“The Schlandpfe”: A Smurf video becomes a right-wing propaganda film

Smurfette would vote for AfD. At least that’s the message of a popular Internet video. The cartoon clip shows the actually apolitical Smurfs as being below “Complete monitoring” and “population exchange” sufferers “Schlandpfe” – and demonstrates how right-wing populists turn children’s series into propaganda films.

Already in the intro of the video it becomes clear: The idyllic Schlumpfhausen has become a kind of Reich citizens’ commune. A narrator’s voice begins to speak: “In a country that until recently had a strong economy and enough prosperity for everyone, suddenly the worm has appeared.” An episode of The Smurfs actually begins with a different sentence, but the voice is that of the original speaker Jochen Striebeck.

The maker of the video cloned Striebeck’s voice using an AI program and can make her say any sentence – including right-wing propaganda. For example, dark forces have taken possession of the soul of the country and are now trying to destroy it from within. “Everything has to be different here”shouts villain Gargamel from his tower. “Man is woman and woman is man, pronouns for vegetables and carpets, hormone therapy for children.”

The evil wizard embodies that “Woke dictatorship”in which the new right-wing Germany believes that the Smurfs stand for the AfD and its voters who support the “technocratic neo-feudalism” want to stop.

How the Smurfs became AfD mascots

The video is from the Facebook page “Snickers for left-handers” published, which is run by the satirist Willy Kramer. Kramer once worked for the satirical magazine “Additional 3”, he drifted away during the corona pandemic. Today he sees the world “into a pure shitshow with premium access” transformed. The human soul is subjected to systematic rectal rape.

His posts contain conspiracy theories and fake news, and most of his statements seem confusing. Kramer prefers to create deepfakes. These are AI-falsified images and videos of politicians, celebrities, film heroes – and now the Smurfs.

It is no coincidence that the Smurfs are now being misused as AfD mascots: at the end of February, the headmaster of the Richard Wossidlo High School in Ribnitz-Damgarten (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) contacted the police with a similar case. A 16-year-old student had a video with the title, among other things “The Smurfs and Germany have something in common” posted on Tiktok. Both – according to the video – are blue, the color of the AfD.

Overall, the young people’s appearance on social media seemed as if they were drifting to the right. The headmaster probably wanted to avert this by contacting the authorities. The police reacted rather unhappily: there was a kind of threat speech on the sidelines of the lesson. Although the school principal asked the young person out of the classroom without her classmates noticing the police, their presence still made the rounds. Right-wing media and the AfD butchered the incident “Smurf scandal” out of.

For the Schlandpfen, journalists are informers

Since then, the little blue creatures have enjoyed great popularity in the right-wing corners of the Internet. The video about the “Schlandpfe” After six days it has over 80,000 views on YouTube and is similarly popular on Facebook. The episode is titled “The informer”.

The Schlandpfe have gathered in the village square, leader Papa Schlandpf gives a speech: “From the looks of it, Gargamel wants to undermine the momentum of our successful farmers’ protests by releasing strategically placed propaganda about anti-democracy activities.” The sentence is nonsense, but the message is clear: the government is evil.

Then Papa Schlandpf warns his protégés about an informer in their own ranks. “The goal is – as always – to further divide the population”, according to the village elder’s theory, faked with AI. In the next scene, the informer turns out to be a journalist from the Correctiv medium, which published a major investigative investigation into the AfD’s secret meeting in January. This ends the two-minute clip.

Are the Smurfs Nazis?

Regardless of the current Smurf videos: The characters invented in 1958 by Pierre Culliford alias Peyo have long been under latent Nazi suspicion. In addition to various websites and forum posts dedicated to the topic, the French political scientist Antoine Buéno published in 2011 “The little blue book”which examines fascist symbols in the Smurfs.

Buéno, a lecturer at Sciences Po University in Paris, compares the world of the Smurfs to a totalitarian utopia reminiscent of Stalinist communism (Papa Smurf wears a red costume and resembles Stalin, while Clever resembles Trotsky) and National Socialism (the figure of Gargamel is an anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew). In the history “The Black Smurfs” The Smurfs are bitten by a fly that turns their skin black and makes them unable to speak. This has racist and colonial undertones, says Buéno.

The book is not a scientific work, but rather a call to action “amused vigilance”, explained the author after his book caused much outrage. In fact, he loves the Smurfs – as does the new right.