After the AfD party conference: Gauland calls for the end of the quarrels

After the premature end of the AfD party conference, honorary chairman Gauland is now speaking. He calls for an end to the internal party quarrels. Instead, the focus should be on content again.

At the weekend, things got hot at the AfD federal party conference: First, party leader Tino Chrupalla was punished, then he suffered a few defeats with his new co-boss Alice Weidel – and last but not least, the party conference ended prematurely. Alexander Gauland, the honorary chairman of the AfD, has therefore called on his party to end the quarrels. Cooperation in the federal executive board must be significantly better, Gauland told the “Rheinische Post”. “Then we have to deliver when fighting political opponents instead of fighting our own people.”

“It is important to finally put the issues that move people back into the focus of our work. And not the dispute,” said Gauland. He believes, however, that this will succeed with the newly elected federal executive board.

“Höcke drives Chrupalla and Weidel in front of him”

After a bitter dispute over a Europe resolution supported by Thuringia’s AfD co-head of state Björn Höcke, the AfD ended its federal party conference in Riesa, Saxony, prematurely. Almost 56 percent of the delegates voted for the demolition, a good 44 percent were against.

Co-party leader Tino Chrupalla spoke of a “very controversial day”. Nevertheless, he hopes that the AfD will be able to send a “signal of departure” to the outside world after the re-election of its leader. The party congress was not broken off, but “was properly ended by the vote of the delegates,” he said. The day was “absolutely perfect” for him, said the AfD boss when asked whether his authority had already been damaged immediately after his re-election.

According to Thuringia’s Minister of the Interior, Georg Maier, Höcke emerged stronger from the AfD federal party conference. Höcke drives the party and the chairmen Chrupalla and Weidel in front of him, Maier told the editorial network Germany. It is only a matter of time before he completely dominates the party. “Then he will reach for the presidency,” said Maier. In Thuringia, this process has already been completed. “The AfD is clearly a right-wing extremist Höcke party here.”

New dual leadership “dismantled”

The dispute was sparked by a resolution critical of the EU entitled “Rethinking Europe”. Delegates from the West in particular criticized the fact that the motion called for a rapprochement with Russia without mentioning the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. The bill only referred to a “Ukraine conflict”.

AfD right winger Höcke campaigned for the text. The dual leadership of Weidel and Chrupalla, which was only elected the day before, advocated not adopting it in the present form in view of the resistance of many delegates. However, Chrupalla’s request was rejected by 210 to 208 votes. Member of the Bundestag Kay Gottschalk criticized that the new dual leadership would be “dismantled” just one day after their election.

In the course of the two-hour, heated debate, the party leadership was only able to push through with its proposal after several unsuccessful attempts to refer the bill to the federal executive board for further discussion.

Dispute also about the so-called incompatibility list

Thuringia’s co-head of state Höcke had previously recorded another success with the application to remove the “Centrum” union from the so-called incompatibility list, on which the AfD lists organizations and clubs whose members are denied access to the party. The majority of the delegates followed his vote. Around 60 percent of them voted to remove the club from the list.

Weidel, who, as AfD state leader for Baden-Württemberg, ensured that the “Centrum Union” was included on this list, named the organization in the ARD interview “toxic”.