After more than four days of the AfD party conference, many variants of what the EU is to blame for have already been heard: inflation and “mass immigration”, censorship and “left-green totalitarianism”. Conversely, the question arises: What is actually not the fault of the EU? However, the candidates at the AfD European election meeting, as the party congress in Magdeburg is officially called, do not want to address this. On the contrary, the aspirants for a promising place on the list for the European elections in June next year show that something is still possible. The EU is “the enemy” here, a “monster whose arms we have to cut off”, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has to be put in the “cell for remand”.
The AfD is voting on its EU candidates this weekend, in extension to last weekend, when the first 15 places on the list were occupied in a sometimes tough process. Measured against the previous poll values of around 20 percent, the party could move into the EU Parliament with around 20 MPs – if these values then materialize in the election results.
Sweep out, reserve, settle accounts
The first 20 candidates are set by Saturday afternoon and it shows: the previous MEPs largely sweep away the delegates, of the eleven AfD people elected to Strasbourg in 2019 only four make it onto promising list places. The troupe at that time was still set up under Jörg Meuthen, the then party leader had accommodated some of his comparatively moderate candidates. Meuthen, however, resigned as party leader at the beginning of 2022 and left the party, and former Meuthen supporters such as MP Joachim Kuhs are now being dumped. The list of candidates is headed by Maximilian Krah, a lawyer from the Saxony state association, who expressly speaks out against moderation in the partially right-wing extremist party.
The process in Magdeburg is protracted, but much more orderly than was the case at previous AfD party conferences such as in Riesa in Saxony last year. There the delegates had quarreled on the open stage, the chaotic assembly had been broken off.
According to leaders in Magdeburg, some AfD functionaries have drawn the necessary conclusions and made preliminary arrangements to avoid open debate and the vote-down of candidates from other party tendencies. “We prepared the list in a network of primarily young leaders such as Münzenmaier, Hohloch and others,” said René Aust, AfD parliamentary group vice-president in the Thuringian state parliament, on Saturday of the SZ. Sebastian Münzenmaier, 34, is the AfD parliamentary group deputy in the Bundestag, Dennis Hohloch, 34, is parliamentary director of the AfD parliamentary group in Brandenburg. This group is about “professionalizing the process,” said Aust. “Party conventions must be promotional events for us.”
Party should be presented as bourgeois
The right-wing party is in the process of using internal networks to curb the often violent internal quarrels. The apology from the “fermented bunch” AfD, once put forward by the then party leader Alexander Gauland, is apparently no longer enough, an orderly process of party meetings should now help to present the party as middle-class and to consolidate the good poll numbers. This is all the easier because the far-right former wingers around the Thuringian AfD boss Björn Höcke and his supporters had prevailed at the party conference in Riesa.
However, this is not entirely silent. The AfD MEP Sylvia Limmer failed in her attempt to get one of the top places on the list. “On command, the tight Höcke cadres made me cold as a reckoning for having voted to throw Kalbitz out of the party,” she called out to the delegates. The AfD membership of the right-wing extremist then Brandenburg AfD party and parliamentary group leader Andreas Kalbitz was canceled in 2020 because he is said to have given false information when joining the party.
“Congratulations, Mr. Höcke!” Limmer etched. She had been a member of the AfD national board until the party conference in Riesa. After the attack on Höcke, she withdrew her application for the European Parliament.