“It works like it did in 1933”
AfD city councilor is appalled – and announces her exit
08/15/2023, 4:19 p.m
An AfD city councilor radically settles accounts with her party and sees parallels with the rise of the NSDAP. “To come to power, they use the weaknesses of democracy – the democracy they want to abolish.” At the same time, she warns against the “installation of right-wing extremists in the constituencies”.
In an interview, Freia Lippold-Eggen, AfD city councilor in the Bavarian town of Bad Kissingen, compared the actions of the AfD with those of the NSDAP in 1933 and announced her departure from the party. “In order to come to power, they use the weaknesses of democracy – the democracy they want to abolish,” said the local politician to the “Saale-Zeitung”. And further: “It works like it did in 1933, that’s exactly how the NSDAP grew. The AfD does it without decency. I have to say it so clearly, because: Whoever is silent, agrees.”
Regarding the goals of the AfD, she said: “They dream of taking power, or at least of co-governing.” The right wing is exploiting the exhaustion of the population, who are voting for the AfD out of frustration. “These people are hoping for a promise of salvation. However, if the right-wingers come, it will be even worse – they don’t adhere to the rule of law.”
In the interview, Lippold-Eggen refers to an AfD official from Lower Franconia who no longer wants foreigners in the country: “He sees an ethnologically clean society weakened by mixing. These are the fantasies that these people have – they make foreigners for you own inability to be held liable. That is the direction of the Pied Piper, just as it was in 1933.”
Right shift planned for a long time
The party’s shift to the right had been planned for a long time, Lippold-Eggen continued. The strategies include the “installation of right-wing extremists in the constituencies”.
When asked whether the AfD should be banned, the 68-year-old said: “If things continue like this, I’m all for it.” She hopes that there will be “more decent people” leaving the party. “No one needs to say afterwards: I didn’t know anything.” Lippold-Eggen also said that she didn’t want to condemn the AfD as a whole: “There are other members too. It’s said that the AfD is partly right-wing extremist – with the Young Alternative certainly being right-wing extremist.”