The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is holding a two-week congress to prepare for next year's European elections with the 600 delegates so divided on the very existence of the European Union that the party leadership has decided to choose candidates first and leave for the next week -or the following- the discussion of the program.
Europe is the hot potato of a far-right formation that celebrates its tenth anniversary with 20% of voting intentions in the polls, only four points behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and well ahead of the three coalition parties of Government: Social Democrats (SPD) Greens and Liberals (FDP). The AFD wants to govern and the motto is 'No scandals'. And the current European program is, even if its execution is impossible: abolition of the European Parliament, departure from the single currency in favor of the introduction of the German mark and outright rejection of the European institutions.. The opposite, the most far-right sectors believe, would be betraying the voters and renouncing the founding bases that now make it the second political force in the demoscopia.
The AfD's program for the 2021 Bundestag elections stated: “We consider it necessary for Germany to leave the European Union and establish a new European economic and interest community.”. For some in the party, this is going too far, also because it makes it difficult to cooperate in the European Parliament with politicians from other European states who otherwise pursue similar goals to those of the AfD.
The AfD co-presidents, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, want a change in the European strategy, but on the first day of this marathon congress it became clear that there is strong opposition, hence the postponement of the debate. It will therefore be the candidate who joins the program and not the other way around.. In theory, this principle of “candidates first, program second” could lead to candidates running who do not fully support the program with which the party enters the election campaign.. But Weidel doesn't care. “It is about the legal certainty of the list. For legal reasons, it should not be extended for too long.. In addition, the candidates, if they are also delegates, have the opportunity to participate in the debate of the program”, maintains.
The proposal of the European presentation of the executive copies the pragmatism of the anti-European parties with a presence in the European Parliament and which gave the British nationalist Nigel Farage so much success with Brexit. Farage has been one of the most repeated names in the interventions of the delegates.
“Only in cooperation with other patriotic parties can we achieve our goal”, is the motto of the party leadership. In other words, the EU must be fought and refounded from within, a reasoning that does not convince the majority either, since “our work is not in Brussels but in Germany”, they allege.
The discussion will be bare-chested, a new pulse of power between hunger and the desire to eat. And the hungry one is Bjorn Höcke, leader of the most extremist and most successful branch at the polls. His influence on the party is unquestionable.. Höcke's name, among others, appears on an amendment to the main motion of the European electoral program. It reads like this: “The AfD recognizes the EU as a failure and as irreformable”. The motion also contains a notable sentence regarding Germany's defense policy.. It demands “that the states of Europe finally take responsibility for their own security into their own hands instead of fleeing under the supposed protective umbrella of a distant and self-serving hegemon.”
Despite the repulsiveness that the EU produces to the German extreme right, the competition to top the list in the parliamentary elections next year is fierce. 30 candidacies have been presented, to which a delegate reacted from her site that “this is chaos, we have a lack of discipline.”
polemics
One of the favorites is Maximilian Krah, a less controversial character. When he talks about Germany's role in the EU, he says things like these: “I always compare it to a woman who gets beaten up at home, but she doesn't leave voluntarily either, usually you have to help her, show her an alternative.”
Krah affirms that “many want me as the main candidate and I am ready, but we will do another risk analysis before making decisions”. Krah appears in several reports by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which examine how dangerous the AfD is for democracy.. He is currently suspended from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, of which the AfD is a part in the European Parliament, due to fraud accusations.
The “risk analysis” shows that making Krah's wish come true is anything but a foregone conclusion, as instead of bringing hope many in the AfD see him as a potential danger to the party, especially now that the polls support them.
“We are ready for more. In Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia we can become the most voted force. Although you have to remain humble, the polls are not electoral results,” Chrupalla said, referring to the three regional elections to be held next year in eastern Germany and in which some polls show the AfD as the most voted party. .
In order to be part of the Government, however, he would need an alliance with the CDU, which has a prohibition on cooperating with the extreme right in its statutes..
Chrupalla said his party is willing to make coalitions with anyone who makes “a policy in the interest of the citizens” but expressly excluded The Greens, calling that party “the most dangerous in Germany.”. The AfD leader attacked the sanctions against Russia in his speech and said that The Greens, a minority partner of the current government coalition, had taken advantage of the war in Ukraine to suspend the purchase of Russian gas at low prices, which they had previously had as their objective. political.
“The Greens want war with China and with Russia. The green we have is olive green,” said Chrupalla, who blamed Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, also of the Greens, for drawing Germany into the war in Ukraine.. AfD is against sending arms to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.
The AfD congress in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, has brought hundreds of citizens to the streets, but that is as common at party events as the patriotic menu -based on sausages- that is sold outside the room or remote observers of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.