Comment on the AfD: A top candidate who needs to be hidden

The AfD can no longer get rid of its top candidate for the European elections. She is now trying to hide Maximilian Krah during the election campaign. That won’t help. Urgent questions remain.

The AfD is hiding its top candidate. Maximilian Krah seems to be embarrassing for her. He is banned from the stage at the start of the election campaign. That won’t help, because the pressing questions won’t go away if you run away from them like the AfD.

These are very unpleasant questions: especially for a party like the AfD, which repeatedly says that it represents German interests and that it is patriotic. Could it be that it is completely different? That China and Russia are exerting influence through the AfD? So that it’s not about German interests at all?

Distribution of power in the party

The AfD chairmen have to endure that a top candidate like Maximilian Krah makes excuses and dances on the AfD’s nose. Krah knows: The AfD can no longer remove him from the European election list.

Krah was never a popular candidate. But the fact that he was elected also shows how power is distributed within the party. He was the candidate of the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke. Nobody dared open conflict. Even though many probably suspected that Krah could have an unpleasant election campaign.

That’s exactly how it happened. Krah stands out with statements that are read as racist or misogynistic. He puts forward absurd theses. About how foreigners are too stupid to find their way around German airports. Or that women are less likely to win the Nobel Prize or be on the DAX board. And now apparently a Chinese spy in his own office. China of all places? Krah has repeatedly flirted with the fact that he has good contacts in this dictatorship.

In the end, the voters decide

The party leadership is repeatedly asked about Krah. Rightly so. After all, it is the top candidate. But Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla remain silent or try to excuse themselves. “Ask Mr. Krah that,” is a standard answer. They won’t get away with this.

But in the end it is the voters who decide. Who should represent their interests in Brussels? Not the ones from China or Russia. That’s what matters now. And everyone can ask themselves this question before the election.