The tone in the Bundestag had become rougher with the arrival of the AfD four years ago, one often hears from members of other parliamentary groups.
It is unlikely that this will change in autumn.
Berlin - No one can say how big the next AfD parliamentary group will be before the election on September 26th.
But a look at the AfD candidates that have now been set up suggests that blatant sayings from the right-hand side of the plenary will probably be heard at least as often in the future as in the current election period.
Because there are some candidates on the lists who have already achieved a certain local fame.
More radical tones
The proportion of supporters of the party's right wing wing is unlikely to increase significantly in the new parliamentary group.
The past few months have shown, however, that quite a number of functionaries who are actually not ideologically located there are sometimes willing to take on more radical tones when looking for majorities.
The new parliamentary group will also have few women and many ex-military in its ranks.
It is already foreseeable that the AfD will probably also be the parliamentary group with the lowest proportion of women in the next Bundestag.
In Lower Saxony, for example, not a single woman was voted on the list last weekend.
Safe list places
If the general election were to take place next Sunday, the AfD would get ten to twelve percent of the vote. In the election in September 2017, she received 12.6 percent of the second vote. If you use the current survey values as a benchmark, the more well-known women from the parliamentary group from 2017 would be there again via their relatively safe list positions: This applies to the current group leader and top candidate Alice Weidel, Beatrix von Storch, Mariana Harder-Kühnel from Hesse, who in The competition for the top candidate was defeated by Joana Cotar and for Corinna Miazga.
The relatively high proportion of MPs from the military remains stable. Even if the current chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives, Georg Pazderski, does not make it into the Bundestag via fourth place on the Berlin state list. Because a retired Bundeswehr general, Joachim Wundrak, will probably be part of the new parliamentary group as number one in Lower Saxony. Some AfD members suspect that Wundrak could be less concerned with defense and more with foreign policy in the new parliamentary group. There is less crowding because some of those who have claimed this field in the AfD so far will no longer be there in the foreseeable future.
What is striking: Those who stood out in this electoral period through particularly blatant, racist or inhumane statements were nevertheless able to - or perhaps precisely because of this - again secure good places on the list.
The same applies to MPs who made headlines through disruptive actions such as smuggling in visitors who harassed and cursed MPs.
Newbies close to Höcke
Hansjörg Müller, who wants to dissolve the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, published a satirical vicious video about his parliamentary group colleague Roland Hartwig, who is no longer up, and appeared as a speaker at lateral thinker demos, is out. According to party circles, the reason for his defeat at the Bavarian constellation was neither his political messages nor his proximity to the "wing", which has now formally disbanded and which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution observes as a right-wing extremist endeavor. On the contrary, some delegates resented the offensive position he had taken against the state chairwoman Miazga in the past few months. Miazga had made her cancer public at the end of 2020. She finally prevailed against Müller in the vote for second place on the state list.
Christina Baum from Baden-Württemberg is one of the conspicuous newcomers who are likely to slip into a relatively safe list position in the Bundestag.
The former member of the state parliament enthusiastically shares posts by the founder of the “wing” and Thuringian AfD boss Björn Höcke on her Facebook page.
She herself posts sentences like “Germany no longer knows any honor or pride.
What has become of the once great people of poets and thinkers?
Just a shadow of himself. A nation is dying. "
Membership in the secret service control body questionable
Torben Braga (fourth place on the state list) could possibly move into the Bundestag from Thuringia. So far, he has held a key position in Höcke's parliamentary group as the parliamentary managing director. In 2015 Braga was the spokesman for the German fraternity. The groups organized in it as an umbrella organization had come under massive criticism at the time. They had been accused of not acting consistently enough against right-wing extremist currents in their own ranks. Numerous student associations had subsequently resigned.
Roman Reusch, who used to be a senior public prosecutor in Berlin, will no longer run for the Bundestag. According to party members, he would have had a chance of being set up by his Brandenburg state association. With Reusch's departure, the question arises whether someone from the ranks of the AfD will be re-elected to the secret service control body of the Bundestag. The nine-member Parliamentary Control Committee (PKGr) monitors the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The members of parliament regularly meet in strict secrecy in a tap-proof room.
Regarding secrecy, there were no complaints from the members of the committee about Reusch. However, the situation when he was elected was different than it is today. In the meantime, sub-organizations of the AfD such as the wing, which was formally dissolved in 2020, and the Junge Alternative as well as several state associations of the party are in the sights of the constitution protection. According to his own statement, AfD MP Gerold Otten is one who is interested in applying to become a member of the PKGr. Before entering the Bundestag, the former fighter pilot and colonel in the reserve worked in the arms industry. dpa
