European elections
The elephant in the room – AfD without a top candidate
The AfD party leadership consisting of Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla at the start of the election campaign for the Euro elections together with the AfD state chairman Emil Sanzen (l) in Donaueschingen. The party’s actual leading candidate was not present. photo
© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
The top candidate is making headlines because of possible China and Russia involvement and is therefore missing from the AfD’s election campaign launch. The party is trying to be united – and attacking.
Inside there is an elephant in the room and they are trying to deal with it in different ways – outside demonstrators are happily putting their finger in the wound caused by the European election campaign AfD has a gap. “Alternative for Dictators” is written on a large screen that was installed on a van in front of the hall in Donaueschingen, Baden-Württemberg, during the party’s election campaign launch. The portrait of Maximilian Krah is emblazoned underneath; he is holding a Russian and a Chinese flag in his hand.
There is no sign of the top candidate himself at the start of the election campaign: you will look in vain for election posters with his face in the Danube Halls, and he cannot be seen in the spots for the election program either.
Krah should actually have opened the hot phase of the election campaign for the vote on June 9th together with party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla – if he hadn’t been in the headlines for weeks because of reports about possible connections to pro-Russian networks and China. After a crisis meeting between Weidel and Chrupalla with Krah, the party announced on Wednesday that Krah would forgo an appearance in Donaueschingen “in order not to burden the election campaign or the party’s reputation.” Some other appearances have also been canceled, and there will be no election commercials with Krah.
The party is therefore faced with the problem in Donaueschingen of having to open its election campaign without the man with whom it actually wanted to convince voters. It’s still a topic somehow. The two party leaders deal with this situation differently.
Weidel avoids Krah’s name
Chrupalla thanks Krah for foregoing the appearance – and calls for the ranks to be closed. “It is now adventurous the means by which our party is to be disintegrated, how people are trying to damage our party, how they are trying to cause unrest and mistrust,” says Chrupalla. We must and will resist this. “We will show with the election campaign that we cannot be defeated so quickly and that we stand together as one.”
Co-boss Weidel doesn’t mention Krah’s name once and instead sticks to the motto: Attack is the best defense. Her speech is a series of tried-and-tested AfD classics: She insults politicians from the traffic light parties and speaks of “concentrated incompetence.” “In a normally functioning medium-sized company, they wouldn’t even be touched with pliers.” Those in power are deliberately making policies against their own people, she says. And anyone who wants to support Ukraine should please go there themselves. The supporters obviously really enjoy hearing this, the hall goes wild after her speech, almost everyone jumps up from their chairs.
A campaign ad that summarizes the right-wing populists’ election program in 100 seconds also provokes similar reactions. This also includes the party’s classics: sovereign nation states instead of a centralized EU, a return to nuclear power, hard external borders. The audience cheers particularly loudly when it comes to gender: “Only women can become mothers and men cannot become women,” it says in the film – or: “We know: skilled workers don’t come in a rubber dinghy.”
Accusations against other candidates
But the AfD doesn’t just have a problem with its top European candidate, Krah. There are also allegations of Russian connections against Bundestag member Petr Bystron, who is in second place on the list. After media reports about possible monetary payments to both politicians, public prosecutors are checking whether investigations should be started. Krah is also examining whether there should be an investigation into possible Chinese payments. Krah is under additional pressure because one of his employees was arrested for suspected spying for China. According to critical party colleagues, the Saxon AfD politician has repeatedly attracted attention in the past with pro-Chinese statements and activities.
Both politicians assured the AfD leadership that they had not taken any money. If the allegations prove to be true, they will face consequences, Chrupalla makes it clear again. “I promise that opinions and positions in the Alternative for Germany will never be for sale,” he said. Anyone who can be proven to be for sale has to go. “But it needs to be proven and demonstrated.”