The German extreme right chooses its candidates for a European Parliament in which it does not believe

The polarization that the European Union (EU) causes in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party will make it impossible to even discuss the program with which it will run in the 2024 European elections. The date for next weekend that the party Executive had set at the congress that is being held in the capital of Saxony-Anhalt is finally diluted to January. “Things could get tough. We hope we can manage with night sessions but if there is no agreement we will not have the debate program until January next year,” said AfD co-president Tino Chrupalla.. His partner in charge, Alice Weidel, already assumes that “it is very likely that we will not get the program and we will have to leave in January.”

This would mean that the only result of this congress, focused exclusively on Europe, would be the preparation of the list for the European Parliament, an institution in which he does not believe and for which he has come to ask, and therein lies the irony, its dissolution.

The list was closed this Saturday. The maximum number was 30 people and, to enter the competition, the congressmen established, among other requirements, a minimum of five years of professional activity outside of politics, a minimum time of affiliation to the party to avoid potential careerists and good English skills. After a seven-minute presentation speech, the candidates had to submit to two questions. One of the AfD's mantras is transparency..

The election of the head of the list for the elections that will allow the AfD to fight, from within, against some community institutions that they consider “undemocratic” and “pernicious”, was less painful. Four candidates stood but the balance was clearly tipped towards Maximilian Krah MEP. And there have been no surprises. krah is one of them. He has published a book entitled Politics from the Right through Götz Kubitschek's ultra-right publishing house Antaios, which is monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.. The first edition is already sold out.. Krah appears in several places in reports from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which examine how dangerous the AfD is for democracy.

As a lawyer, he represented protesters from the Pegida anti-immigration movement and the group of men who tied an Iraqi refugee to a tree, but that, he rightly asserts, is guaranteeing the right to defense guaranteed to all by the Constitution.

His ideas breed quotes that equate EU membership with “a woman who gets beat up at home, but she doesn't leave voluntarily; usually you have to help her, show her an alternative”. On social platforms, he explains on video to a target group of young men that they should not watch porn and should not vote green. “Real men are on the right,” he says.

All this is not a disadvantage, but rather an advantage for a career in the AfD. So much so that analysts consider Krah a threat to Chrupalla. With his support for his candidacy, the co-chair confirms that he prefers to have him in Brussels and Strasbourg rather than in Berlin.

hard to control

But Krah, in addition to being charismatic and skilled, is a difficult character to control.. “Attackable” is the word most used by friends and enemies when they talk about him. The list of his attack points is long. He was suspended for three months from the Identity and Democracy (ID) fraction, of which the AfD is a part in the European Parliament, due to accusations of fraud. In 2022, he was punished with the same sanction for supporting Éric Zemmour in the French electoral campaign instead of Marine Le Pen, who belongs to ID, founded in 2019. Its leader is Marco Zanni, from the Italian xenophobic party Liga. Also members of this group are the Austrian FPÖ, the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy Party, the Danish People's Party and the Estonian Conservative People's Party.