Dear friends and interested readers,
Welcome to the 18th newsletter on and against global authoritarianism, June 2026. In Germany, the CDU is tearing down the 'cordon sanitaire' instead of building it up, while the world is not boycotting the MAGA World Cup despite racist measures against its guests.
In our ReGA newsletter, you’ll find the following reports:
→ As always, we take a look at the AfD’s foreign policy, this time focusing on their participation in conferences in Portugal and Russia, AfD invitations to the Bundestag, and a number of trips abroad as parliamentary delegates in May and June.
→ Under “Europe’s Far Right,” we report on the proceedings by the EU agency APPF to ban the far-right ESN, as well as on the fight against conversion therapy at the EU level.
→ Under “International Reports,” you’ll find an English-language interview that Andrea Dip conducted with Judith Butler about their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, which first appeared in Agência Pública.
→ In our Linea B project, you can read a profile from Latin America on the far-right Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella (by Frederic Schnatterer), a background report on German fraternities in Chile by Lucius Teidelbaum, and additional news from Peru, Brazil, Honduras, Argentina, Bolivia, and Guatemala.
→ Finally, information on upcoming and past events—by and against the far right!
If you’d like to subscribe to this newsletter, please click here.
For a brief moment, one might have gotten the impression that the CDU had been mulling over a strategy against the AfD at its party headquarters and that something meaningful had come of it. “Decline for Germany” is the title of a brochure about the AfD that sharply criticizes the policies of the far right. It calls them “detrimental to democracy,” “anti-Semitic,” “ethnic nationalist, and xenophobic,” all backed up by quotes from AfD politicians. When the AfD’s parliamentary secretary, Bernd Baumann, rushed angrily to party headquarters, the CDU filmed a video for Instagram about it. The AfD is panicking, “just because we collected and wrote down quotes from the AfD—things any of you can look up online, things that are public knowledge.”
This is what a 'cordon sanitaire' might actually look like. But just two weeks later, Secretary-General Carsten Linnemann tore down not only this moment but the very idea of the 'cordon sanitaire' as a whole. In a TV interview with Welt, he said this was a “left-wing term” that had poisoned the discussion in recent years. Calls for established parties to cooperate with the AfD are growing as the elections in the east draw nearer and the far right could form a state government for the first time. Former SPD Minister-President Torsten Albig (Schleswig-Holstein) proposed to his party that they tolerate the AfD, following the model of Danish social democracy; former Chancellor Scholz disagreed. Yet the AfD’s policies have already found their way into mainstream politics. In the same interview, Linnemann emphasized: “Of course we’ve done something about migration (...) now that we’ve managed to set up deportation centers abroad, repatriation centers.”
This is because, following the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) adopted by the EU in 2024, it will be implemented across the EU starting on June 12, 2026. EU member states now have virtually no leeway in implementing the rules. The reform represents a “boost to the continued Europeanization of asylum and migration policy,” writes Bordermonitoring, criticizing the European Union and its member states for attempting to stabilize the crisis in European migration policy at the expense of asylum seekers’ rights. While the individual fundamental right to asylum and the obligations under the Geneva Convention on Refugees remain in principle intact, however, the details of the reform represent a significant setback for refugee rights. These include screening procedures under detention-like conditions at the EU’s external borders and the possibility of carrying out deportations and outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries. Furthermore, it is clear that following the asylum reform, the aim is now to tighten European deportation policy, according to Bordermonitoring.
Pro Asyl takes a very close look at de facto detention in external border proceedings, new forms of detention, and restrictions on freedom in initial reception centers, and is particularly critical of the fact that “the draft bill itself explicitly permits the detention of children.” Following deportations to Syria and Afghanistan, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) is now also planning deportation centers outside the EU. The ideas of the far right have largely been implemented, even without direct participation in governments and legislative processes.
ReGA had already reported in early April that Arian Aghashahi, a political networker with a long career in Christian Democratic circles, had moved in February 2026 to the Sovereignty Foundation of the far-right ESN and thus into the AfD camp. Aghashahi had also appeared alongside George Weinberg as CPAC Germany, and it seemed obvious that the expansion of CPAC conferences into Germany was to be expected. In mid-May, t-online also reported on these developments under the headline “Trump’s MAGA Network Expands to Germany.” In the article, Weinberg confirmed the plans but denied that the AfD was involved. In a footnote, the editorial team reports on a statement by Alexander Sell (AfD), president of the Sovereignty Foundation, that Aghashahi was no longer working for them: “We terminated the employment relationship by mutual agreement and with immediate effect at the beginning of May.”
Aghashahi has not yet commented on this, but it does indeed appear that his involvement there has come to an end. He had been announced as a representative of the foundation for the Hayek Society conference in May, but on the panel there—the so-called “Young Roundtable”—he was referred to only as a political advisor. Aghashahi used the forum to present his ideas for CPAC Germany. Not a word about the AfD; in fact, CPAC should not become “a purely party-political project.” The key, he said, is “greater synchronization of liberal and conservative networks across Europe, in Germany, and in the United States.” We will continue to monitor whether this “synchronization” is feasible without the AfD. Kathrin Anhold has written an excellent summary of the Hayek conference on lobbycontrol.