Tuesday, October 12, 2021
“This is not a retreat”
Meuthen formulates a challenge to critics
Jörg Meuthen does not want to run again for the office of federal spokesman for the AfD in December. But he doesn’t want to say goodbye to politics. Meuthen promises that he will continue to stand up to his internal party opponents.
The outgoing AfD boss Jörg Meuthen wants to continue to influence the fate of the party even after the announced withdrawal from his leadership position. The joy of his internal party opponents will be short-lived, he told the portal t-online. “If you think that now you are rid of me, you are mistaken. They will notice very quickly that I am not gone. This is not a retreat.”
Meuthen also does not assume that the Thuringian state chief Björn Höcke, who is assigned to the radical party wing, will run for the federal chairmanship at the party conference in Wiesbaden in December. This one has “not dared to leave his Thuringian stronghold for years”. “The media attaches a weight to him that de facto does not have at all.”
Meuthen also admitted that he had long misjudged the party’s extreme “wing”. In 2018, the wing no longer only claimed to be part of the AfD. Rather, it was said: “The” wing “is the party.” Then he “threw the lever,” said Meuthen, who had initially supported Höcke, about his change of course at the time. “I saw that too late, I have to admit this mistake.”
In a circular to the members that became known on Monday, Meuthen announced that he would not stand again as federal spokesman at the party conference in December. Meuthen did not give concrete reasons for his step in the letter to the members. But he wanted to continue his political work, wrote the MEP.
Meuthen represents the more moderate, economically liberal wing of the party. In the AfD, however, the power structure has been shifting in the direction of the radical forces around Höcke for a long time. Meuthen was also no longer able to assert himself in the federal executive committee.