Germany: AfD benefits from its strategy of radicalization

Germany: AfD benefits from its strategy of radicalization without limit
The extremist fringe of the party does not hesitate to tackle the taboos of Germany as the memory of the Holocaust.

(Corresponding to Berlin)

Without filter and without restraint, the far right is leading its offensive. In Cottbus, former East Germany, she took to the streets at the end of January in the name of "the future of the homeland" to protest against the reception of refugees. The demonstration, co-organized by the populist AfD party, resulted in violent clashes. In Berlin, a women's march was organized on 17 February by AfD activist Leyla Bilge. With the help of far-right networks, she called for protests against "the so-called refugees" who are turning "our society into a cesspool of violence and sexual abuse". In March, the presence of a handful of right-wing editors at the Leipzig Book Fair is already raising concerns. In October, the visit to the Frankfurt Fair of Björn Höcke, the leader of the hard wing of the AfD, caused tensions.

In the Bundestag too, the Alternative für Deutschland plays the role of spearheading radicalization. The most radical fringe of the populist party no longer hesitates to attack the taboos of Germany. At the end of January, at the Holocaust Victims' Memorial, MP Hansjörg Müller ostensibly refused to applaud the survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who had just spoken. She is not responsible for "being manipulated," commented the elected on Tuesday to explain his attitude. "I have a problem with this kind of commemoration because it is not sincere because it is hypocritical," he added.

The desire to question German memory is spreading within the AfD. One of the local party leaders in Baden-Württemberg, Wolfgang Gedeon, for example, called in December and again recently the end of the Stolpersteine. These small, pavement-sized plaques can be found all over the country, where Holocaust victims lived. Known for his anti-Semitic positions, Wolfgang Gedeon claimed to denounce "a dictatorship of memory".

Embarrassed, the leadership of the AfD disassociated itself from the request of the elected. This is not a subject for us, Bernd Baumann, the secretary general of the parliamentary group, evaded on Tuesday. Part of the AfD does not hide its discomfort with this kind of excesses and provocations. An exclusion procedure against Wolfgang Gedeon has thus been initiated. But it failed in December, highlighting the failure of management to control its most extremist elements.

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The right wing of the Alternative für Deutschland no longer retains its blows. Last week, one of its most important representatives, André Poggenburg, caused an uproar by treating the German Turks as "cumin dealers" who have "the genocide of the Armenians in the ass". "And they want to teach us something about history and country? They completely mess up! These camel drivers should go home, far behind the Bosphorus, to their mud huts and their polygamy! "He said. Later, he pleaded satire. The AfD's management merely sent him a "warning".

But the temptation of extreme-rightization is assumed in broad daylight: André Poggenburg was displayed that day with Lutz Bachmann, the founder of the Pegida movement "against the Islamization of the West." Referring to the removal of Martin Schulz from the presidency of the SPD, he also dared a veiled allusion to Nazism. "To everyone what he ...", he began deliberately suspending his sentence, which recalls the phrase "Jedem das seine" written on the pediment of the Buchenwald camp. "To each one what he deserves".

In Germany, these formulas are too sulphurous to be used innocently. Faced with these outrages, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged the Germans "not to be manipulated" by the AfD.

Rising in polls

Without occupying the key positions of the AfD, the tough ones hold the party. They are taken behind the scenes by Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in Thuringia. He was also the subject of a never-ending exclusion procedure for comments about the memory of the Holocaust.

Prisoner of its extremes, the direction of the AfD espouses the tendency to radicalization. Bundestag group president Alice Weidel attacked German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel on Twitter, who had been released from Turkish jails where he had been imprisoned for a year: he is "neither a journalist nor a journalist. German ", Alice Weidel was offended last weekend by refusing to associate with the general relief.

For now, this provocative strategy that tries to capture the theme of German identity pays off. While government paralysis is not yet resolved in Berlin, polls are every day better for the AfD. In the latest Insa poll for Bild, published Monday, the populist party ahead of the Social Democrats with 16% against 15.5%. There is the margin of error. But the trend is undeniable.