“More and more uninhibited course”: Meuthen accuses AfD of cult-like behavior

“Increasingly Uninhibited Course”
Meuthen accuses AfD of cult-like behavior

Within the AfD, radical forces are gaining the upper hand. For Jörg Meuthen this is apparently not a problem for a long time. After he left, the ex-party leader launched a sweeping attack: the increasing radicalization has pushed the AfD into political obscurity.

The resigned AfD leader Jörg Meuthen no longer expects his previous party to return to a more moderate course. “I no longer see any future in the AfD political project as a pan-German party,” Meuthen wrote on Facebook. For years he had “warned of the dangers of increasing radicalization,” but he didn’t get through. The possibility of the AfD “politically growing up” will “not come back either”.

Meuthen also announced his resignation from the party on Friday, which he no longer sees “on the basis of the free-democratic basic order”. He had been AfD chairman since July 2015. The 60-year-old initially wanted to be close to the radical forces in the party before he openly opposed them.

“Large parts of the party and with it a number of its leading representatives have opted for an increasingly radical course, not just linguistically uninhibited, for political positions and verbal gaffes,” Meuthen wrote on his Facebook page. This drives the party “into complete isolation and further and further to the political fringes”.

“Particularly shocking” for him was “a deep, verbally articulated disdain for not a few party members for those who think differently and for the established and proven mechanisms of parliamentary democracy,” said Meuthen. He could no longer support this course, which “leads to the complete political sidelines, which sometimes has something downright sectarian in it”.

Thuringia’s Interior Minister warns

After Meuthen left the party, Thuringia’s Minister of the Interior, Georg Maier, expects the party to become more radical. It was only a matter of time before the Thuringian AfD boss Björn Höcke “also takes over the party chairmanship at the federal level,” the SPD politician told the newspapers of the editorial network Germany.

“The fact that the incumbent party leader is leaving is an expression of further radicalization,” said Maier. The AfD “already took this step in Thuringia”. The right-wing party, which was officially dissolved and classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, continues to exist and is “continuing to seize power”. This will probably “not remain without consequences” for the way the security authorities deal with the AfD.

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