Enlarge image
40,000 messages leaked: a man with an AfD cap bends over a smartphone
Photo: Monika Skolimowska/DPA
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel is denounced as a "rat", for the alleged overthrow in Germany one has to prepare for "merciless fights" and anti-gay jokes are cracked about Jens Spahn: A leak from the chat group of the AfD parliamentary group deepens the image of a through and by radicalized party.
The internal chat was leaked to NDR and WDR, and the broadcasters have a total of 40,000 messages from 2017 to after the 2021 federal election.
The AfD MPs are organized in the strictly confidential group, and at least 76 of the 92 AfD MPs wrote regularly in the chat.
»The party is slowly flying out from under our ass«
The statements are directed against other parties and politicians - but often also aim at the state of the AfD.
Parts of the parliamentary group give themselves bad marks and see themselves as a "chaos shop" without a strategy or describe the party leadership as a "sleeping car board".
One person writes: "We're slowly getting rid of the party that was founded to protect our country!"
About nine months before the 2021 federal election, party leader Joana Cotar, who was fighting Alice Weidel for the top candidate for the election at the time, posts: »ONCE move in the same direction.
That's it.
Voters have no idea what to expect when they vote for AfD..."
According to the report by public law in the chat group, others are also violently attacking the parliamentary group leadership: "Ms. Weidel can obviously set priorities, but only when it comes to her own head," says a message.
Weidel herself could not react, she was not a member of the chat group.
Weidel told NDR and WDR that attacks from the party on the leadership were "completely normal": "That doesn't affect me." The AfD parliamentary group leader also commented on homophobic and radical messages in the chat.
Such statements are unacceptable to them.
If she had known about it, she would have taken action against it.
homophobia and fantasies of subversion
Among other things, a person is said to have written in the chat: "The rat Merkel at the top!
This traitor to the people belongs in jail for life!” The group also has fantasies about a revolution: “We will have to wait until the old regime comes to an end economically and the spark from Austria, Italy, France etc. jumps over.
That will come and we must arm ourselves for the merciless fighting that will also follow (...).«
When the self-confessed homosexual CDU politician Jens Spahn was briefly discussed in the media as a possible new defense minister, people said: “Oh good, another defense minister”.
Another person is said to have written: “With Spahn, the Bundeswehr would have switched back to breech-loaders …”.
The increasing radicalization of some party members is discussed critically even within the AfD, as the chat shows.
"We need a directional decision," says one message.
"Do we want to be a National Socialist or a liberal conservative party..." Another person openly writes that she doesn't want "proven Nazis" in the party: "Reject the ideology and the Führer cult represented by Höcke and Kalbitz I deeply.”
Mr
