parties
AfD celebrates tenth anniversary – protests announced
With the exception of Schleswig-Holstein, the AfD is represented in all German state parliaments and since 2017 also in the Bundestag. photo
© Kay Nietfeld/dpa
The AfD celebrates its founding anniversary. Party celebrities and around 300 members come together in the Taunus. Associations, parties and unions have announced counter-protests.
In Königstein, Hesse, the AfD wants to celebrate its tenth anniversary today. According to a spokesman, around 300 party members are expected at the event, including the two chairmen Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. A speech is also expected from honorary chairman Alexander Gauland.
Various associations, unions and parties want to demonstrate around the event hall in the spa town. According to the police, “several counter-meetings” were registered. A road closure has been announced. Others could not be ruled out, it said.
In the AfD one sees a great threat to democracy, according to a call from several groups to the protest rally. Among others, representatives of the Greens want to participate. Their deputy parliamentary group leader in the Hessian state parliament, Miriam Dahlke, accused the AfD of trampling on democratic values and stirring up hatred and hatred inside and outside of parliament for a decade.
AfD is observed by the domestic secret service
The “Alternative for Germany”, which now has around 30,000 members, was founded on February 6, 2013 in Oberursel, a few kilometers away, by around 20 participants led by economics professor Bernd Lucke and conservative publicist Konrad Adam. Started as a “Professors’ Party,” which primarily opposed the euro rescue policy, the AfD has now, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, moved so far to the right that the domestic secret service is watching them as a whole. According to the authority, there are sufficient indications of anti-constitutional efforts.
The AfD is taking legal action against it. The Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia will probably decide in the second half of the year whether the observation is legal.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel sees a foreseeable chance to help govern ten years after her party was founded, given the strong polls in eastern Germany, as she said at the beginning of the year with a view to the 2024 state elections in Saxony and Thuringia. However, the CDU, as a theoretical partner from the AfD point of view, has ruled out cooperation with the right-wing populists by party convention resolution.
With the exception of Schleswig-Holstein, the party is represented in all German state parliaments and since 2017 also in the Bundestag. The climate had become rougher with the arrival of the AfD, said the first parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, the German Press Agency. “The bullying has increased. Parliamentary work is despised by the AfD.” The AfD is not a normal party, but authoritarian, xenophobic, exclusionary and wants to drive society apart.
“AfD is here to stay and it will stay”
Several political scientists no longer rule out AfD participation in government. “It will still take a while before the AfD governs in a federal state, but it cannot be ruled out – see the experience with the left -” said the Mainz party researcher Jürgen Falter of the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ).
Party leader Chrupalla confirms the intention to participate in the government. “We will also be able to assume government responsibility in the future,” said Chrupalla on ZDF’s “Morgenmagazin”. In East Germany, the AfD is the strongest party. “This makes it increasingly difficult for other parties to forge alliances against us,” he said.
In the coming year, new state parliaments will be elected in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. However, a CDU spokesman made it clear at the beginning of the year: “We have a clear party conference decision. Any cooperation with the AfD is excluded. Our firewall to the right must be in place.”
Bonn political scientist Frank Decker said: “The AfD came to stay and it will stay.” In the medium term, Decker sees them in elections in the West in the double digits. In the East, “the popularity is likely to remain more than twice as high”. Among other things, the AfD benefits from the fact that it does not occupy or take on topics and positions that are not represented or represented enough by other parties, for example on immigration or climate protection. “Both topics will continue to shape the agenda in the years to come.”
The Berlin political scientist Hajo Funke believes that the AfD will not gain in importance in federal politics in the next ten years. “With its radical orientation, the AfD will remain trapped nationwide in the tower of ten percent plus,” said Funkte of the “Rheinische Post”. However, things are different in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, where the party seems to have become potentially powerful.