This was announced by members of the Bundestag in a Telegram channel. He also wants to leave the parliamentary group. Internal party critics are calling on him to resign from his mandate – from the right-wing camp, he is insulted as an “opportunistic prey vulture”.
The AfD member of the Bundestag Johannes Huber has announced that he will be leaving the party at the turn of the year. At the same time, he will leave the parliamentary group in the Bundestag, but he apparently wants to keep his mandate. This was posted by the politician from the constituency of Freising, who was elected to the Bundestag for the first time in 2017 via the list and again three months ago, in a Telegram group of the Bavarian AfD. The contribution is available to the SZ. Huber was initially not available for inquiries on Thursday. Party circles unanimously assured the authenticity of the posting on Telegram. The reasons given by the 34-year-old gave a rather confused picture; also in the interpretation of many party colleagues.
Huber announced that after careful consideration he had decided that his concern was “to protect the free-democratic opposition movement and the peaceful strollers in Germany”. He wants to draw personal conclusions “in a professional field in which the culture of irresponsibility is widespread”. He also writes of “the general uncertainty right up to the private sphere and families, for which the rulers have been responsible at least since the broken promise to avoid compulsory vaccination”.
“Opportunistic Prey Vulture”
Even well-informed party colleagues were a bit at a loss on Thursday. One interpretation is that Huber “may want to protect the party from worse”, concerning himself. The Landshut public prosecutor’s office recently checked a Telegram message from the MP, which reads like instructions for creeping into a positive corona test. In the resignation statement, Huber calls this a “diversionary maneuver” from the “essentials”. He was also one of the most active protagonists of the Telegram group that has been causing unrest in national politics for weeks. In the chat with hundreds of politicians, functionaries, members and sympathizers of the AfD, subversion fantasies and the question of the system were voiced. According to analyzes of the chats by the SZ, Huber was one of the first to try to break away in spring 2020, when the AfD supported the government course at the beginning of the pandemic. Huber also used the name “Södolf” for the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) in postings.
Huber used to be said to have tendencies towards the völkisch “wing” of the AfD; Most recently, however, he appeared internally and also at the list party conference in 2021 as a supporter of the more moderate camp. That is why there is now harsh criticism of Huber’s “stupid” reason for resignation, especially in “wing” circles. Since he had “fat” pension entitlements for two full periods in the Bundestag, he was an “opportunistic prey vulture”, it was said, “who leaves the AfD, but of course keeps the recently acquired mandate”. But even in more liberal AfD circles, Huber was advised to give up the mandate on Thursday.