With their book “Im Bann der AfD”, two dropouts shine deep into the right-wing party. The authors are young and both have a migration background. They also use chats and other documents to show how the extremists are taking over the AfD.
He really says hello when someone added him to the Whatsapp group, a young man from Göttingen. “Heil Höcke, comrades!” And what must say? In the Whatsapp group “Young Guard”, in which the AfD youngsters cavort, he is exactly right. This is how Nicolai Boudaghi and Alexander Leschik, two dropouts, describe it in their book “”.
They report how the AfD youngsters in the Whatsapp group outdo each other in admiration for Björn Höcke, the AfD chairman of Thuringia, the figurehead of the extreme right wing of the party. Mostly grown-up people who post heart after heart. “Höcke is God,” writes one. “He’s a German hero,” says another. That is 2017, and Boudaghi and Leschik are just about to make party careers.
One of them will soon become vice federal chairman of the youth organization “Junge Alternative”, the other later even appointed by the AfD federal executive board to the important working group for the protection of the constitution. Two junior squads, highly motivated. They fight on the side of those who call themselves moderate. The fight goes against the Höcke wing, against the extreme right-wing camp. Leschik and Boudaghi are resisting it. They long believed that the less radicals could win. It doesn’t happen like that.
In the chats it becomes racist, homophobic and misogynist
The chat excerpts that they present in “Im Bann der AfD” are sometimes disturbingly racist, sometimes homophobic, sometimes misogynistic. In other groups, well-known AfD politicians such as the former deputy federal chairman Georg Pazderski, still head of the AfD parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives, are exposed. Pazderski lets himself out in a Telegram chat about the “jogging pants”, party members who pay a reduced membership fee of 2.50 euros per month: “How did someone put it, the 3K members: no teeth, no money, no education.“Others in the group are eager to blaspheme.” The party is stupid, “says a long-time AfD state chairman. The frustration of not getting rid of Höcke and Co. runs deep.
In “Im Bann der AfD” the authors, who come from very different milieus, tell how they got into the right-wing party and were quickly taken seriously. They tell how money in the form of paid mandates and employee positions holds the AfD together. One chapter describes how the non-Höcke camp in North Rhine-Westphalia is vying for top places in the list for the federal election. They are people who have come together within the AfD because they want to keep Höcke and his helpers small – and who now, in their desperation, are making pacts with Höcke people.
Boudaghi and Leschik are more likely to strike hatred from the AfD; many former party friends consider them traitors. On the other hand, the AfD has already moved further to the right in this election year. The Höcke wing recently dominated the election program and, with Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, will be the top candidates in the upcoming federal election.
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