Year 2020 Review: Panic on the AfD-Titanic

reThe Titanic was moving at 22 knots when the explorer reported an iceberg. First Officer William Murdoch ordered: “Helm strong to starboard, full throttle rearward!” In the jargon of the time this meant: dodge to the left. For 37 seconds the steam turbines groaned in vain in reverse, the ship turned slightly, then crashed into the ice. The turning point came too late.

The AfD had 11 percent in polls when the Office for the Protection of the Constitution reported observing the extremist party’s “wing” in March. Such things are often ugly for the holidays. They lose their reputation, with the reputation of the moderate members and with that of the majority before the ideologues. The party executive recommended that the “wing” disband before the end of the month. The order was: hard to starboard. The party groaned under unknown pressure to do something against the extremists rather than defend them. The maneuver lasted nine months.

The “wing” apparently followed the recommendation and declared its dissolution. That cost the extremists nothing. They are a conspiratorial association of like-minded people, their glue is informal loyalty. You don’t need the “wing” website or the name “wing”. There was never an association, much less a list of members. Consequently, little has changed since then. To this day, AfD politicians talk about the “wing,” and when journalists look askance, they quickly say: “the previous wing” or “the people who used to be organized in the wing.” The “wing” has recently been marketed under the name “dissolved wing”.

In May, the AfD executive committee canceled the party membership of the leader of the “wing” Andreas Kalbitz because he had not stated in his membership application that he was ever among the neo-Nazi “home loyal German youth”. With that, the “wing” lost its most important shooter. In between, the “lateral thinkers” movement emerged, and with it a milieu consisting of friendly esotericists, but also right-wing extremists, and was caught up by parts of the AfD. In November, the first mate made a call to Meuthen: “Or we can turn the corner here, very decisively and very soon. Or we, as a group, will end up in very, very heavy seas in the not too distant future and possibly fail. ” That sounds like a panic on the Titanic. The AfD is in the middle of a turning maneuver. “2020 was already a year of setting the course,” says FAS’s Meuthen

Christian Lüth is someone for whom the year was particularly uncomfortable. He was a press spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group until he spoke of the “gassing” and “shooting” of migrants. He was then released without notice and says today that the year was “one of the most difficult years for the AfD and for me. Full of unnecessary declarations, exclusions and power struggles ”.

The leader of the AfD parliamentary group, Alexander Gauland, for example, does not believe in Meuthen’s direction. “He has the idea that he could use these things to prevent the intelligence services from observing them. That is a complete error of judgment, ”says Gauland of FAS. Lüth, in turn, has the theory that Meuthen rejects the dissolved “wing” because it did not support his concept of pension. Meuthen rejects this. “It just has nothing to do with the concept of a pension,” he says.

At the end of the year, despite Meuthen’s efforts, there is much to be said for an early observation of the entire AfD, the protection of the Constitution is already recruiting V-people. Lüth says: “The wing has not weakened. It even got stronger with Meuthen’s attack. “

When the Titanic struck the iceberg, it had changed course only two degrees to the left.