The AfD presents two ultra candidates for the German Chancellorship
The general elections to be held in Germany on September 26 will not be the turning point that the most moderate sectors of the populist formation Alternative for Germany (AfD) intended to take advantage of to encapsulate the most radical wing of the party. In primaries with barely 48.14% participation, the bases of the AfD have chosen the candidacy for the Chancellery of the right-wing Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, against the moderates Joana Cotar and Joachim Wundrak.
According to the results of the online vote -open since March 17 to 32,000 AfD militants and released this Tuesday-, the Weidel-Chrupalla duo received 71% of the votes. The opposing couple, 24%.
The victory of Weidel and Chrupalla is the defeat of the AfD president and MEP Jörg Meuthen, who has tried to impose moderation throughout a term that, after the results of this vote, will foreseeably have an expiration date at the next party congress. .
Weidel and Chrupalla are not part of the so-called Der Flüge (the Wing) of the party, led by the radical nationalist Björn Höcke, but they have been and are the most compromising with an ideology and propaganda that have given the formation important electoral successes in the eastern states of the country, formerly the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Polls currently place the AfD in fourth position, behind the Greens, the conservative CDU-CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).. The election of a two-headed candidacy reveals that the AfD does not aspire to win the elections, but to gather forces to consolidate the 12% achieved four years ago. Without the support of the most radical sectors, such as Der Flüge, this result would not be possible, since they are the ones that underpin the raison d'être of a party grown in the rejection of fundamental values and principles within the framework of a European Union.
The AfD grew under the cover of the refugee crisis and have also tried to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to sow opposition in the streets to the policy of restrictions of the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The infiltration of neo-Nazi groups and members of the AfD in the demonstrations against the restrictions, some of them organized by the Querdenken denialist movement, have not gone unnoticed by the Prosecutor's Office. Part of the AfD and Querdenken have been placed under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Interior secret services)
The choice of Weidel and Chrupalla as defenders of the “essence” of the AfD was an announced chronicle. In the congress held last month by the party for the approval of what will be its electoral program, the correlation of forces was made clear. Höcke's candidates did not prevail in the nomination of candidacies due to the rejection of the more moderate groups in the West of the country, but Der Flüge was key in all the votes. And de facto, they favored Weidel and Chrupalla to serve as a bridge between the different currents, that is, to guarantee the existence of the Wing.
In one way or another, Höcke always appears in all the internal affairs of the party, which seems not to care about the controversies that this character generates and involves.
Last week, the Prosecutor's Office even proceeded to search his home in the course of a hate crime investigation. Höcke posted on his Facebook page a photo of activist Carola Rackete, captain of one of the boats that rescue migrants at sea, with a phrase: “I imported torture, sexual violence, human trafficking and murder.”
The AfD approved last month the electoral program with which it will compete in the autumn elections, but left the door open to make-up changes once the candidates are chosen. Weidel and Chrupalla will now have to put their stamp on it and will do so by adding radicalism to a text that already advocates leaving the European Union, full control of national borders, rejection of migration and Islam, for reversing the pluralistic society that is the German one.