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AfD right wing Höcke at the party conference in Dresden: Noticeably present
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
The AfD has just presented its advertising campaign for the federal election campaign.
Last Friday, the party proudly presented its posters: not as gloomy as usual, a lighter blue, here a small dog, there a blond young woman.
The same goes for the commercial: a family having dinner together, a grandfather who plays with his grandchildren, a garden gnome - and another dog.
Then the slogan: »Germany.
But normal. "
The AfD wants a normal Germany?
If it were so, the party would not have to fear any observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - and then the office would not have classified a significant part of it as "proven right-wing extremist".
The AfD tries its hand at a staging that not only in vain, but after the most recent party congress in Dresden seems downright ludicrous.
Because there the delegates decided, for example, to leave the EU, for border fences à la Donald Trump and a migration policy based on the Japanese model, with which hardly anyone could immigrate to Germany.
EU membership, free borders and the immigration of skilled workers have been "normal" in Germany for decades.
In many social issues, the AfD program moves between arch-conservative and democratically untenable positions: On the one hand, the AfD makes it clear that families consist of mother, father and children, that there are two genders, and that there are “gender quotas” and gender-appropriate language to refuse - so far, so fifties.
But the extreme right is also calling for "German dominant culture instead of" multiculturalism "" and demanding that the Bundeswehr "maintain a strong corps spirit, its traditions and German values".
A dangerous spirit is evoked here, which the armed forces controlled by the Bundestag have painstakingly pushed back for years.
The AfD's demands are also rigorous in the Corona policy.
For example, a mask requirement is generally rejected, as is any direct and indirect compulsion to corona tests and vaccinations.
In addition, not all people with a positive PCR test should be counted as infected, but only sick people whose symptoms have been medically proven.
The program used to be considered a fig leaf
What is new is that the AfD's radical view of German society can now also be read in black and white in the election manifesto.
So far, the painstakingly coordinated program pages have always been more moderate than the speeches of AfD politicians listened to.
That was no coincidence, as people liked to use the program as a fig leaf: Look here, what some politicians say about us in a marketplace or write on Facebook, is not our official position at all.
The AfD is not that radical at all.
Those days are over now.
From now on the following applies: The AfD, finally honest, shows "courage to truth," the motto that the party had adopted at the beginning.
Björn Höcke, head of the state in Thuringia and even officially designated a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, played a major role in this.
In Dresden he campaigned for many of the amendments that were tightened up.
It was "about setting a political signal," he said.
In general, Höcke.
If he otherwise held back at party congresses, he was conspicuously present in Dresden and thus showed his will to lead.
What was also new was that the majority of the delegates went along with almost all of his demands.
With the poor results of the last state elections in the West and in the European elections, AfD functionaries in the Western associations have radicalized themselves, others hope that they can copy the success of the Eastern associations in this way.
Those who are concerned that their positions will scare off middle-class voters are now outnumbered.
Even party leader Jörg Meuthen, who had suddenly positioned himself last year as a fighter against the most radical of the AfD, called for "maximum commitment" for colleagues in Saxony-Anhalt - this state association is one of the most radical of the party, representatives of the officially dissolved " Wing «around Höcke are at its tip.
With the course, the AfD is likely to lose some actually bourgeois voters compared to the last federal election.
But it is evidently the right-wing party's new strategy: With the radicalism that can also be read in the program, it is targeting the fifth of Germans who, according to the Mitte study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, have "hostile attitudes towards" strangers. "
And probably also to the 17 percent who agree with the following sentence: "The primary goal of German politics should be to give Germany the power and status it deserves."
