Overview

• Matthias Brandt is scheduled to deliver a speech in Berlin on July 20 marking the 81st anniversary of Claus von Stauffenberg’s attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler.
• In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, the actor warned that fear-driven demonization of right-wing radicalism gives it undue power.
• He argued that Germans should name the simplicity and stupidity of extremist ideologies instead of magnifying their influence through anxiety.
• Drawing on his father Willy Brandt’s experience as a wartime resistor, he said modern society remains paralyzed in confronting radical forces.
• His address comes as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s classification of the AfD as a right-wing extremist group remains legally suspended.