In its election program, the AfD in Bavaria promises numerous tax breaks, which are to be counter-financed through a rigid asylum policy. Every foreigner who is required to leave the country must leave the country within a maximum of six months, and there should also be “no new asylum seekers,” declared top candidate Katrin Ebner-Steiner on Tuesday – we must “finally turn the tap on illegal mass migration.” This means there is “enough money” to abolish inheritance and gift taxes, for example, or to increase income tax allowances. After all, German families would be “dispossessed” by interest rate policies, taxes and inflation, so “we feed millions and millions of immigrants from other cultures.” However, when asked, the AfD politician was unable to give exact sums and calculations for the plans.
The presentation of the program with her co-lead candidate Martin Böhm and state head Stephan Protschka showed above all: The AfD is again fully committed to the issue of migration for the state elections, which brought it into parliaments everywhere in the refugee crisis of the past decade. And she doesn’t put any verbal restrictions on herself. Ebner-Steiner said that the CSU supported the “flooding of Germany and Europe” with migrants and was thus the driver of the country’s “decline”. The program calls for contracts with the federal government for a “border protection offensive” and extended powers for the immigration authorities in the case of returns. Böhm pointed to the torpedoed educational success of German children when they go to school with foreigners – one shouldn’t “mix two liquids” here, otherwise a “mixture” would result.
Even more according to the program: When new mosques are built, the building law should be “strictly interpreted”, the call of the muezzin is undesirable. Internal security must be “guaranteed again,” they say; despite the state’s best security record in Germany, which Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) can list. The AfD, on the other hand, accounts for “excessive violence by migrant youth gangs,” and outdoor pools have been turned into “civil war zones” — also in contradiction to official information from the authorities.
This time, the program was preceded by a lengthy process and editorial work. In 2018, even AfD politicians were ashamed of the sloppy draft. Boehm said the program was “not the result of highly scientific expertise, as was the case with the old parties,” but rather the simple members’ urge for freedom and the will to prevent the country from “declining”. It deals with “real problems” and not with “apocalypses” like climate change. The program calls for a “corona review” because civil rights were unconstitutionally restricted during the pandemic and the unvaccinated were discriminated against. Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) in particular must therefore “bear the consequences”. In addition, they oppose an allegedly “destructive gender ideology”; according to Protschka, “the family that shapes the image of Bavaria” consists of a man, woman and children. The AfD also calls for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. However, there is not a word in the text about Putin’s war of aggression or Russian aggression: a military conflict “escalated” in Ukraine in 2022. The state government must condemn arms deliveries to Ukraine.
In surveys for state elections, the AfD currently comes mostly at twelve percent – and is thus well below the national trend and also the values in some western German states? Ebner-Steiner identified the Free Voters and their boss Hubert Aiwanger as the reason for this. He plays the “bad guy”, while Prime Minister Söder gives the “good guy”, starting with the vaccination in the pandemic. The voters would be “fooled again and again”. Now – in the case of the traffic light heating law and the Erdinger demonstration with Aiwanger’s controversial speech – the FW chairman uses “our sayings” and presents himself “as AfD light”. But the AfD is also “trickling through” in the Free State, she believes, and promised possible results of around 15 percent. Ebner-Steiner and Böhm, who belong to the officially dissolved nationalist “wing”, were elected as top candidates in May.