There is now one in Brandenburg too State association of the new AfD youth organization “Generation Germany”. The founding meeting took place on Saturday amid protests in Königs Wusterhausen. AfD member of the state parliament Fabian Jank was elected chairman. The 29-year-old said after the election that he wanted a “cadre forge”: “Politically stable. Strong character. Athletically fit. Ready to take on responsibility!”
The personality of Fabian Jank shows: In Brandenburg too, the AfD youth will continue or further intensify their right-wing extremist course. Jank’s career is an example of how intertwined the party youth is with the extra-parliamentary, right-wing extremist front.
Jank earned his first political spurs in Cottbus with the local group of the “Identitarian Movement”. The group organized several actions in southern Brandenburg, in which Jank took part. Propaganda photos show him in 2017, among other things, distributing pepper spray in downtown Cottbus or at a banner campaign at the Raddusch Slavic castle.
While studying agricultural sciences in Halle an der Saale, Jank remained loyal to the Identitarians. He will live in the house project of the local Identitarian branch until the beginning of 2020. Shortly after his return to southern Brandenburg in 2021, he joined the AfD and had a lightning career: within a few years he worked his way up from a simple party member to Direct candidates in a promising constituency in Lower Lusatia – from where he will enter the Potsdam state parliament in 2024.
Anyone who has proven themselves among the Identitarians appears to have an accelerated and preferred career path
He succeeds in all of this, even though the “Identitarian Movement” is on the AfD’s incompatibility list. It seems as if this is not an obstacle in the Brandenburg AfD – on the contrary. Those who have proven themselves among the Identitarians obviously have a better career.
In this regard, Fabian Jank has a lot in common with Jean-Pascal Hohmwhom the young AfD voters elected as their federal chairman in November. Hohm also comes from the south of Brandenburg and looks back on political socialization with the Identitarians and other frontline organizations – and now also sits in the state parliament.
Deeply anchored in right-wing extremist traditions of thought
Fabian Jank is the agricultural policy spokesman for his parliamentary group there. In this role, he draws attention to himself with one idea in particular: his solution to the supposed “problem of overpopulation”. The crude calculation: Without migrants, Germany would have a population of 65 million, around 20 million fewer than it does now. According to Jank, this would relieve pressure on nature and minimize land use conflicts. In doing so, he follows the intellectual path of the economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), who is considered the key word behind the National Socialist project that Germany should gain “living space in the East”.
At the same time, Jank tries to portray himself as a down-to-earth guy who is close to his hometown and doesn’t want to be a “typical politician”. He poses on a Simson motorcycle or in the middle of a meadow, stroking a cow. At the same time, he strives to implement the strategic and ideological concepts of right-wing extremist ideas. He wants to expand his “Heimatrevier” parliamentary office in Großräschen into a “meeting point for patriots”. At specially organized “youth evenings”, AfD-affiliated activists are supposed to convey right-wing extremist content to young people. The journalist Benedikt Kaiser, who comes from the neo-Nazi scene, praised Jank’s commitment to “islands of togetherness and patriotic solidarity” as “exemplary”.
Jank probably comes in handy with the right-wing youth culture most recently spread in Brandenburg. Under his leadership, the new AfD youngsters are likely to try to use this potential to form an ideologically consolidated and radical youth movement. There can be no question of moderation among the party youth here either.