German ultras prepare for the polls and demand the end of the cordon sanitaire against AfD

The German extreme right is preparing to turn the growing support of the polls into votes at the polls, which put it in second place. Alternative for Germany (AfD) has held a congress in Magdeburg this Friday and Saturday in which it has chosen its headliner in the 2024 European elections and has promoted its message in view of the elections in several federal states next autumn and next year. The leaders have also attacked the cordon sanitaire of the rest of the German formations against the AfD.

With protests against extremism at the gates of congress, around two-thirds of the party’s 600 delegates have chosen as their main candidate (the full list will take several days to compile) Saxon politician Maximilian Krah, an MEP since 2019 and twice suspended by the Identity and Democracy (ID) group of the European Parliament, to which the AfD belongs together with the Italian League and the National Regroupment of Marine Le Pen, among others. Last year, he was temporarily expelled from ID for supporting the ultra Éric Zemmour in the French campaign, instead of Le Pen, and since last February he has been investigated for suspected fraud. The case concerns the possible rigging of a public tender.

“We have become the most exciting right-wing party in Europe,” Krah, who has the support of the leader of the most radical wing of the AfD, Björn Höcke, proclaimed to the congress.

The day began with a speech by the party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, who accused the EU of being “deeply undemocratic” and of having failed to contain migration. “What is needed is a Europe of the homelands,” declared Weidel, who advocated reducing the powers of Brussels, strengthening nation states and building a “fortress Europe” armored against immigrants and asylum seekers.

According to several opinion polls in the second half of July, the AfD would now obtain between 20% and 22% of the vote in Germany. This puts it ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (18%) and second behind the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the main opposition party (26 to 27%). In the 2021 federal elections, the AfD was the fifth force, with 10.3%, which shows the recent boom that the formation is experiencing.

With this tailwind, Weidel called the rest of the German parties undemocratic for “excluding” voters represented by the AfD. “We talk to everyone,” he said, arguing that doing otherwise increases “social polarization” and makes it impossible and a “sociopolitical consensus.” “What we see now in eastern Germany is only the beginning. We are leading the polls and until the regional elections we will strengthen our position even more, ”he said of his strength in the former East Germany.

Tino Chrupalla, the other party leader, warned at the start of the congress on Friday that the AfD cannot rest on its laurels before the elections in Bavaria and Hesse in the autumn and those planned in three federal states in the east of the country in 2024. “The next year we can become the strongest force in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. AfD must prepare to assume government responsibilities. AfD is ready for more” concluded the ultra leader.

Chrupalla also addressed the German conservatives with the express request that they renounce the cordon sanitaire against the AfD, which recently took over a mayor’s office and a county leadership in the east of the country. The co-leader called on “all the patriots of the CDU to tear down the black and green wall”, an insinuation that the blockade of the ultras is a concession by the conservatives to the Greens. In the background, the controversy that has plagued this past week the top leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, who had to backtrack on some statements in which he opened the door to a collaboration with the AfD at the local level.

Chrupalla said that his party is willing to form coalitions with anyone who makes “a policy in the interest of the citizens”, but he expressly excluded Los Verdes and described that party as a partner of the coalition led by the Social Democrats and in which they are also the liberals – as “the most dangerous in Germany”.

In addition to the first candidates for the European list, the delegates approved a motion on Saturday to postpone the debate on the political program for those elections, initially scheduled for this and next weekend. Approval of the program has been deferred to January.

The party leadership has designed a 92-page draft document in which it will predictably advocate a radical reduction in Brussels’ powers and highlights the idea of ​​Europe as a fortress against immigration. Along these lines, the AfD also rejects multiculturalism and Islam, which it considers a “danger for Europe”. The document does not mention an express condemnation of the Russian war of aggression and only contains a brief statement: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a lot of suffering among those affected.”

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