Imagine a man running for mayor and the local election authorities disqualify him because he praised a “Lord of the Rings” television mini-series, made the “okay” sign with his fingers, and went to a book fair.
That’s what’s happened to Joachim Paul. He was the front-runner in the mayoral race in the working-class German city of Ludwigshafen (population: 180,000) when the local election council, which is supposed to be politically neutral, declared that he could not run in the September 21 mayoral election. The council relied upon an analysis by the Ministry of Interior, which is the equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, for the Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) state.
As evidence that Paul was a threat to the Constitution, the Ministry quoted from Paul’s praise of the Amazon series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” “The protagonists in ‘Lord of the Rings’ fight for a cause that is greater than themselves,” Paul wrote for an Austrian magazine in 2022, “the homeland, the continuation of their culture, a just order, the defense against a world danger. They are prepared to risk their lives for it.”
Said Paul, “They say that, by writing positively about ‘Lord of the Rings,’ I want to support nationalism and the ‘Conservative Revolution’. But I didn’t mention nationalism. I didn’t mention ‘Conservative Revolution.’ It’s all made up. The intent was to draw a picture of me as somebody who is far right…. [U.S. Vice President] J.D. Vance nor Giorgia Maloni, the president of Italy, couldn’t run for office in Ludwigshafen.”
Paul is the candidate for the right-wing populist and nationalist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), which advocates for repatriating immigrants back to their native countries and other policies with which reasonable people might disagree.
But one need not agree with any of AfD’s politics to see that the reasons given by the Interior Ministry for Rhineland-Palatinate, which is supposed to focus on potentially violent extremists, are frivolous or highly subjective.
For example, the Interior Ministry accused him of making the “OK” sign. “Leftist groups say making the OK sign means white power,” he said, “but it’s crazy to talk about the OK sign as a white power sign.”
One of the Ministry’s bullet points notes that “On 18 and 19 of October 2024, Joachim Paul was invited to a book bazaar in the ‘Quartier Kirschstein.’ Among other things, the Chemnitz-based ’Antiquariat Zeitenstrom’ exhibited various right-wing literature there.”
Paul says the “right-wing literature” they are referring to is Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel, a classic of German war literature taught in universities that some on the Left say glorifies war and violence.
“To consider these books as right-wing is childish,” said Paul. “Literature is literature. Even if I read right-wing books, that doesn’t mean I agree with every single word. No book has for me the value of a party program. It’s crazy thinking.”
Paul’s Social Democrat opponents weaponized both the Ministry and the local election council, he says.
“I was a member of an election council and I approved every candidate, left, right, and ecological [Green]. Their duty is only to check formal correctness, not political positions,” Paul said. “But now the Social Democrats have developed a strategy to weaponize election councils.”
All of this occurs within the context of widespread censorship by the German government, despite Germany’s ostensible status as a liberal democracy. What the government is doing to Paul is, he says, a new and “hidden strategy… my case is unique.”
Paul’s lawyer is confident that the electoral court is in violation of the constitution. Still, it has kept Paul off the ballot, stating that if higher courts rule in Paul’s favor, they will conduct the election again.
“The federal constitution says that you can be stripped of your right to run for office only by a court and only if you are convicted of dangerous crimes like sabotage, espionage, or defrauding elections,” said Paul. “But the court said, ‘We don’t want to discuss this any further. Even if it’s not constitutional, we can’t fix it on this level anyway, and so it’s better to have the election now. They’ve opened the door to weaponizing the council for party politics to get rid of opponents.”
What is going on? Why is the German government openly undermining democracy?
