NYC Republican club to honor far-right German leader months after anti-Asian texts

A New York City Republican club will honor a far-right German political leader at its Dec. 13 gala, two months after its statewide counterpart was disbanded over leaked chats in which members praised Adolf Hitler and used racist slurs targeting Asian Americans.

What they’re planning: The New York Young Republican Club will recognize Markus Frohnmaier, the deputy chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s parliamentary group, as an “honored guest” alongside GOP Reps. Andy Ogles, Mike Collins and William Timmons at the event, Politico first reported. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, however, has labeled AfD extremist, alleging the party holds an ethnic, racial conception of the German people that violates core tenets of the country’s democratic order.

Meanwhile, the New York club has openly aligned itself with AfD’s controversial politics. In August, it published a statement declaring “AfD über alles,” adapting a phrase associated with Nazi propaganda, and in October hosted an event where an AfD staffer sang the old German national anthem containing the Nazi-linked line. The gala will take place at Cipriani Wall Street with tickets for nonmembers ranging from $799 to $30,000.

What this means: The club’s decision to honor a leader from a party labeled extremist by German intelligence represents a normalization of far-right politics that threatens Asian American communities. The pattern extends beyond this single event to documented racist rhetoric within New York Young Republican circles. The leaked Telegram chats that led to the state organization’s dissolution in October revealed specific slurs targeting Chinese and Indian Americans across 2,900 pages of exchanges from early January to mid-August. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) said its members were “deeply disgusted” by the messages, noting that “no community was spared in their hateful tirade, including Chinese and Indian Americans.”

Republican leadership’s response has been dismissive. Vice President JD Vance characterized the exchanges as “edgy, offensive jokes” from “kids” doing “stupid things,” despite the fact that chat members were men in their 20s and early 30s in government positions. When political leaders platform extremist figures without consequences and top officials minimize documented racism as jokes, it creates an environment where discrimination against Asian Americans becomes acceptable in Republican organizing spaces.

What the club is saying: Club President Stefano Forte blamed criticism of conservatives for the assassination of activist Charlie Kirk, saying that rhetoric tying conservatives to Nazis contributed to Kirk’s death. In defending the Frohnmaier invitation, the club described AfD as a model for fighting the far left and insisted their “über alles” statement was not intended to invoke Nazism, arguing the phrase referenced the song’s 19th-century author.

The club also noted that neither the first verse of the German national anthem nor “Deutschland über alles” is banned in Germany and that all verses remained legal, though only the third is used as the national anthem today. When questioned about the October event featuring the Nazi-linked anthem, a club spokesperson told Politico, “It must be an extraordinarily slow news day” and dismissed the inquiry as dishonest.