On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Alternative for Germany, co-party leader Tino Chrupalla reiterated the expectation that his party could be part of the government in Germany in the foreseeable future.
In East Germany, the AfD is the strongest party. “This makes it increasingly difficult for other parties to forge alliances against us,” he said on Monday on ZDF’s “Morgenmagazin”. Political scientists do not rule out such a development, at least at state level.
Representatives of other parties called for a clear demarcation from the AfD and for counter-protesting against the anniversary event on Monday evening in Königstein, Hesse.
Chrupalla told Bayerischer Rundfunk that other parties were already working with the AfD at the local level. “It will eventually also prevail at state and federal level, you just have to be patient.” In the coming year, new state parliaments will be elected in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia.
Co-boss Alice Weidel had spoken of an “absolutely realistic” option in view of the strong poll numbers of the AfD in the east, then being able to co-govern. However, a CDU spokesman made it clear at the beginning of the year: “We have a clear party conference decision. Any cooperation with the AfD is excluded. Our firewall to the right has to stand.”
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert called for a clear demarcation. It is crucial for the basic democratic consensus that the AfD will not be able to achieve any direct political effect in the future – not only in federal politics, but everywhere, he told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. In particular, the parties in the liberal-conservative spectrum are called upon not only to maintain the firewall to the blue-brown border, but to stabilize it.
The Mainz political scientist Jürgen Falter did not rule out a government participation of the AfD at state level in the long term. “It will take a while before the AfD governs in a federal state, but it cannot be ruled out – see the experience with the left -” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ).
The Berlin political scientist Hajo Funke assumes that the AfD will not gain in importance nationwide in the next ten years. “With its radical orientation, the AfD will remain trapped nationwide in the tower of ten percent plus,” he told the “Rheinische Post”.
However, things are different in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, where the party seems to have become potentially powerful.
According to an AfD spokesman, around 300 party members, including Chrupalla, Weidel and honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, wanted to celebrate the founding anniversary in Königstein, Hesse, on Monday evening. Chrupalla spoke in advance of a “huge success story”.
The AfD did not fall from the sky, but closed a gap in the party landscape.
Around the event hall in the spa town, various associations, unions and parties have called for protests. According to the police, “several counter-meetings” were registered. The AfD sees a major threat to democracy, according to a call to the rally.
The deputy leader of the Greens parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament, Miriam Dahlke, accused the AfD of trampling on democratic values and stirring up hatred and hatred inside and outside of parliament for a decade.
The Alternative for Germany, which now has around 30,000 members, was founded on February 6, 2013 in Oberursel, a few kilometers from Königstein, by around 20 participants led by economics professor Bernd Lucke and conservative publicist Konrad Adam.
Started as a “Professors’ Party”, which was primarily opposed to the euro rescue policy, the AfD has now, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, moved so far to the right that the domestic secret service is watching them as a whole. According to the authority, there are sufficient indications of anti-constitutional efforts.
The AfD is taking legal action against it. The Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia is expected to decide in the second half of the year. On Monday, Chrupalla described the observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as “government protection that is being politically exploited and abused”.
Ten years after its founding, the AfD is represented in all German state parliaments apart from Schleswig-Holstein, and since 2017 also in the Bundestag. The climate had become rougher when she moved in, said the first parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, of the German Press Agency.
“The bullying has increased. Parliamentary work is despised by the AfD.” The AfD is not a normal party, but “authoritarian, xenophobic, exclusionary” and wants to drive society apart.
The International Auschwitz Committee accused the AfD of having become “more cynical and extreme” with each passing year. The party has thus “contributed massively to the radicalization of the language and the right-wing extremist scene in Germany,” said the committee’s executive vice-president, Christoph Heubner, in a statement on Monday. (dpa)
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Source: Tagesspiegel
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