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Demonstrate with right-wing extremists? The AfD only regrets one thing
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Over 300 arrests and 131 criminal charges – the rest of the weekend
Even after the weekend, the shock over the aftermath of the demonstrations against the Crown measures in Berlin runs deep: How could up to 400 protesters storm the Reichstag steps? Politicians are now concerned about the reasons for this.
The AfD has nothing to criticize except the scene on the steps of the Reichstag at the Berlin Crown rally. The party’s leader, Meuthen, warned against right-wing extremist groups. But it wasn’t just the Höcke camp supporters there.
reThe Saxon member of the Bundestag Karsten Hilse made visible in a particularly drastic way in which ideological community his AfD was on Saturday.
Hilse posted a photo on Facebook showing him and his colleague from the parliamentary group Robby Schlund during the demonstration in Berlin in front of posters with photomontages featuring, among others, virologist Christian Drosten, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU ) and some journalists were despised as convicts. Also, the words “guilty”. Hilse and Schlund smiled happily at the camera.
Hilse and Schlund weren’t the only ones. More than two dozen deputies from the AfD of the Bundestag and many of the state parliaments were in Berlin. An important meeting for the members of the Bundestag had been postponed: according to the original plan, from Friday to Sunday the heads of the 25 parliamentary groups, in which the issues of the AfD parliamentary group are discussed, would have discussed the strategy for the coming months in a joint closed meeting in Berlin. should.
The meeting was considered very important because during the summer there was considerable criticism within the faction regarding strategic deficits. But the demonstration was apparently even more important: the meeting of the working group leaders was postponed one day so that there would be an opportunity to participate in the rally.
Whom they would be dating on Saturday must have been clear to all AfD MPs. Numerous far-right groups called for participation days in advance, including the NPD, the “Third Way” and the Identitarian Movement. This was also noticed internally, namely by one of the party’s leaders, Jörg Meuthen.
According to a report by the publishing network Germany, which coincides with information from WELT, Meuthen pointed out in several sessions that Reich citizens, right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists would be supported by participating in the demonstrations.
Also some Meuthen fans on the show.
But these warnings were also unimpressed by some of the Bundestag members who otherwise side with Meuthen in internal party disputes and who seek to distance themselves from right-wing extremists. For example, Joana Cotar, Jürgen Braun, Paul Viktor Podolay, Rüdiger Lucassen and Bruno Hollnagel. The far-right camp of the party was well represented. Bundestag member Steffen Kotré even joined a delegation of right-wing Polish populists.
Right-wing Thuringian extremist and AfD politician Björn Höcke also called for participation. Party flags, however, should be left at home, Höcke recommended ahead of time.
In a video on the “One Percent” network, suspected by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, on Saturday afternoon Höcke spoke of “overwhelming” impressions. He was “proud” to be there, along with “probably millions of people.”
In any case, there were also those who ran up the stairs of the Reichstag building later that Saturday. Right at the front was a man from Rathenow in Brandenburg, a member of the youth organization AfD Junge Alternative. He has since distanced himself from the action, the man has resigned.
The scene on the stairs was the one thing on Sunday and Monday that the party’s top politicians distanced themselves from in retrospect. On the other hand, the fact that they had moved in a joint train with many citizens of the Reich and tough anti-Semites was not worthy of any expression of regret. Parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel called Sunday “unacceptable that some chaotic people broke through police barriers in front of the Reichstag after Corona’s peaceful demonstration in Berlin.”
And the party’s vice president, Beatrix von Storch, found that brief occupation of the stairs “is not right either,” as she said on Monday in the SWR. But she immediately accused the moderator, who asked from now on, that she was reducing “this entire citizen movement of half of society to this point.” It became clear that at the top of the AfD there were almost no fundamental doubts about the groups that met on Saturday.
