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AfD parliamentary group leader Alexander Gauland on November 20 in the Bundestag: "I apologize for this as parliamentary group leader"
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Political-Moments
At the end of a turbulent week, Alexander Gauland is at the lectern of the Bundestag.
The speakers of the AfD are often punished by the others with demonstrative disregard, but this time the competition is quite excited to see what the parliamentary group leader of the far-right party has to say.
How, so many in the plenum ask, would Gauland react to AfD MPs having invited visitors into the Bundestag building who filmed and harassed other MPs with their cell phones?
Gauland decides this Friday, as the Union and the SPD have specifically scheduled a debate on the incidents from last Wednesday, for a mixture of apology and qualification.
The fact that elected representatives of the people were "harassed and harassed by" guests of two members of his parliamentary group is uncivilized and not proper. "
He apologizes for that, says Gauland.
No intention of course
The AfD honorary chairman could have left it at that.
But he doesn't.
Shortly before, the first parliamentary managing director of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, Michael Grosse-Brömer, accused him that the incidents were the low point of a “lasting strategy of the AfD”.
But Gauland does not want to know anything about an intention of his parliamentary group, speaks of an "allegation", calls it "infamous".
So after the short intro he goes into attack mode.
At Gauland, Wednesday, when the passage of the Infection Protection Act in the Bundestag was accompanied by protests outside and by disruptive actions by right-wing bloggers inside, sounds like this: The heated atmosphere has been carried over inside, "something has gotten out of hand," you have the visitors Have to "supervise".
His faction, however, "could not expect" that "something like this" would happen.
Mocking laughter follows from the ranks of the Union, SPD, FDP, Greens and Left - in a debate that was conducted with sharp words.
In his speech, Gauland gathers those argumentation patterns that are also disseminated in the social media by AfD parliamentarians: that troublemakers from other political camps have already made it into the Bundestag that double standards are being measured.
Gauland calls the climate activists of "Extinction Rebellion" who, with the help of a former SPD MP, distributed leaflets in the building in July, reminiscent of an action in the summer by Greenpeace activists who unrolled a banner from the roof of the Bundestag.
"Fair play and equality of standards", Gauland misses, there is obviously a big difference between who behaves "improperly in or at the Bundestag" and with "what attitude".
At the back of the plenum sits AfD MP Karsten Hilse, who was pushed to the ground by Berlin police officers on Wednesday on the sidelines of the demonstration, handcuffed and briefly arrested.
Hilse, a police officer from Saxony, had to be treated in the Bundeswehr hospital on the advice of the Bundestag doctor, according to the AfD.
And of course Gauland uses Hilse's arrest - he had recently spoken to a "lateral thinker" T-shirt in the Bundestag - to slip into the role of victim.
He thinks it is "more than appropriate if you also and especially condemn this attack on a representative of the people," cries Gauland, so that "you could prove that what you are doing today is not hypocritical."
Thunderous applause from his parliamentary group is certain.
However, it is not true that Hilse's arrest went unmentioned among parliamentarians: The FDP domestic politician Konstantin Kuhle spoke about this in an interview with SPIEGEL on Wednesday and asked for the incident to be clarified.
These and other facts do not fit into the worldview of some AfDlers: On the Twitter channel of the foreign politician Petr Bystron it is claimed that the arrest did not trigger any "media coverage".
Several media reported on the same day - including photos of the police action.
AfD parliamentary group no longer wants troublemakers as guests
The diversionary maneuvers and relativizations from the AfD cannot hide the fact that the disruptive actions are also viewed critically within the parliamentary group.
Hardly anyone believes that the party will benefit in the long term.
"The political opponent is of course assuming a strategy for us, but in the matter the action is more likely to have harmed us," an AfD employee told SPIEGEL.
Before the debate on Friday, the AfD parliamentary group met for its special session.
"Unanimously", as a parliamentary group spokesman explained afterwards, the invitation of the guests was "disapproved" by members of the Bundestag.
The parliamentary group had decided that these guests were "banned from all parliamentary group events."
The AfD MPs Petr Bystron and Udo Hemmelgarn were also asked to apologize to the President of the Bundestag - guests who were later noticed as troublemakers were given access to parliament via both offices.
However, the request did not initially apply to parliamentarian Hansjörg Müller, who invited a YouTuber close to the AfD (read the background to the interferers here).
Here the case is "not clear," said the group spokesman for SPIEGEL.
What to think of a possible apology is shown by the response of the foreign politician Bystron to a request from SPIEGEL: "Of course we apologize to our colleagues if they were harassed by Bundestag visitors who were registered through our office."
But then he adds: the "talk" of an "infiltration" is "crude defamation" with which they try to "cover up our great parliamentary success".
The AfD was "the voice" of the people who were against the Infection Protection Act.
Bystron did not mention that other parties also criticized the amendment and, like the FDP and the Left, voted against it.
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