Experts and party defectors warn of a radicalization of the AfD. Their politicians make regular verbal gaffes and historical relative adjustments. Now, the management Board decides on the latest case.
The two AfD’s national Chairman Alexander Gauland (left) and Jörg Meuthen
The recent affair from the ranks of the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) bears the name of a German hero Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The Colonel of the Wehrmacht was committed in the summer of 1944 a group of officers to assassinate Hitler. Although the action failed, it is today in Germany as a feat.
Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg (photo from the early 1930-years)
Now, however, the young AfD activist Lars called Steinke, Hitler’s bombers “traitors and enemies of the German people” – an opinion that you previously knew only from the radical Right. A purely tactical provocation of the Public, or a proof of the radicalization of the AfD? Since September 2017, the party is the third force in the Bundestag.
Steinke is not just anybody, but the Chairman of the “young Alternative” in lower Saxony, the youth organization of the right-wing populist AfD. His Facebook entry to Stauffenberg makes for indignation. Both the lower Saxony land Association, the Steinke, as now, the Federal Executive is a party to the exclusion of wanting to belong.
It is already the second attempt to throw Steinke from the party. In the beginning of the year, he should be because of its contacts to extreme Right-wing excluded. But Steinke has survived politically, unlike his former AfD-land chief Armin-Paul Hampel.
AfD activist Lars Steinke – here in October 2017 when the road campaign
Why provoke the AfD-politician?
The willingness to cross the borders is the duty of the party to the offspring, so the opinion of experts. However, it is not only the provocation, says the political scientist Werner Patzelt. In the AfD a certain set of “easy and unfiltered” to the top, so the analyst in the DW-Interview. What Steinke about the assassins of the 20th century. July said the assassins had been no hero in Germany after 1945, a certain amount of “Tradition”. The current case is merely a confirmation of this, so Patzelt.
The author Franziska Schreiber on the book cover
The AfD officials are always open rights positions, says the 28-year-old AfD Aussteigerin Franziska Schreiber in her recently published investigative report, “Inside the AfD”. Black box warning, the AfD is on the path of political radicalisation and wanted to revise with deliberate provocations of German history. “The Chairman of the AFD are under a lot of pressure,” said Schreiber in an interview with DW.
“In the AfD officials Driven”
The analyst Patzelt, a Professor in the Saxon capital of Dresden – the home of the AfD, this development is quite “logical”. Because the AfD in the German Public quickly, the Image of a right-wing party, had in fact been many of the rights and extreme-Right are attracted to. “Now, indeed, the inertia of the AfD is,” says Patzelt. They had days, the majorities in the party. Who wants to continue to remain in a party office web, “will do well to listen to these people”. The party is functioning differently than other parties in Germany, the political scientist: “it is Not the party leadership determines what is to be decided by the rank and file”, but Vice versa.
That moderate voices on the AfD-based find little hearing, also shows the fate of the previous party Chairman. Both the first, Bernd Lucke, who founded in 2013 as the Euro rescue critics of the party, as well as his successor, Frauke Petry, documents the radical forces within their own party. The principle from the bottom to the top has shown to be effective, says Patzelt.
The officials were Driven and needed to talk to the party people after the mouth, the steadily further to the right drift. It’ll cut down”,” says the AfD Aussteigerin Franziska Schreiber.
“Party of Pegida”
Also, the recently repealed ban on Cooperation between the AfD and the foreign enemy organization “Pegida” – the “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”. Since 2014, Pegida demonstrations in Dresden. For Patzelt, of the observed scene for many years, is certain that the AfD members went to the Pegida demonstrations, if there were nationwide demonstrations. “The AfD is the party of Pegida,” he says.
Large overlap of statements between the “Pegida”, here in Dresden, and AfD
To act even if the party leaders, the AfD brought to the outside of the slip, moderate, and outliers, such as the recent Staufenberg-affair of one’s own Offspring, who has publicly condemned, is not at all sure where far to the right the AfD is positioned at the end.
One more question, with the help of the AfD must address soon, is the attitude to the Initiative of the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. The ultra-rights from the United States wants to achieve with his “Movement”-the project of closer cooperation among Europe’s right-wing populists. Although it is still unclear whether the national-oriented right-wing populists in Europe ever wanted to leave in a Bannon Think Tank, which will unify, says Patzelt, a partnership between Bannon and the AfD of the political scientist sees it as possible. First Meeting of an American, with two officials, there were last spring.