analysis
Status: 08/12/2021 3:39 a.m.
Sentences that don’t ignite. An audience that is only slowly thawing out. The AfD is currently not feeling much of the euphoria of earlier times. This is also evident at the start of the election campaign. What is missing?
“Love. Mother, father, children” is written on an AfD sign that is in the center of the small campaign stage. It is what the party understands by a “normal” family. Also in the election manifesto only this type of family is conspicuously mentioned. Almost provocative then, what the top lesbian candidate Alice Weidel then says about her own family seems like a little outing in front of an audience. The top candidate says she knew early on that she wanted a family. Just like she got to know at home.
“I also knew that it wouldn’t be easy for me,” says Weidel. “That is precisely why I am so proud of the family that I have built with my partner.” Sentences that sound a little as if she wanted to emphasize that she was “normal” after all. But they run into nowhere, the audience at the Old Garden in Schwerin seems strangely untouched in front of the splendid backdrop of the palace.
There is another reason why Weidel is so surprisingly open about her private life. There are repeated complaints from within the party that the parliamentary group leader does not fulfill her management duties, does not take part in telephone conferences, and cancels appointments spontaneously.
During the election campaign, too, she will have significantly fewer appointments than Tino Chrupalla, confirms the AfD federal office. Party friends are wondering how much desire they actually want to be the top candidate. Weidel is now on the offensive with her sentences. But so far, the AfD has given little consideration to the compatibility of work and family.
Only later, when Weidel put on the record with the classic AfD hits – ranting against the government, complaining about criminal asylum seekers – did the around 350 listeners thaw a little. However, one is still many decibels away from the mood during the recent federal election campaign.
Alternative seeks alternative topics
Why is it that the AfD does not seem to get through? Political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder from the Berlin Science Center sees the party in crisis and on the defensive. Also because of their internal party disputes, especially about how to decide how to distance oneself from right-wing extremists. “Above all else: It has no topic with which it can really score points in the election campaign, what electrifies people and what is currently on the agenda – unlike the 2017 migration crisis.”
There are many AfDists and members of the Junge Alternative in the audience. But also listeners who say that they just want to get an impression of the AfD. You think Weidel’s speech is good. She says “what every honest German cares about,” says a gentleman around 60. It is important to him “to get out of this dictatorship and to be able to live freely again, to be able to exercise his basic rights, whether vaccinated or not.” His wife adds: She has the feeling that one should no longer say what one thinks.
Painter’s pants and rhetoric coach
Enter Tino Chrupalla. The master craftsman from Weißwasser near Görlitz was still wearing painter’s trousers, for show purposes, so to speak, and now he’s on stage in a suit. But with the change of costume also disappears the ability to speak authentically as a master painter. Chrupalla has worked on his appearances, and a rhetoric coach has been advising him intensively for a long time. But he still seems rather wooden when he speaks of the need to “consolidate” the election result, when he complains about “the erosion of the federal structure” or when he wants to “stick a sharp needle in the media balloon”.
Chrupalla talks a lot about pride, about the fatherland. And that the AfD is the only sensible party, that the other parties must be stopped: “We don’t throw ourselves against the zeitgeist, we don’t curry favor, we don’t sell our souls,” shouts the top candidate. But in 2017 there were still big “finally-say-somebody-someone” cheers on many marketplaces for the AfD, his words now fade between the German flags.
A departure looks different
Weidel is the bigger star anyway. While Chrupalla speaks, Weidel has to do a real selfie marathon next to the stage and shake many hands while she offers journalists her elbows in greeting.
Many in the party had hoped that this start of the election campaign would generate a spirit of optimism, a strong impetus that could stop the party’s downward trend. It doesn’t look like it after this evening.