parties
Meeting of radical right-wingers: How to deal with the AfD?
Should an AfD ban procedure be initiated? The debate has picked up steam again after reports of a meeting between right-wing activists and AfD politicians. photo
© Carsten Koall/dpa
The debate about possible ban proceedings against the AfD has been simmering for a long time. It is gaining new momentum following reports of a meeting between the party’s politicians and the radical and extreme right.
The reports about a meeting between right-wing activists and politicians from AfD and CDU in Potsdam have once again fueled the debate about how to deal with the AfD. From the point of view of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, a ban procedure is the “ultima ratio” when dealing with the party. CDU leader Friedrich Merz also spoke out clearly against proceedings. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens), however, said on the sidelines of his trip to Israel that he considered it necessary to collect evidence against the party.
You have to look closely at individual statements, individual people and individual outlines and then collect evidence that is hard enough to be able to enforce a court case, build up a body of evidence and act accordingly. “I think that’s necessary,” Habeck told RTL/ntv during his visit to Israel.
Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) said that the example of targeted fantasies of subversion in cooperation with representatives of a party that sits in the Bundestag and state parliaments filled her with deep concern. “In view of the serious threat situation that has now become clear, in my view, criminal prosecution must have priority,” she told the Neue Berliner Editorial Society as well as the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten”.
The media company Correctiv first reported on the Potsdam meeting in November. The participants included several AfD politicians, including Roland Hartwig, advisor to party and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel. According to his own statements, CDU member Ulrich Vosgerau was also there. Correctiv also named several members of the Union of Values. This was close to the CDU and CSU for a long time, but is not a party group. She is considered to be particularly conservative and was sometimes harshly critical of the CDU’s line under former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The speaker at the Potsdam meeting was Martin Sellner, long head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian movement in Austria. According to his own statements, he spoke about how more foreigners and even people with a German passport could be allowed to leave Germany, and how people with a history of immigration could be pushed to assimilate.
Merz: AfD provide content
Merz told the “Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung” that one should not help the AfD to act as a victim in the context of a ban procedure. “If you want to make the AfD even stronger, you should talk about a ban for a long time.” It is important to fight the AfD with political and not legal means. “We have to ask this party about the content because it has no realistic answers anywhere,” said Merz to the media outlet Table.Media. The CDU federal executive board will meet in Heidelberg for its retreat this Friday.
Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) does not rule out a ban. “If the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the security authorities see sufficient information for a ban procedure, then the question of banning the party must be answered,” Strobl told SWR. There are good reasons for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to also monitor the AfD in Baden-Württemberg.
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: Statements no surprise
Kramer, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the “Handelsblatt” that he and other colleagues from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had read the Correctiv report with interest. The statements presented are no surprise for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. They corresponded to the findings of the authorities and the assessments in previous years.
Faeser: CDU must distance itself from AfD
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) called on the CDU to make a clear demarcation to the right. “The CDU leadership could be much clearer here. A creeping normalization of inhumane and anti-democratic policies on the far right must not continue,” she told the “Frankfurter Rundschau”.
CDU leader Merz emphasized that there would be no cooperation between his party and the AfD. When asked whether he was sure that no CDU state association would tolerate an AfD minority government, Merz told the “Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung”: “We have a clear decision on this, which we made this weekend at the closed meeting of the The Federal Executive Board will also reiterate: There will be no cooperation between the CDU and the AfD.”