Alternative to Germany, initially a Eurosceptic formation, now welcomes ultra-nationalists, populists and xenophobes
In just a decade, the controversial Alternative for Germany (AfD) has undergone a total transformation from a Eurosceptic formation to an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic, populist and xenophobic party. “They will have given us up for dead in two or three years, but our success will continue,” said its president, Tino Chrupalla, on Monday, marking the 10th anniversary of the most radical party, but also the most isolated, in the German political spectrum. A testament to the ideological shift towards neo-Nazism is the fact that of the 18 AfD founders who founded the party a decade ago in the small town of Oberusel, in the central state of Hesse, 13 have since left, two have died and only three have died. still connected. Alternative for Germany’s parents were mainly professors, politicians and economic experts who were critical of the policies of the European Union and its headquarters in Brussels.
“We founded the party in 2013 because the European Union wanted to break the Lisbon treaties. Because the euro was introduced under the wrong conditions and with the intention of making an electoral offer to those who were dissatisfied with the measures taken by the federal government to save the single currency,” explains Markus Keller, grandson of a Jew who was murdered in the Nazi camp of Auschwitz, who left the AfD years ago because of the party’s “unbearable” ideological drift. When asked whether he would re-establish Alternative for Germany, the formation’s former first treasurer, Norbert Stenzel, replies today: “on no way. Moreover, it is now a threat to democracy and that is the most unfortunate thing. And the first president, the professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, Bernd Lucke, has not even wanted to comment on the round anniversary of its foundation “I’m sorry for what it has become,” he said laconically in an interview five years ago.
Lucke was the first Alternative for Germany leader to live in his own flesh, leading to the massive infiltration of his formation by far-right elements. At the 2015 federal congress in Essen, just two years after its establishment, he lost the power struggle and was removed from the presidency by Frauke Petry, an ambitious politician from the moderate wing, who was also swallowed up by the far-right AfD. in 2017. Jörg Meuthen, his successor at the head of the party, succumbed in 2022. Three presidents in nine years who threw in the towel and left the Alternative for Germany when they were outnumbered by the most radical wing. Despite this, the AfD seems solid in the election polls. The Politbarometer, the political barometer of the public television channel ZDF, gave them 15% of the vote in a national poll at the end of January. That is five points more than in the general election in the fall of 2021. Fears of inflation, high energy prices and the war in Ukraine have again given wings to a formation that won voters during the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016.
However, they are still marginalized by the rest of the political forces. All parties with parliamentary representation in the Bundestag respect the pact not to support or unite Alternative for Germany at national, regional or local level. Despite everything, the current leader of the German lower house, Alice Weidel, is optimistic about future elections. Particularly strong in the east of the country, on the territory of the extinct German Democratic Republic, the AfD hopes to succeed in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia by 2024. for the government in an East German state,” said Weidel in a recent interview. A dream that hardly comes true. If necessary, the rest of the parties, conservatives, social democrats, liberals, greens and the left, will form coalitions that will support the to avoid the creation of a far-right executive.
The most famous face among the right-wing extremists of the AfD is undoubtedly Björn Höcke, chairman of the party in the state of Thuringia. In 2017, he described the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin as a ‘monument of shame’. This and other statements of the same tone that downplay the crimes of Nazism have earned him permanent observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s internal intelligence service. Those who have left the formation, frightened by this kind of nonsense, calculate that 40% of the affiliates are extreme right, neo-Nazis or “Reichsbürger”, the so-called citizens of the Reich who deny the existence of the Federal Republic and defend the legality of the Imperial era, more than a century ago. And while it has been repeatedly claimed to be a short-lived party, the truth is that Alternative for Germany has established itself on the German political scene. The current leaders, Chrupalla and Weidel, see this as a “significant success” and hope their formation will continue to reap triumphs thanks to the dissatisfied and the protest votes.
Source: La Verdad
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