Does party expulsion also follow?
AfD right winger Ulbrich resigns from the state parliamentary group
January 31, 2024, 1:13 p.m
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Just one day after he resigned from his position in the AfD’s Federal Arbitration Court, Ulbrich, a member of the state parliament, also resigned from the parliamentary group. He did not comment on the reasons for the move. However, it is possible that he wants to forestall expulsion.
The Saxon AfD politician Roland Ulbrich, who was threatened with expulsion from the party, has resigned from the local parliamentary group. A parliamentary group spokesman in Dresden said the step was taken “of our own decision”. No specific reasons were given for the departure. According to the spokesman, Ulbrich is still an AfD member.
Ulbrich has recently come under criticism. According to press reports, he is said to have referred to the Nuremberg race laws in an arbitration award. According to a report by the news portal Tag24, an AfD politician from Wuppertal is said to have marked her digital holiday card with “#Aryan”, but should still not be expelled from the party.
On Tuesday, Ulbrich resigned as vice president of the party’s Federal Arbitration Court. In doing so, he is taking responsibility for the content of an emergency decision by the AfD arbitration court, “which could give the impression that his jurisprudence is adopting a terminology and a legal principle of National Socialism,” the party said.
“Violating party principles”
The Saxon AfD announced on Monday that Ulbrich should be excluded from the party and parliamentary group. She didn’t give any specific reasons either. Ulbrich had “seriously violated party principles,” it simply said. The Federal Arbitration Court of the AfD is responsible for party exclusion.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the AfD in Saxony as firmly right-wing extremist. Ulbrich has previously attracted attention through right-wing extremist statements, for example after the attack on the synagogue in Halle in 2019. The lawyer from Düsseldorf, who works as a specialist lawyer in criminal law in Leipzig, came to the Saxon state parliament for the AfD in 2019.