ARD interview: Weidel refuses to commit the German rule of law

It was a difficult conversation, which Markus Preiß, head of the ARD main city studio, had on Sunday with AfD boss Alice Weidel. Difficult because a group of counter -demonstrators, who had placed opposite the studio, sometimes bothered with speech choirs and loud music so that interviewers and interviewed sometimes hardly understood acoustically.

But it was also difficult in terms of content. Because asked about the suspicion of extremism under which the AfD is, Weidel did not want to clearly confess to the German rule of law even when asked.

Around 20 minutes, moderator Preiß had recorded a report in which the Brandenburg member of the Bundestag Hannes Gnauck said at an event about German citizenship: “We have to be able to decide again who belongs to this people and who does not. Gnauck was the last chairman of the AfD youth organization “Junge Alternative” (yes), which has now dissolved.

It is precisely such statements why the protection of the constitution is therefore the AfD as “secured right -wing extremist”, it was said in the one. At the same time, it was pointed out that the AfD defends itself legally against the classification. Up to a court ruling, the protection of the constitution may not repeat the term.

Confronted by moderator Preiß with the allegations, Weidel replied with the classic counter -argumentation of the AfD that the protection of the constitution was a “political” organization. “The label ‘secured right -wing extremist’ I reject anyway,” said Weidel. It is “complete nonsense”. “It comes from an authority that is not independent of the protection of the constitution. The constitutional protection offices are conducted by our competitive parties.”

She also pointed out that the Federal Ministry of the Interior, to which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is subject, was led by the SPD politician Nancy Faeser in the past legislature. However, this was more of a reserved manner in the question of whether there should be a prohibition procedure against the AfD and that there was “no automatism” as a suspicion due to a high classification of the AfD.

Markus Preiß then referred to a judgment of the Higher Administrative Court of Münster on May 13, 2024, in which the AfD was classified as a right -wing extremist suspicion. As a reason, it was said that the court had found enough indications of anti -constitutional efforts.

“Do you accept that then?” Asked Preiß and Hakte: “Do you accept German judges?” Also for repeated demand, Weidel did not want to answer clearly here. Instead, she first repeated that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution does not act independently.

Then, with a view to the Münster judgment, she suggested that a court that would work because it described “knife crime” in Germany as a “import problem” did not act independently: “The political agenda is also clear.”

Only Weidel’s statements were not the subject of the court ruling (read under the file number 5 A 1216/22). Rather, it was about the activities and statements of the “wing” within the AfD and the youth organization “Junge Alternative” founded by the Thuringian AfD state chief Björn Höcke, both also the basis for the classification of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The tactics to give evasive answers to concrete questions or none at all, also applied Weidel in other places. So the moderator asked them about the discrepancy between a criticism by the member of the Bundestag Stephan Brandner (AfD) on the diet increase of the parliamentarians on the one hand and the fact that the AfD tip recently had a doubling of their allowance: Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla will receive a further 12,000 euros in the amount of 12,000 euros Instead of 6000 euros so far, a total of 24,000 euros.

“Is that honest?” Wanted to know Preiß from Weidel. “Absolutely,” found this. And claimed: “We are the only faction that is transparent.” The only “level of the usual level of the other parties and factions was raised”.

That is at least partially wrong. The left no longer pays allowances to its parliamentary group and was also under the allowance of the AfD in the past legislature.

The Greens pay their parliamentary group up to 50 percent of a diet, i.e. significantly less than the AfD.

At the end of the interview, Weidel also owed answers. At the end, the moderator wanted to know which three things in Germany would “run really well”. She is proud that the “workers and the workers have not given up hope of standing for our country”. Two more points did not want to come up with her even after some thinking.