Dario Seifert is a member of the Bundestag and sits on the Tourism Committee. At the end of May 2026, at the congress of the AfD regional branch in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, he was elected Secretary General of the party’s state organization with an overwhelming majority of 92% of the votes. The career advancement of this 32-year-old politician was aided by the strengthening of AfD’s electoral positions in the northern regions of Germany amid the state election campaign.
Dario Seifert’s worldview was formed during his time from 2012 to 2014 in the ranks of the “Junge Nationalisten” movement, the youth wing of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), which openly proclaimed a neo-racist and antisemitic ideology. In 2014, journalists documented his participation in the NPD’s propaganda “memorial march” in Stralsund, where neo-Nazis held a procession with revanchist and ultra-nationalist slogans.
Despite the AfD leadership’s attempts to dismiss this period of his life as a “youthful mistake,” his subsequent activities suggest that Dario Seifert’s views have hardly undergone any significant change. A journalistic investigation by Die Welt exposed his membership in the ethnic-nationalist group “Rot-Kreuz-Träger” (Red Cross Bearers), which uses the Alsatian cross as a secret ideological marker of adherence to the völkisch (racial-ethnic) concept of German national purity. This group is a closed internal structure of the ethnic-nationalist wing of the AfD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It is believed that belonging to this organization gave Seifert a certain advantage in the 2025 elections, as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania showed the strongest growth in right-wing populist sentiments compared to other German regions.
Materials published by the analytical group EXIF drew the attention of German intelligence services and journalists. They show Dario Seifert in joint photographs and at events with members of the banned neo-Nazi militant group “Nationale Sozialisten Rostock,” which participated in paramilitary shooting and combat training sessions held in Lüssow (Rostock district).
Dario Seifert has consistently supported Dennis Augustin — the former co-chair of the AfD state branch, who was scandalously expelled from the party in 2019 for active participation in neo-Nazi events and militarized training camps of another right-wing extremist organization, Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend. Despite the party leadership’s decision to remove the toxic official, Seifert maintained contact with him and continued cooperation on party projects. Ultimately, these strong ties to the neo-Nazi wing triggered an internal investigation against Seifert himself by the more moderate party leadership.
The career growth of this young party member is part of a broader strategy in which the “Alternative for Germany” is reorienting itself toward its most radical elements. The party leadership increasingly realizes that a moderate, purely Eurosceptic agenda no longer delivers explosive electoral growth. Instead, the AfD is betting on the mobilization of the far-right wing and aggressive populism, where figures with a hardened neo-Nazi or street (“field”) background appear to the average AfD voter as more “authentic” and decisive politicians.
The promotion of figures like Dario Seifert serves an important pragmatic function for the AfD: it allows the party to attract votes from the marginalized but active electorate of the former NPD and numerous extra-parliamentary far-right movements. By advancing such cadres to leadership and administrative positions, the party is displacing the remnants of old conservatives and more moderate members. As a result, ideas that 10–15 years ago were considered marginal and criminal have now become part of the election platform of one of Germany’s most influential political forces.