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AfD politician Björn Höcke and party leader Tino Chrupalla at the party conference in Riesa: working in the background and in the foreground
Photo: Sebastian Kahnert / dpa
There is a story in the AfD that has been going on for years: Björn Höcke is not as powerful as the media always attributes him to.
He lacks the charisma of a leading politician, for years he has shied away from the top because he fears defeat.
It is an attempt to downplay Höcke as much as possible in order to still be able to connect with the middle-class voters in the West.
But Höcke, a West German who ended up in the East, is no longer interested in such questions, if they ever were.
The smaller the group of the so-called moderates, who often differ from the radicals only in questions of style, the harder Höcke tries to reach out.
The Thuringian state and faction leader showed at the federal party conference in Riesa that he and his followers can pull the strings.
Höcke, a nationalist right-wing extremist, uses the additional space that has opened up to him through the resignation of co-party leader Jörg Meuthen and other so-called moderates.
Time is working for him, he accepts occasional setbacks, such as with a European motion that was not voted on in a turbulent debate on Sunday.
Höcke can wait, he acts like a classic technician of power, who knows that first of all the statutory foundations have to be created in order to eventually jump to the top of the AfD.
Two years ago, at the Dresden party conference on the federal election program, Höcke attracted attention with his lively participation in the motion debates.
In this way, he helps shape the party in his own way.
This continued in Riesa, at a crucial construction site.
An application co-signed by him was pushed through, which will enable a one-pointer in the future.
That was also the outwardly completed break with the claim from the founding phase of the AfD, when at times up to three federal spokesmen were the faces of the party.
Höcke is now preparing the throne that he himself might one day ascend.
In two years there could "perhaps" be a peak, he formulated the goal in Riesa.
As for his personal ambitions, he remained vague, as always.
“Maybe it will be in a few years.
Until then, I'm in good hands in Thuringia," he said in Riesa on the fringes of the party conference.
Which is why, also with his blessing, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel were chosen as the provisional duo.
At the same time he promoted the idea of a general secretary.
He, Höcke described his future plan, should flank a future party leader.
Höcke's opponents have little to oppose his claim to form - "will" is often mentioned in Höcke's 1930s rhetoric.
In Riesa, those who had supported Meuthen for a long time continued to decline, not because they were convinced of him, but because he stood for the attempt to make the AfD appear less radical.
There was an unmistakable sign of their loss of power in Riesa: None of the so-called moderates made it into the federal executive committee in the elections, and they often no longer put up any candidates for the ballots.
Höcke alone managed to get three representatives through, including Christina Baum, a member of the Bundestag, who propagated historical revisionism in its purest form in her application speech: The "healthy national pride" of the Germans had been buried by the "rubble of decades of culpability".
That sounded like Höcke's sentences from his notorious Dresden speech from 2017, in which he spoke of the Holocaust memorial as a "memorial of shame" in Berlin and also of the need for a "180-degree turn in commemoration politics".
Even among those who had the re-elected co-party leader Tino Chrupalla on his original election list, there are some who are close to Höcke's world of ideas.
This is how the AfD continues to radicalize itself.
In the West, it is likely to continue to lose members and voters.
It remains strong in the east, even if it did not achieve its goals in the district elections in Saxony.
The leadership duo Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel already seem like an interim solution in view of Höcke's efforts to restructure the party in the long term in his interests.
In Riesa, Höcke showed Weidel where the journey was headed: the right-wing pseudo trade union »Automobile Center« was – against Weidel's will – taken by a resolution of the delegates from the party's incompatibility list.
You decide for yourself "who is an extremist and from whom we distance ourselves, no government agency does that," says Höcke.
However, residual fire is still blazing against Höcke's redesign plan.
How deeply the party is divided became clear once again on Sunday, in an hour-long debate about a Europe proposal that Höcke had justified.
It not only called for the “amicable dissolution of the EU and the establishment of a new European economic and interest community”, which comes close to an earlier Dexit decision by the party.
Above all, however, western delegates feared future losses in the state elections in mid-October in Lower Saxony, because the motion also played down the »Ukraine conflict«.
That was a "Putin narrative" and "grossly damaging, at least in the West," said a delegate from Baden-Württemberg,
Early termination of the party congress
Chrupalla's and Weidel's authority had already been eroded by the time the European application was made.
On the open stage in Riesa they looked like Höcke's driven people.
Chrupalla's proposal to refer the application to the federal executive board for further consultation was only accepted after he had stood at the lectern with six state leaders behind him.
The picture seemed like a helpless gesture.
However, Höcke, the driver, was not there.
In the end, the only thing left to do was to flee forward.
The delegates complied with the new duo's almost pleading request to end the party congress prematurely - which meant that one of Höcke's important projects, the party structural reform commission, was no longer dealt with.
So Höcke will have to wait for that.
In the end, little was left of the »departure«.
That fits into the overall picture.
The party is losing members, it was only around 29,000 in January.
She recently lost ten elections and was recently kicked out of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament.
An exciting topic is now being sought.
Against the background of the Russian war against Ukraine, the AfD is counting on the situation escalating, on rising inflation and energy prices, as Weidel indicated in her speech.
This corresponds entirely to the spirit of this anti-party, the world view of many of its members and officials.
Destructiveness has long been part of the food that the AfD feeds on.
But it could be that in the end she herself perishes.
At the latest when Höcke and his followers should have gained power completely.
It's not that far yet, but they're continuing to work on their construction project for a radical AfD.
Riesa was just the beginning.