La Derecha Diario A right-wing candidate in Germany was banned for speaking about the well-known author Tolkien.
Regional deputy of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany, Joachim Paul, was banned from the mayoral elections in his city for speaking about literature
In Germany, it's no longer necessary to commit a crime to be eliminated from politics. It's enough to read the wrong books, quote the wrong authors, or attend the wrong conferences.
Joachim Paul, regional deputy in Rheinland-Pfalz, professor, writer, and candidate of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) party for the mayoralty of Ludwigshafen, was supposed to compete in September 2025, but instead was banned.
It wasn't a judge who removed him, it wasn't the voters, but rather it was the municipal electoral committee, chaired by the acting mayor herself, Jutta Steinruck, following a report from the Verfassungsschutz (the German domestic intelligence service), officially tasked with "protecting the Constitution," but in practice, turned into a political police force that neutralizes patriotic opponents before they reach the polls.
The procedure was as swift as it was cynical: on July 18, Steinruck sent the regional Interior Ministry "indications" that Paul lacked the constitutional loyalty required to run; on July 29, the ministry, led by a member of the SPD, sent her an eleven-page dossier from the Verfassungsschutz with "evidence" taken from public sources. On August 5, the electoral committee, under the same chair, executed the exclusion of the inconvenient rival.
For an Argentine reader, the method is familiar: a strong candidate eliminated by administrative act before facing the polls, as in the political proscriptions the region knows well. The difference is that here we're not talking about a fragile country or one under international tutelage, but about Germany, sold for decades as an impeccable model of the rule of law.
The file doesn't mention corruption, violence, or fraud. It accuses ideas and symbols: articles in conservative media about Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and the "Nibelungenlied"; an online course on this medieval work; a quote from Charles Martel, the Frankish leader who in the eighth century stopped the Islamic advance at the Battle of Tours; the use of the term "remigration" for the return of illegal or non-integrated immigrants; attendance at conferences of nationalist student associations; support for the "Stolzmonat" (National Pride Month), a patriotic campaign in response to the globalist Pride Month.
It even considers it suspicious that he organized a book market where an antiquarian offered editions of Ernst Jünger or Hofmannsthal. In this logic, selling a copy of The German Reader for 64 euros is already a threat to the republic.
The "Nibelungenlied" is a thirteenth-century German epic that tells the story of Siegfried, a hero who kills a dragon, conquers a treasure, and dies betrayed. It's a song of loyalty, honor, and tragedy, with no happy endings: all the protagonists fall.
For centuries it was a central part of German culture, equivalent in symbolic weight to the Cantar de Mio Cid in Spain. In the incriminated article, Paul criticized the regional government for not taking advantage of the filming of the movie Hagen – Im Tal der Nibelungen as an opportunity to project the image of Rhineland-Palatinate.
In this, the story is described as one of "great men and women who do what must be done, because they remain true to their values and, with that, to themselves." For the Verfassungsschutz, that description isn't literature: it's "dangerous nationalism."
The accusation borders on the absurd when it's added that, in 2022, Paul commented on the Amazon series The Rings of Power, drawing parallels between nationalism and the "Conservative Revolution" of the New Right.
The political reading of Tolkien has a long tradition, from Elémire Zolla to Michel Houellebecq, including Giorgia Meloni, but for the bureaucrats of Mainz, recalling that the peoples of Middle-earth fight for their survival already implies an "ethnic concept of people." Seen this way, the institution starts to resemble the Eye of Sauron more than a guardian of the Constitution.
The report also labels as unconstitutional Paul's description of the degradation of the Hemshof neighborhood, attributing it to the high percentage of immigrants and dependence on state aid. In this logic, even stating the obvious becomes extremism.
Since the federal government, under then Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, promoted the classification of AfD as a "confirmed extremist," the Verfassungsschutz has perfected a hermeneutics of suspicion: it doesn't sanction acts, but atmospheres; it doesn't combat arguments, but mental associations.
Ludwigshafen, the scene of this ban, is a post-industrial city with high rates of crime and ethnic tensions. There, AfD obtained more than 20% in the last national elections.
In Oggersheim, the birthplace district of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, it even won. For the political elites, the fact that their candidate arrived with real chances at the mayoralty was inadmissible. Thus, German democracy avoided the risk of losing at the polls by eliminating the candidate before he could compete. The fact that this happens in Germany, a country that in Latin America is presented as an example of the rule of law, should set off all the alarms.
In the United States, a politician can run even with 91 criminal charges. In Israel, a prime minister can remain in office during a war. Within Germany, interpreting a medieval epic may be enough to be declared incompatible with democracy.
It's not a system failure: it's its function. A system that doesn't defeat its adversaries, classifies them; that doesn't censor opinions, labels them; that doesn't fear ideas, fears the meaning they may have.
If even someone who only spoke about Siegfried can no longer run, politics has ceased to be a competition of ideas to become a bureaucratic procedure watched over by the All-Seeing Eye.
AfD summarizes it bluntly: what happened in Ludwigshafen is an act of constitutional rupture that won't withstand judicial scrutiny.
They denounce that Mayor Steinruck (former SPD member) personally commissioned the Verfassungsschutz report, possibly in coordination with the Social Democratic Interior Minister, to justify the unjustifiable: that writing about the Nibelungen saga or interpreting Tolkien from a conservative angle is grounds for electoral exclusion.
They warn that if this decision is consolidated, it will set a dangerous precedent for the entire country. They promise to fight, not only for their candidate, but for the right to vote of that 23.4% of Ludwigshafen residents who, whether the establishment likes it or not, have already chosen them as the second political force.
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