Maximilian Krah has been chosen by Germany’s populist ‘right-wing’ party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland – AfD) as its lead candidate for next year’s European elections. Krah, a 46-year-old lawyer from Dresden, has been a member of AfD since 2016 and an MEP since 2019. Last year he ran as AfD candidate for Mayor of Dresden and finished fourth with 14.2%.
In recent weeks Krah’s loyalties have been questioned by German journalists from the Berlin-based news portal T-Online. They found what they described as a pattern of money from China and Chinese lobbyists flowing to Krah’s office and to his political network.
According to T-Online’s reporters, this is a story of “money and secret service contacts, intricate corporate networks, conflicts of interest and Chinese state propaganda. Above all, it is about the credibility of a party that claims to be a party based on the rule of law and cannot be bought or influenced: the AfD.”
Krah told T-Online that he did not believe these Chinese contacts – which date back to before he became an MEP and which I discuss later in this article – amount to a conflict of interest.
But historical revisionists know that this is not the first time Krah has been suspected of such a conflict.
In 2009 the traditionalist Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson was charged by the German authorities with contravening their strict laws against questioning the alleged ‘Holocaust’ of six million Jews in homicidal gas chambers. Bishop Williamson, who was then a member of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, had told Swedish television interviewers in 2008 (in answer to their questions about the ‘Holocaust’):
“I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. …I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them in gas chambers.”
The lawyer Maximilian Krah (who was then an active member of the German conservative party CDU) was appointed by SSPX to oversee Williamson’s defence, and it was at Krah’s instigation that a left-wing German lawyer Matthias Lossmann was chosen as the Bishop’s defence attorney. Lossmann’s political affiliation is with the German Green Party.
Despite being ostensibly a fellow traditional Catholic, Krah took part in a press campaign against Bishop Williamson, collaborating with left-wing and liberal media to denounce the Bishop’s views.
In November 2010, after 18 months of trusting his nominal superiors in SSPX and their adviser Krah, Bishop Williamson decided to appoint the respected Berlin lawyer Wolfram Nahrath to handle his case. Lossmann was dismissed by the Bishop after refusing to work alongside RA Nahrath.
(The Bishop was eventually represented at his Regensburg trial by RA Dr Edgar Weiler.)
Krah continued to denounce Bishop Williamson and the affair contributed to a fundamental split in SSPX, with Bishop Williamson and his supporters forming the St Marcel Initiative.
Revisionists began to look closely at Maximilian Krah and his antecedents. We found that in September 2010 Krah had taken part in a fundraising event in New York to raise financial support for Jewish students to attend the University of Tel Aviv.
More recently as part of his work with AfD, Krah has formed further close alliances with Israeli lobbyists.
In May 2020 together with fellow AfD MEP Joachim Kuhs, Krah joined forces with Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This began with their joint denunciation of the European Union for sending a representative to a “virtual memorial service” for Palestinians.
Netanyahu thanked Krah and asked the AfD MEPs to “work with your colleagues to stop hostile activity against Israel with German taxpayer money”.
Krah replied in ever more friendly terms, writing to Netanyahu:
“Antisemitism used to be a right-wing problem. But since Israel became strong and defeated the pro-communist Arab countries in 1967, things have changed. Since then, the liberals support anti-Israeli organizations, because they hate strong nations with a solid identity.
“Israel is a strong country with a solid identity as the home of the Jewish people – exactly what liberals hate. They don’t want rooted people who believe, they want uprooted subservants for their brave new world. That’s why they fight you and us.
“I visited Israel four times, including a visit at the IDF, which brought me a shitstorm of real Neonazis, calling me a ‘Mossad-spy’. When it comes to your country, there are remarkable alliances.”
AfD has (unsurprisingly) been among the first German political parties to offer “full solidarity” to the Netanyahu government as it prepares for a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.
And Krah has joined his AfD colleagues to offer de facto support for Vladimir Putin in another genocidal war – this time against Europeans. AfD has been among the most craven Putinist parties in European politics, seeking to betray European interests in favour of the Kremlin.
Perhaps therefore we shouldn’t be surprised that journalists have uncovered a web of connections between Krah and lobbyists working with the Chinese secret services and their propaganda arm.
One of Krah’s parliamentary staff in Brussels is Jian Guo, a man with a long history of working with the Chinese Communist Party and its front organisations. Even some of Krah’s colleagues within AfD have become concerned about his employment of Jian Guo. Fellow AfD MEP Nicolaus Fest told The European Conservative earlier this year:
“Mr. Guo is rarely ever seen or heard in the corridors of the Parliament. Nobody knows what he does, nobody has any contact with him, nobody seriously thinks he is here to progress the aims of the AfD. Rumour has it that he is paid on the lowest grade available. If this is found to be true, this not only raises more questions, but also suggests that his income might likely be topped up by other sources.”
While working for Krah, Jian Guo has allegedly lobbied for Chinese interests. Partly facilitated by Krah himself, Jian Guo worked with a German-based Chinese businesswoman Min Zhang and a longtime friend of Krah’s (Dresden management consultant Torsten Voß), to form an association called ‘New Silk Road’, or the ‘China-EU New Silk Road Chamber of Commerce’, promoting the interests of the Chinese communist regime.
Jian Guo, Voß and Krah also worked on specific schemes to promote Chinese interests in Pirna, a town near Dresden. Chinese money then flowed into companies owned by Krah’s assistant Jian Guo and his partner. Meanwhile Krah lobbied his colleagues within AfD in efforts to prevent political opposition to the role of the Chinese company Huawei in the expansion of Germany’s 5G network.
In Germany as in the UK, security services have become increasingly concerned by China’s intelligence service cultivating politicians. There are several criminal investigations under way in the UK, after a member of a British MP’s staff was arrested in March this year under the Official Secrets Act.
Yet for Maximilian Krah connections to China, or to Russia, or to Israel are all business as usual.
The real mystery is why anyone takes AfD seriously as a patriotic or ‘civic nationalist’ party.
