Homophobic, racist statements, fantasies of a revolution and insults by Angela Merkel: This is what NDR and WDR found in an evaluation of 40,000 chat statements by 76 AfD members of the Bundestag. The tirades show that the AfD is neither liberal nor conservative; she is a right-wing extremist NPD 2.0.
“We are liberals and conservatives,” is the first sentence in the preamble to the AfD’s basic program. Nice-sounding words, only they don’t correspond to reality. Liberals are tolerant and conservatives attach importance, among other things, to a civilized handling of political disputes. Many AfD politicians lack both: accepting other opinions and decency.
Chats by members of parliament from the far-right party analyzed by NDR and WDR reveal the contempt with which many AfD politicians speak of political and inner-party opponents, and the hatred they harbor for this state and its institutions. Anyone who describes the Federal Republic as an “illegal state” obviously has a split relationship with the constitutional state. Anyone who insults the former chancellor as a “rat” and “traitor to the people” cannot be a conversation partner for a democrat – regardless of party political orientation.
In the 40,000 evaluated statements of this chat group, in which 76 AfD members of the Bundestag participated, the openly racist statements stand out, as well as nasty attacks on homosexual politicians from the CDU and SPD. The fantasies of a coup are also frightening, along with the demand that the party must prepare for the “coming merciless struggles”. That’s what the Nazis said in the 1930s.
In the chats, it is also clear that a fierce struggle is raging within the party between the right-wing extremist wing and those who are considered moderates by AfD standards. However, there can be no doubt that the extremists in this far right party have the stronger battalions at their disposal, that the supposedly dissolved “wing” often sets the tone. The sympathetic judgment of leading AfD politicians about the war criminal Putin speaks volumes. However, you don’t have to evaluate confidential chats to see this. All you have to do is listen to party leader Tino Chrupalla and his co-leader Alice Weidel.
The AfD has had many electoral successes since it was founded nine years ago. But the infighting within the party between the ever-shrinking national-conservative wing and the right-wing extremists, with their leader Björn Höcke, who are becoming ever more assertive, has damaged their appeal among voters. Only 10.3 percent in the federal election after 12.6 percent in 2017 and heavy losses in votes in the three state elections this year let the alarm bells ring in the party. That should exacerbate the struggles among the AfD members who fear for their mandates.
Anyone who has looked closely when even leading AfD politicians made contemptuous remarks about political opponents who disregarded the democratic rules of the game, discredited the rule of law, advocated racist theses and tried to poison the political climate, knew for a long time that no state could be associated with this party make is. The now known chat tirades prove this: The AfD is neither liberal nor conservative; she is a right-wing extremist NPD 2.0.
