The AfD was kicked out of the state parliament in Schleswig-Holstein, lost votes in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland and also in the Local elections in Saxony achieved less than hoped for…
As a result, the AfD will lose influence and there will also be fewer posts to be filled. And the people who didn’t do anything in the right-wing camp before are now struggling for the fewer and fewer remaining posts. So there are now many gamblers who actually make a name for themselves with their enraged citizen stagings instead of selling themselves politically rationally – to the detriment of the party as a whole.
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This is actually a cumulative radicalization process, where certain things are mutually dependent and where the party can no longer get out.
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Alexander Haeusler…
… is a research associate in the research area right-wing extremism/ neo-Nazism at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. The social scientist has observed the AfD since it was founded and has published numerous books and articles on the party.
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What are the internal consequences for the party?
Panic is spreading more or less throughout the West German state associations, because this downward trend is also starting a spiral that needs to be countered. Because they realize that those who used to support the party are now leaving them in droves. That means that in some countries, especially in large areas like North Rhine-Westphalia, they are no longer campaignable. There is a lack of personnel and opportunities for this, and there is also an ever-increasing dispute within the party.
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What are the consequences of this dispute?
The party has always been at odds. It is a party of right-wing angry citizens. This means that the dispute is part of the gene of the party. But there used to be more to give away. Now it’s the other way around and undone. Of course, that intensifies the competition. Above all, this exacerbates the frustration, so that people then turn their backs on the party.
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What does this amount to?
Of course, the AfD is still there in the West. Compared to other far-right parties, such as the Republicans or the NPD, it has considerably more influence. She made the right-wing camp strong beyond measure in Germany.
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But is the influence declining?
Yes, and the trend is that the AFD is more or less developing into a party that their radical course can score particularly well in the East German states and at the same time loses influence, especially in the West. This is dramatic within the party and also for the outside world insofar as the claim of the parties to be a people’s party with right-wing content has been repeatedly formulated.
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So there is an East-West conflict within the party?
Yes. The functionaries in Western associations are often concerned with giving the party an apparently more moderate appearance – in the hope of covering electoral politics more of the middle-class spectrum and, in the long term, getting away from the surveillance of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This course appears to have been nullified.
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