Because he was fed up with the increasingly extreme behavior, the faction leader left the AfD. He is running with a new alliance for the state elections – and is clearly distancing himself from his former colleagues.
The former AfD parliamentary group leader Markus Plenk has found a new party – the “Bündnis Deutschland” founded in the fall. He is now also their chairman in Bavaria. The alliance now has one member of parliament in the Maximilianeum, but this has no practical consequences: Plenk remains listed as non-attached. The alliance apparently settles itself between Union and AfD. “In the liberal-conservative spectrum,” it is said, a vacuum has arisen that the “new, serious party” wants to fill. The state association was recently founded with the election of a seven-member board in Regensburg; including three women, which is important for Plenk to emphasize.
Plenk, who led the parliamentary group with Katrin Ebner-Steiner when the AfD entered the state parliament in 2018, resigned a good six months later. He was “sick of being the bourgeois facade of a fundamentally xenophobic and extremist party,” he said. After that, the organic farmer from Ruhpolding showed interest in the CSU, but did not become a member. Plenk says today that he no longer wanted to because of the “careless handling of fundamental rights” in the pandemic. However, the CSU was already skeptical about Plenk’s AfD past. The national association of Bündnis Deutschland currently has a good 100 members, and further interviews are ongoing, says Plenk. There are always discussions before joining, “whether it fits” – a kind of prospective check. These are “disappointed members” of the CSU, FDP, free voters and a few SPD and AfD, but also previously non-party members.
Plenk’s goals are rapid development and nationwide participation in the state elections in October, with district lists and constituency candidates. He certainly hopes for votes from his old party. Many did not choose the AfD out of conviction, but for the lack of a “reasonable alternative”. But voting for the AfD is “the stupidest thing you can do”. For example, their demand for an exit from the EU should be mentioned, despite all justified criticism of Brussels. In migration policy, his alliance is close to Union positions. The principle: “We definitely do not defame any population group.” In the AfD faction, however, one remains relaxed, the re-foundation will “soon disappear again,” is to be heard. And mockery is also circulating in AfD circles: Plenk only wants to secure another mandate and “big coal for little work”.