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AfD in Saxony-Anhalt: The "historical sign" is missing

2021-06-07T20:43:56.902Z


The right-wing camp's dream of an election victory in Saxony-Anhalt has burst. The AfD is again the second strongest party - with a large gap to the CDU. Co-party leader Meuthen is now teasing his internal opponents.


Enlarge image

AfD election party in Magdeburg on June 6, 2021 with Alexander Gauland (second from left) with Jörg Urban and Björn Höcke

Photo: SEAN GALLUP / POOL / EPA

It was the great hope of the far right in the AfD: They wanted to set a beacon in Saxony-Anhalt.

Björn Höcke recently proclaimed in Merseburg that the party would become the strongest force, it would be a "historic sign".

The Thuringian AfD country chief completed a particularly large number of appointments in Saxony-Anhalt's neighboring country.

On election evening there was no longer any question of such a sign for the state and the republic.

The AfD, according to first projections in ARD and ZDF, is probably even below its 2016 result, when it got 24.3 percent.

There was only one consolation for the election campaigners: The state party, which is far to the right within the AfD cosmos, became the second strongest force for the second time in a row.

When the first forecast ran over the screens at the AfD election party in Magdeburg, the body language of the party celebrities present also reflected the disappointment: Höcke applauded rather dutifully, just like the Saxon state chief Jörg Urban standing next to him.

The AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland, who had also traveled, looked almost unmoved - to see no trace of exuberant cheers.

The AfD co-federal chairman Jörg Meuthen, who has had an argument with Gauland and Höcke about the direction of the AfD since last May, was not on site in the state capital.

In contrast to internal rival and co-party leader Tino Chrupalla, Meuthen had not made campaign appearances in Saxony-Anhalt anyway.

The regional association had not invited him, as it was called internally.

Meuthen was not present on television on election evening either, but commented on the outcome via the news agency: The result was "overall good and respectable," after all, it was confirmed as the second strongest party.

After this rhetorical bow to the election campaigners, Meuthen could not resist an indirect swipe at the ultra-right camp in the AfD. In view of the "unmistakably desolate constitution of the competition", especially the CDU, in his opinion "an even stronger result would have been possible with an election campaign aimed more towards the center and less solely on protest". Meuthen demanded that this should now be analyzed within the party.

On site they tried other explanations.

The Saxon-Anhalt AfD top candidate Oliver Kirchner, who was brought up by the crisis of the state association in 2018 around the then and now resigned state and parliamentary leader André Poggenburg, spoke of five years of "agitation" against his party, in which he next to "the media" also included "the churches".

Kirchner no longer wanted to hear about the hope of a victory over the CDU, which had previously been nurtured internally.

"I hadn't given the goal," he said defiantly on ZDF, internally he only spoke of a possible result between "23 and 26 percent".

For the top candidate, one thing was particularly important: they were "People's Party" and had taken "the workers" away from the Left Party - in fact, the party was able to score again here.

Kirchner, but also Chrupalla, talked about a "conservative majority" in Saxony-Anhalt on the evening of the election.

Chrupalla was "very satisfied" with the result, the citizens wanted "a government made up of CDU and AfD".

But such claims by the AfD did not stand up to closer inspection: According to a survey by the research group Wahlen for ZDF, 91 percent of CDU supporters spoke out against working with the AfD.

The number on this election evening supported the course of the CDU Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff, who strictly rejects cooperation with the AfD, in an impressive way.

Höcke also looked for explanations.

He gave a short interview to the “One Percent” association, a group that is being observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist case.

It was a "great result" under extremely difficult conditions, the established media had "really tried everything" to "badly write" the AfD.

In keeping with the internal-party power struggle, he also criticized the poor results of his AfD colleagues in the last state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, in which the party suffered losses.

"The East," claimed right-wing extremist Höcke, "stands."

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-06-07

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