Horst Strub was an enthusiastic young member of Germany’s neo-Nazi NDP party. Monika Strub, 35, is running for Baden-Württemberg’s state parliament for the nation’s socialist Left party. But they have more in common than their political differences would imply.

In fact, they’re the same person, reports German news site TheLocal.de. Until gender-reassignment surgery, “Horst” sported “cropped hair, a beard and a bomber jacket,” TheLocal says, embracing “the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party (NPD) from 2000 to 2002.”

“Monica” is now a nurse and photographer “who decided to go ahead and campaign for the Social Democrats after convincing the party that she really had changed, not just in terms of her gender but also in her political beliefs,” according to UK site OrangeNews.

“I am not trying to hide my past and I never have done, either from the fact that I was a man or the fact that I was a member of the far right scene – but now I am a different person and I have completely broken ties with the NPD. I am a true socialist.”

Not all her compatriots agree. “I have now become a victim of far-right harassment, I have had numerous threats from people who feel I betrayed the NPD. My home has also been vandalized with graffiti,” Strub tells Orange.

Christoph Kröpel, a spokesman for the Left party in the state of Baden-Württemberg, described Strub’s history with the NPD as a “youthful transgression” – and said she had “fundamentally changed,” Orange reports.

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