Ten years AfD: The radicals have long since won

Ten years after it was founded, one thing is clear: the AfD will remain a right-wing extremist problem. The party is caught in a self-radicalization loop. Their brand essence remains the stoking of anger.

The radicals have won, they can no longer be stopped. There are hardly any skeptics anymore and in the AfD nobody gets applause for being thoughtful. It is elected who hands out verbally – and tops it all off.

The AfD has lost itself in its alternative reality, it is stuck in the self-radicalization cycle. This can be explained using the example of the arrested former AfD member of parliament Birgit Malsack-Winkemann.

But not in public: There they speak of: carded, exaggerated, staged – pull the large-scale raid into ridicule.

government participation? Excluded!

Their base, their voters, are getting the reaction they expect. Everyone fuels each other and with it their own abstruse narrative: us against the rest of the world. Those who want to remain at the top of the AfD have no alternative but to keep this cycle going.

Government participation is excluded under these circumstances. Coalitions, compromises – that would be like the other parties. The core of the AfD brand, however, is fueling anger at those up there – and not being up there and taking on political responsibility. Only against, not for. After ten years, one thing is clear: the AfD will remain a right-wing extremist problem, because the radicals won long ago.