After Andreas Kalbitz was banned from the AfD, Höcke has been the sole leader of the party's far-right Der Flügel faction, which the German government's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared a suspected right-wing extremist organization.

In October 2015, one day after a knife attack on Cologne mayor Henriette Reker, during the political talkshow "Günther Jauch", otherwise a popular TV entertainer with Germany's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Höcke pulled out a small German flag and stated "3000 years of Europe, 1000 years of Germany".

[19] In the 2019 Thuringian state election, the AfD, led by Höcke, more than doubled its vote share to 23%, overtaking the opposition's major party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to place second.

In 2021, Jörg Meuthen, moderate co-leader of AfD attempted to remove Höcke from the party on account of his alleged racism, but failed.

He was accused to have ended a speech in May with the phrase Alles für Deutschland [de] ("All/Everything for Germany") that was used by the Hitlerian regime's SA and whose use is illegal under insignia legislation.

It is its biggest share of the vote ever captured by the party and the first time AfD placed first in a federal state election.

The family obituary for Höcke’s grandmother features the coat of arms of the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen, an organization for people displaced from East Prussia.

"[36] Höcke has used the term “Lebensraum,” which was used by Nazis to refer to territorial expansion and has questioned why this phrase is denounced by the German public.

[40][41][42] Höcke has expressed public support for the far-right ecologist magazine Die Kehre (The Turning), which has been published since 2020 in an attempt to "reclaim" environmental conservation from the left.

[44][citation needed] Höcke has called for more Prussian virtues and promotes natalist views, specifically the "three-child family as a political and social model.

[54][55] In 2015 Höcke was accused of having contributed to Heise's journal People in Motion (Volk in Bewegung) & The Reichsbote [de] under a pseudonym ("Landolf Ladig").

Höcke denied having ever written for NPD papers, but refused to give a statutory declaration as demanded by the AfD Federal Executive Board.

"[60][63] As a result of his speech, the majority of leaders of the AfD asked in February 2017 that Björn Höcke be expelled from the party.

[67] Björn Höcke was accused by the Halle (Saale) public prosecutor's office of having proclaimed the slogan: "Everything for our homeland, everything for Saxony-Anhalt, everything for Germany!"

[76] After Höcke complained publicly about the incident, the Heute-show, a late night satirical news program, started to systematically use "Bernd" for his first name as a running gag.

[83][84] In December 2020, the AfD of North Rhine-Westphalia accidentally invited journalists to a party event where "Herrn [Mr.] Bernd Höcke" would be present.

The campaign network Campact started this petition and set the goal of collecting 1.7 million signatures, to urge the German government to action.

Legal scholar Gertrude Lübbe-Wolf first introduced the idea of using article 18 of the constitution to defend German democracy, in a way that would be less radical than banning the whole political party (the AfD).