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As a spokesperson, he was untenable for the AfD parliamentary group in April. Now he has finally parted ways with Christian Lüth. He is accused of making inhumane comments.
By Martin Schmidt, ARD capital studio
Many of the deputies attend the AfD parliamentary group meeting in the afternoon, shaking their heads. One of them even received a text message from Austria: “What’s wrong?” Asked a friend of the right-wing populist FPÖ. “Now we have our own Ibiza business,” he replied. Nobody wants to give the impression that there are still two opinions about Christian Lüth. “It’s gone now, it doesn’t work at all,” growls another deputy.
Lüth was once his press spokesman. In April, however, he had to leave his post. He probably boasted of his “Aryan” ancestry to a woman and described himself as a “Fascist”. However, he was not fired for this at the time. It should first enter the “cooling group” for a few months, it was said among the parliamentary groups, until the media attention wears off. Recently, they had found him a new job, but now it is nothing more.
Secret movie recordings
The reason for this is a secretly filmed conversation, part of a ProSieben documentary that Lüth is said to have had with a right-wing blogger. The “Zeit” quotes him saying: “We discussed it for a long time with Gauland: the worse it is for Germany, the better for the AfD.” That in itself is a troublesome quote for a party that puts patriotism to the top of the flag.
And it is also said that Lüth said that more immigrants could arrive. “We can still shoot everyone after, that’s not a problem at all, or put gas on them, or whatever you want, I don’t care.”
That is too much even for a parliamentary group for whom the verbal crossing of red lines is part of the business model. Although initially it was said from the press office that the documentary had not yet been seen, no assessment could be made. The faction board obviously saw it differently in the morning and decided to fire Lüth without warning. He was informed about it immediately. Several MEPs had already prepared similar motions for the group’s meeting that afternoon.
Many would have liked to kick Lüth out in the spring anyway. Although he is not a member of the AfD, he has always had a great influence on the party, including in the work of the parliamentary group. A good number of deputies have ignored it or have felt that they were not sufficiently commercialized in the media.
Gauland’s Protective Hand
And there is also his close relationship with co-chair Gauland. Some cannot understand that he continued to defend Lüth for a long time. In fact, Gauland wanted to avoid discontent at the meeting of the parliamentary group by announcing the expulsion himself at the beginning.
But the deputies insisted that their own motion should be passed unanimously. On the one hand, to establish a clear signal together. On the other hand, however, also not to leave a back door open to the executive committee of the parliamentary group.
Time and again in the speeches it was implicitly assumed that Gauland had had a protective hand over Lüth, perhaps because he knew too much about the party or its members, this is what the parliamentarians at the meeting said. The faction leader himself is said to have rejected this in some cases with great anger. “Actually, today could have been a shorter parliamentary group meeting,” says one of the members of the Bundestag, who sees Gauland at the helm critically. “But we really turned it on today.”
