What is written and said in chat groups and internal meetings at the AfD shows how deep the rift that runs through the party is now. And what a brutal tone there is at times.
Racist remarks, brutal internal power struggles and what they consider to be too great an influence of the right wing tendency in the AfD have prompted two young members from North Rhine-Westphalia to leave.
They tell their story, garnished with unsavory excerpts from chat logs, in a book that was published by Europa-Verlag. The journalist Wigbert Löer, who reported on the AfD for a number of years for “Stern”, worked on “Im Bann der AfD”.
The book also quotes from an online event by members of the party youth with AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen last April. Meuthen said there that there are different currents in the AfD that are politically far apart. “Nevertheless we are under one roof”. There are times when you have to have this argument to see where you stand. And there are times, like now in the election campaign, “when things have to rest”. When asked how the members of the next parliamentary group could work together in the face of such great differences of opinion, the AfD chairman of the German press agency said: the next parliamentary group will do. ”
Nicolai Boudaghi was deputy federal chairman of the youth organization Junge Alternative (JA). In September 2020 he left the AfD. He describes why some members find it difficult to break away from the party despite concerns and criticism. Boudaghi explains that for these people, the AfD becomes a real world. “They enter a milieu in which they understand and feel among their own kind. At some point they sink into it. Outside, they mostly recognize enemies. ”
Alexander Leschik turned his back on the AfD last April. He had joined the AfD youngsters as a teenager and admits that at the time he also had contact with members of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement (IB). “That is inevitable when you move in AfD and JA circles,” he notes. However, he did not initially locate the IB in Münster 2015 as extreme right.
Leschick says: “If moderate AfD politicians want to endure it in the future on the side of the extreme right wing, they have to pay the price of permanent self-denial.” He knows some
they said they were not ready for it. Some of these AfD members have mandates in one state parliament or want to go to the next Bundestag. They seriously considered turning their backs on their party after the general election. In order to make it easier for these moderate forces to return to society outside the AfD, it is important that political opponents stop “permanently defaming all members of the AfD or even their voters”.
Just a few days ago, Frauke Petry published a book about her time in the AfD. The former AfD chairman had left the party in 2017.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
