Earlier this month, Politico leaked an internal strategy document from Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In a closed meeting, the AfD parliamentary group was shown a PowerPoint presentation titled “Introduction to the Strategy Process” that provided insight into the 3D chess the party is playing to outwit all its opponents.

The AfD wants to tear down the Brandmauer, or firewall — the mainstream parties’ informal pledge not to work with the far right — and turn the party’s leader, Alice Weidel, into Germany’s next chancellor. That’s all to be expected. What’s more interesting is that Die Linke, of all parties, is set to play a key role in this. The strategy paper envisions as a first bullet point a “cultural polarization between the AfD and Die Linke”: The AfD wants to instigate a contrived culture war with Die Linke in order to split the entire party spectrum into “bourgeois conservative vs. radical left.” Then the AfD would be left as the only possible partner for the governing Christian Democrats. The firewall would fall — and the AfD’s path to a position in the government, or even the chancellorship, would be open. That’s the plan so far.

The AfD is probably somewhat overestimating how “radical-left” the Social Democrats under their leader, Lars Klingbeil, and the Greens under Franziska Brantner really are. But there’s more to it than that. Die Linke can in any case be grateful to the AfD for making it so unmistakably clear that the culture war is a trap. Now they can more calmly hone their profile as a party focused on class-based politics, as important sections of the organization intend to do anyway.