In 2003, hardcore Anti-German activists took to the streets in 2003 to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. At rallies in support of Israel’s assaults on Southern Lebanon and Gaza, Anti-German forces belted out chants alongside far-right Jewish Defense League militants and flew Israeli flags beside the red and black banners familiar to anti-fascist forces. One of the movement’s top ideologues, the Austrian political scientist Stephan Grigat, oversees an ironically named astroturf group, Stop The Bomb, that advocates unilateral bombing campaigns against Iran. Grigat collaborates closely with right-wing outfits like the Simon Weisenthal Center as well as ultra-Zionist BAK Shalom allies like Die Linke’s Petra Pau.

There might only be about several thousand Germans who identify with the Anti-German sensibility. The movement’s intellectual avant-garde, a collection of dour critical theorists and political scientists gathered around obscure journals like Bahamas, numbers at most in the low hundreds. According to BAK Shalom spokesman and Die Linke member Benjamin Kruger, his organization contains only 140 members. But thanks to the Holocaust guilt that consumes German society, these elements operate on fertile territory. As the translator and anti-racist activist Maciej Zurowski explained, by infiltrating Die Linke and the Social Democratic Party’s youth groups, along with key left-wing institutions like the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, “[Anti-German elements] are strategically well placed to promote ‘young talent’, while cutting off their opponents’ money supply.”

Previously limited to the top-heavy realms of the country’s political and financial establishment, it is through such sectarian groups that the pro-Israel lobby finally secured a base within the German left.