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The AfD leadership, which speaks out against immigration, voted overwhelmingly last Friday in favor of the expulsion of Andreas Kalbitz, a top party member with many ties to eastern Germany.
Kalbitz, 47, a former professional soldier, headed the AfD unit in Brandenburg. But she was expelled from the party for failing to inform her leadership of the once-banned neo-Nazi group, “Young Germans Faithful to the Fatherland.”
And last year, the German embassy in Athens reported that Kalbitz was one of four German neo-Nazis who traveled to a far-right demonstration in the Greek capital in 2007.
Photo by Scanpix / Andreas Kalbitz
Moderates and radicals were angry
AfD, which, according to the reviewers, was no longer able to formulate a clear focus on the coronavirus crisis, attacked its own well at full speed. After all, removing A. Kalbitz from the charts shook the east and west wings of the party’s leadership.
Jörg Meuthen, one of the AfD leaders representing the middle libertarian class in the party, ignited the spark.
The former economics professor plays the German conservatives, who founded AfD in 2013, when protests began in the country against Greece’s financial bailout in crisis.
Photo by Scanpix / Jörg Meuthen
Such citizens have also stubbornly defended AfD politicians in the former Eastern Socialist Germany in the past, claiming that the elite media is exploiting their radicalism. But the patience of the moderates seems to have diminished.
J. Meuthen: “We are a traditional conservative party. We must show unity, but we must also clearly distance ourselves from the ideas of the extreme right. “
In fact, the problems began in March, when the German Internal Intelligence Agency declared that the AfD faction, known as Flügel, was a far-right group whose members the state needed to monitor and follow. Since then, the alliance of moderate and radical wings has begun to break.
“We are a traditional conservative party,” Meuthen told ARD. “We need to show unity, but we must also clearly distance ourselves from the ideas of the extremist right.”
But then on Saturday, Björn Höcke, head of the AfD branch in Thuringia, posted a video on Facebook calling the efforts to expel his ally Kalbitz from the party as a “political act” and a “betrayal”.
Reuters / Scanpix photo / Dolls representing Joseph Goebbels and Björn Höcke at the Düsseldorf Carnival
Höcke, who is seen in Germany as a symbol of AfD’s nationalist “popular” wing, added: “I will not allow our party to divide and destroy.”
Ratings have already dropped
It is still unclear which AfD faction will triumph and defeat the other. Admittedly, another AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, as well as the party’s two parliamentary faction leaders, Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland, have spoken out against Kalbitz’s expulsion.
Photo by Scanpix / Tino Churpa
The latter, incidentally, is vehemently opposed: he has already declared that he will go to court and announced on Monday that he will continue to work in the AfD delegation to the Brandenburg Parliament.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, AfD’s ratings plummeted, and multiple polls showed that the party’s popularity fell below 10 percent. ribos
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the original 2013 membership application, in which A. Kalbitz allegedly failed to mention that he had been rotating among neo-Nazis in the past, simply was not found.
As already mentioned, AfD is currently the largest opposition force in the Bundestage – the 2017 elections were excellent for this party.
But during the COVID-19 pandemic, AfD’s ratings plummeted: multiple polls show that the party’s popularity fell below 10 percent. ribos
For their part, Merkel and the Union of Christian Democrats (CDU) are simply flying. Both the personal qualifications of the chancellor, who ran the country calmly and professionally during the crisis, and the popularity of the CDU have increased. Up to 38% would now vote for this party. voters.
AFP / Scanpix Photo / Angela Merkel
Distracted during a pandemic
Many analysts point out that the populist AfD has done really well in the past to blame specific political actors or individual ethnic groups for complex geopolitical problems. Muslims were the first target of these radicals.
This time, however, during the new coronavirus pandemic, for which a particular ethnic group is not to blame, AfD is distracted.
One day, the party accuses the Merkel government of closing Germany’s borders too late, and another that the government does not want to lift many restrictions on public life.
Photo by Scanpix / Protest against restrictions in Berlin.
On social media, for example, Chrupalla is simultaneously calling for a “reopening of the economy” and proposing new measures to control the virus after that.
This time, during a new coronavirus pandemic that barely blamed a particular ethnic group, AfD is distracted.
Sound ideas include mandatory vaccinations, “passports” to assess immunity, and applications to help trace contacts.
Furthermore, it can now be said that AfD has failed to tame and protect under the roof of the party the growing protest movement against the state blockade, although the latter unites conspiracy theorists from the far right and left camps.
In April, the organizers of these protests announced that they had registered a new party, Widerstand2020 (“Resistance2020”). This political force will seek to enter the Bundestag in 2021.
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