Financing the Far Right.

Who is financing Germany's anti-migrant AfD  ? Not surprisingly, a billionaire who's family financed Hitler.

From the Nazis to the AfD: Big business finances the far-right

By Peter Schwarz
28 November 2018

According to an investigation by the weekly Der Spiegel, the rise to prominence of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was facilitated by huge financial contributions from 88-year-old billionaire August von Finck. His father, also named August von Finck, financed Adolf Hitler and made a fortune by confiscating Jewish property through the process known as “Aryanisation.”

Der Spiegel concludes that several million euros that flowed into the founding and development of the AfD originate from Finck’s business and financial empire. In 2013, Finck was placed 10th on the Forbes list of the richest Germans, with a fortune of $8.2 billion. In order to avoid paying taxes, Finck has lived since 1999 in an old castle situated in Weinfelden, Switzerland.

Finck has been promoting right-wing parties advocating neo-liberal economic policies and opposition to the joint European currency since the 1990s. During that decade, he deposited €4.3 million with the League of Free Citizens, led by the Free Democratic Party (FDP) politician Manfred Brunner. The League was a forerunner of the AfD.

In 2003/2004, a group of anonymous entrepreneurs donated €6 million to the Association of Citizens’ Conventions. Sitting on the executive of the Association at the time was Beatrix von Storch, now a leading figure in the AfD. The largest part of this sum came from Finck.

In 2009, the hotel and restaurant group Mövenpick, which was owned by Finck, donated €1.1 million to the Free Democratic Party. Shortly thereafter, the FDP pushed through a reduction of the VAT tax in the hotel industry, which benefited Mövenpick directly.

While such financing is perhaps new for the federal republic, it certainly has its precedents in German history. Finck’s father, August von Finck Senior, had already supported the Nazis when they were still far from taking power. He and other industrialists met with Hitler in the middle of 1931 at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin and promised to provide him with 25 million Reichsmark in the event of a left-wing uprising. This sum is equivalent today to about €100 million. At another secret meeting with Hitler on February 20, 1933, Finck and other business leaders provided the newly installed chancellor with €3 million for his upcoming election campaign.

August von Finck was one of the most influential business magnates of the Weimar Republic. His father, Wilhelm Finck, co-founded the bank Merck Finck & Co. and numerous other companies, including Allianz Insurance and the Munich Insurance Company. In 1911, Wilhelm Finck was elevated to the Bavarian peerage.

August von Finck’s support for Hitler paid off. He joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1933 and held numerous leading posts in business and politics. He benefited from the “Aryanisation” of Jewish property, and after the Nazi annexation of Austria took over the Jewish bank S. M. v. Rothschild in Vienna.

In 2010, Finck bought the brand name “Deutsche Gold und Silberscheideanstalt” (Degussa) for €2 million and entered the gold trade, as part of his plan to support the AfD. The name Degussa is closely linked to some of the worst crimes of the Nazi regime. A subsidiary of the company supplied Zyklon B gas for the Nazi extermination camps. Degussa himself melted down the gold extracted from the teeth of the murdered Jews.
Now the Finck fortune, a product of the greatest crimes against humanity in history, is once again being used to promote a party that increasingly embraces Nazi politics.

The revelations about the AfD’s financial resources again confirm that this far-right party is not some sort of rank-and-file movement. As the preface to the book Why Are They Back?points out, the emergence of the far right is “solely due to the support they receive from political parties, the media, the government and the state apparatus”—and, one should add, from representatives of the financial aristocracy.

The above paragraphs are extracts from -https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/28/fina-n28.html