GERMANY: Infighting Roils Extremist AFD Party After Shocking Election, “Moderate” Leader Asked To Resign

September 25, 2017 Extremists, Politics

The Washington Post reports:

A senior figure in the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany says party co-leader Frauke Petry should quit, amid deepening infighting a day after its strong showing in national elections. Petry, who is co-chairwoman of AfD, announced Monday that she won’t join its new parliamentary caucus and walked out of a news conference.

She’s been sidelined in the party recently after arguing that AfD needs to take a more moderate line if it wants to share power rather than just oppose the government.

Alice Weidel, who was one of AfD’s two figureheads going into Sunday’s vote, said Petry’s walkout “is hard to beat in terms of irresponsibility.” News agency dpa quoted Weidel as urging Petry to leave the party “to prevent further harm.”

Alice Weidel is a married lesbian with two children.

More from Deutsche Welle:

In the past, AfD party members — many of whom are now virtually assured of Bundestag seats — have declared that the “constitution is not written in stone,” demanded an end to “the cult of guilt” surrounding the Holocaust, warned against “the creation of mixed peoples” (Mischvölker – also translatable as mongrel peoples) and called Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leading mainstream politicians “traitors to their people.”

Many have been linked to smaller right-wing extremist parties like the NPD and Die Republikaner (the Republicans) and are connected with the PEGIDA and Identitarian movements, which are both kept under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

There are, of course, relative moderates in the party, led by party co-chairwoman Frauke Petry, but as Gauland made clear after the first exit-poll prognosis when he vowed to “hunt down” the new government and Merkel, the election result is not going to encourage the AfD to back off its more radical positions.

Last night anti-Nazi rallies broke out in several German cities after the election results were announced.



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