AfD
launches manifesto as campaign season for German election begins
Polling for
far-right insurgent and its extreme policies is rising but other parties have
closed ranks against it despite their weak popularity
Kate
Connolly
Kate
Connolly in Berlin
Sun 12 Jan
2025 19.10 GMT
Germany’s
far-right AfD party has signed off on its manifesto before next month’s
critical election, proposing a series of deeply controversial policies on
everything from migration to education as the campaign for a new government in
Europe’s powerhouse formally kicked off.
The party,
founded in 2013, endorsed the far-right concept of “re-migration” into its
programme, threatening the mass deportation of migrants if it came to power.
The phrase,
long used in far-right, so-called identitarian circles, gained in notoriety
after it was the focus of a secret meeting between rightwing extremists,
neo-Nazis and AfD officials in November 2023, which sparked widespread protests
across the country when it came to light.
The
Alternative für Deutschland’s two-day convention in the eastern city of Riesa
at the weekend was held up by mass protests and blockades by over 10,000
demonstrators, which considerably delayed its start. A heavy police presence
held back demonstrators and guarded delegates as they entered the meeting. A
leftwing politician said he had been hit in the face and knocked to the ground
by police. Police said they were examining a video of the incident.
New polls
showed the AfD, parts of which have been classified as far-right extremist by
German domestic intelligence, to have increased its poll rating to 22%, putting
it behind only the CDU/CSU alliance, which dropped a point to 30%.
On Saturday
the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, formally renewed their
nomination of him as their main candidate, despite some misgivings within the
party as to whether he is the right person. The SPD currently stands relatively
unchanged on between 14% and 16%.
The Greens,
which held their convention in November, increased their share by 1% on Sunday
to 15%. BSW, a new party that sells itself as offering “left conservatism”,
held its party convention in Bonn and was expected to agree on its manifesto by
the end of Sunday. The party is hovering between 4% and 6%, and in danger of
failing to get the 5% needed to enter parliament.
The same
applies to the far-left Die Linke (3%-4%), as well as to the pro-business FDP
(4%). It was the expulsion from government by Scholz of its leader and
Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, that led to the collapse last
month of the three-party coalition and paved the way for an early election on
23 February.
The AfD
formally nominated its co-leader Alice Weidel as its chancellor candidate on
Saturday. Party delegates held up heart-shaped placards in the party’s
trademark blue, bearing the slogan: “Alice for Germany”, which critics said
deliberately lent on slogans from the Nazi era.
Among its
manifesto promises is the abolition of the euro and a return to the
Deutschmark, the reintroduction of military conscription and widespread reforms
to the education system and media financing.
At its
conference it voted in favour of disbanding its youth wing, the Junge
Alternative, which has been classified as far-right extremist and is considered
more radical and further to the right than the mother party, and replacing it
with a new organisation. The proposal has been highly controversial among
members.
The AfD has
little chance of getting into government, as the mainstream parties have all
ruled out coalescing or cooperating with it. However, after the collapse of
coalition talks in neighbouring Austria, which has left Herbert Kickl, the head
of the far-right Freedom party, at the helm to form a new government, the AfD
has referred to a “firewall” that “risks trapping the main parties in the
conflagration”.
Weidel, and
the party as a whole, have appeared emboldened after an endorsement earlier
this month by the US billionaire Elon Musk, who claimed on X that only the AfD
could save Germany. Last week he and Weidel held a 75-minute conversation on X,
in which Musk invited Weidel to explain her party to the wider world, but which
morphed into a wide-ranging fireside chat on everything from Musk’s plans to
put people on Mars within four years, to his love of solar energy, whether
either believed in God, and Weidel’s conviction – which drew accusations from
historians of revisionism – that Hitler had been wrongly framed as a fascist.
Although
often anti-American in the past, the very notion that the AfD now has a
personal connection to the new US administration led its MEP Marc Jongen to
propose the motion that the party was “committed to improving relations with
the USA, whose new administration heralds the end of climate ideology and
wokeness”. Jorgen said this clause, which was accepted by the majority of
delegates, was effectively a thank you to Musk “without naming his name”, and
acknowledged the “sea change” going on in the US, “from which the AfD and
Germany is profiting”.
Meanwhile in
Bonn, the BSW, which was established only a year ago by the former communist
politician Sahra Wagenknecht and made swift gains in European parliamentary and
state elections, laid out its plans in a 39-page paper entitled: Our Country
Deserves Better. Among its proposals are reported to be a complete withdrawal
of US troops and long-range weapons from German soil, and a refusal to allow
Ukraine to enter the EU.
The
leadership of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance under Friedrich Merz, who has
long since been expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, came together in
Hamburg at the weekend to consult over its election strategy after its drop in
the polls.
The alliance
is proposing its Agenda 2030 to improve Germany’s economic standing, under the
slogan: mehr fordern, weniger fördern (demand more, offer less financial
support), as it pushes for a slimming-down of the welfare state including more
relief for those in work and less support for unemployed or low-paid people. It
also plans to put more stress on domestic security.
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