeal. In particular, the findings support Hafez’s (2014) argument that Islamophobia allows parties with historical links to Nazism to obscure antisemitism by redirecting hostility toward Muslims. This study builds on Hafez’s argument by showing that the AfD specifically blamed the government and its migration policies to redirect accusations of antisemitism toward Muslims, thereby also supporting Kahn’s (2022) finding that, in the German context, the sensitivity surrounding antisemitism leads far-right parties to seek to avoid such accusations.

The findings show that the AfD did not rely heavily on direct references to the October 7 attacks. Instead, it leveraged the broader context of protests, public and political reactions, and concerns about antisemitism that emerged in the wake of the event to reinforce its existing Islamophobic rhetoric. The most prominent themes in the data include claims of German policy failure, portrayals of Muslims as a threat to Jews, and the use of pro-Jewish positioning to legitimise anti-Muslim agendas. October 7 thus served primarily as an opportunity to increase the legitimacy of the AfD’s Islamophobic claims. This study has several limitations. First, it focuses exclusively on Bundestag speeches, meaning the discourse reflects a formal parliamentary setting and an audience of political opponents, which may have amplified government-focused criticism. Second, qualitative coding involves interpretative judgement and therefore carries an inherent degree of subjectivity. Future research could compare parliamentary rhetoric with AfD communication in other settings or examine whether similar mechanisms appear among other European radical-right parties.

References

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1. Stefan Keuter, 16/11/2023. Original German: “Heerscharen unqualifizierter Migranten sind über unsere Heimat hergefallen […] Wir erleben eine fortschreitende Islamisierung. Messer-männer und Gruppenvergewaltigungen sind heute schon an der Tagesordnung. Islamistische Mobs marodieren auf deutschen Straßen. […] Sie fordern die Einrichtung eines Kalifates in Deutschland und wollen Juden töten. Was für eine Schande für Deutschland!” ↩︎
2. Jürgen Braun (12/10/2023). Original German: “[…]: Genau solche Menschen wie die Meuchelmörder von Gaza haben die Altparteien jahrelang ungestört in unser Land einreisen lassen. Zugleich haben sie die einzige Partei verleumdet, die sich klar gegen die Einwanderung von Judenhassern und Massenmördern gestellt hat. Nur die AfD wollte diese Gestalten nie in Deutschland haben. […]. Dieser Islam gehört nicht zu Deutschland.” ↩︎