Chancellor Angela Merkel and her allies "want to dissolve our Germany like a piece of soap under a warm jet of water", Björn Höcke told a crowd of supporters this week. "But we're the ones who are going to turn off the tap."
Such bold images are typical of Mr Höcke, a leading light in the far-right Alternative for Germany and one of the country's most controversial politicians. For years, he has been dismissed as a fringe phenomenon, a firebrand who even people in his own party liken to Joseph Goebbels. After this weekend he will be difficult to ignore.
Voters in the east German state of Thuringia elect a new parliament on Sunday, and under Mr Höcke's leadership in the region, the AfD is on course to double its share of the vote. That would not only cement the former history teacher's status in the party but also that of the hard-right, nationalist faction, known as the "Wing", which he leads.
One survey published on Thursday put the AfD on 24 per cent, up from 10.6 per cent in 2014 and on a par with Ms Merkel's Christian Democratic Union - a deeply humiliating outcome for a party that ruled Thuringia for 24 of the past 29 years.
Yet however strongly the AfD performs on Sunday, it has no chance of gaining real power in Thuringia for now. No other party will have anything to do with it.
Bodo Ramelow, Thuringia's current prime minister, is scathing of Mr Höcke. The region he governs carries deep scars of Germany's Nazi past: about 56,000 people met their death in the Buchenwald concentration camp, 20km from the capital Erfurt, while a local firm, Topf and Sons, made the crematoria ovens for Auschwitz.
"Before, there was always a moral red line that prevented people here identifying with extremist parties, and that was the Holocaust," said Mr Ramelow. "Höcke is to blame that this . . . line has been crossed."
He recalled a speech in 2017 in which Mr Höcke criticised Berlin's memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, saying the Germans were the "only people in the world that have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital". He also called for a "180-degree U-turn" in Germany's approach to the Nazi past.
Mr Höcke also horrified moderates in his party last year when he took part in a "silent protest" alongside football hooligans and neo-Nazis in the city of Chemnitz, following the killing of a local man by a suspected asylum seeker.
Yet regardless of how much Germany's mainstream politicians vilify and sideline Mr Höcke and the AfD, it has brilliantly succeeded in disrupting the German party system. Since the AfD's rise, it has become much harder to form workable coalition governments, both on a federal and regional level.
Thuringia is ruled by Die Linke, a hard-left group with its roots in the East German Communist party, in an alliance with the Social Democrats and Greens. Mr Ramelow, a former trade union leader, is one of Die Linke's most popular politicians.
But the three parties are unlikely to win enough votes on Sunday to maintain their alliance. Thanks to the AfD, the region could become ungovernable.
Mr Höcke delights in his powers of disruption. At a rally in the town of Sömmerda this week he said he wanted to sweep away the "mildew of political correctness" that had spread across Germany. He also railed against illegal immigrants, leftwing bias in the media, wind turbines and the "hysterical" campaign against global warming. "Say yes to diesel!" he shouted, to fervent applause.
Such rhetoric has earned him a fanatical following. More moderate AfD leaders complain of a Höcke personality cult - a perception fuelled by an official "Wing" website selling coffee mugs and bags with his image on them.
Indeed many conservatives in the AfD will eye Sunday's election result with mixed feelings. A strong result will be good for the party, but will also embolden Mr Höcke and his Wing. It could strengthen the perception among ordinary Germans that the AfD is a movement in which rightwing extremists are gaining the upper hand. That is bad news for moderates who see the AfD as just a bit more conservative than the Christian Democrats, and would one day like to form coalitions with them.
Polling data shows that Mr Höcke is just as polarising within the ranks of the AfD as in the population at large. "My impression is that a lot of people vote AfD despite - rather than because of - Björn Höcke," said André Brodocz, a political scientist at Erfurt university. "The people who really love him are not representative of the AfD's electorate."
Mr Höcke has also been hurt by the blowback that ensued after a rightwing radical tried to stage a massacre in a synagogue in the eastern town of Halle this month. Germany's interior minister called the AfD "spiritual arsonists" who, with their nationalist rhetoric, had prepared the ground for the attack. It was clear he had politicians like Mr Höcke in mind.
Stefan Möller, an AfD MP in Thuringia, said the accusation was "a typical verbal aggression against us". "The aim is to try to squeeze us out of society," he said.
In Sömmerda, there were more Höcke fans than detractors. Hans Studer, a pensioner, said he was a "very intelligent man", unfairly targeted in the media. "People constantly take things he says out of context," he said. "It's just downright malicious."
But during a recent television debate between the Thuringian party leaders, one woman in the studio audience had a different view. "Herr Höcke, I just have to say that I'm really scared of you," said Brigitte Kreis. "Not of AfD voters - you have to explain to them better why democracy is important. But I'm truly afraid of this politician."
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