Friday 19th November 2021
Boehringer as party leader?
Gauland plans AfD alliance with CDU / CSU
Alexander Gauland wants to “carry the mushroom into the Union”. The AfD honorary chairman plans a long-term collaboration with parts of the CDU and CSU. For the post of party chairman, he suggests Peter Boehringer from Bavaria, who is fighting against Corona measures and who wants to “hang up” in power.
The AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland considers the Bavarian member of the Bundestag Peter Boehringer to be a suitable party chairman. “I could live with Boehringer very well,” said Gauland of the newspaper “Welt” with a view to the fact that Boehringer is being traded within the party as a promising candidate for the top post in the run-up to the AfD federal executive election planned for December 11th.
Boehringer is fighting against corona measures and what it calls a “Vaccination apartheid“and for the” Dexit “and border closings. He described Corona as” a seasonal illness “. The computer scientist and businessman operates the telegram channel with the widest reach of the individual AfD members of the Bundestag, where he also shares content from conspiracy theorists and spreads conspiracy stories himself. There he also published sentences like: “Many of the people who are in power today should actually be hung up. You can’t say anywhere else, you can say it here “.
Gauland does not believe that the election of the board of directors will become a directional decision between the party currents of the AfD. What he knows so far about possible candidates is not to be expected, he said. At the same time, Gauland directed serious allegations to the previous party leader, Jörg Meuthen, who is not running for the post again.
“Carrying the rift to the Union”
In recent years, Meuthen has “subjected the AfD to the scheme of opposing directions and thus promoted ideas of an alleged right-wing extremism that have absolutely nothing to do with our party and its members.” Meuthen said and did a lot, “which no longer makes him seem suitable to be party chairman,” said Gauland.
With regard to the strategic orientation of the AfD, Gauland believes that cooperation with parts of the Union is possible: “We have to think about working with another party in the long term. That can only be the Union.” This must also have an interest in it: “If the new coalition does not do everything wrong, but works to a certain extent, then the Union will no longer have an option to govern for a long time – unless it considers cooperation with us.”
For his own party and parliamentary group, it is now a matter of “bringing the rift into the Union with applications that a certain group of CDU people could make,” said Gauland. The AfD itself does not have to change: “Why should we moderate ourselves somehow? We have to continue our opposition policy as we have done so far.”
The AfD wants to re-elect its leadership at a federal party conference on December 11 in Wiesbaden. The previous co-party leader Tino Chrupalla had already announced that he would run for the post of chairman again. Regardless of the increasing number of people infected with corona, the party is likely to hold on to the federal party conference. However, if a get-together only according to the 2G rules – vaccinated or recovered – is possible on the weekend in Hesse, the party congress cannot take place, they say. A significant part of the members of the AfD refuses – for various reasons – a vaccination against Covid-19.