Alternative for Germany

The Alternative for Germany (abbreviation: AfD) is a right-wing populist and far-right political party in Germany. Based on EU scepticism and nationalism, the AfD has various, partly contradictory inner-party associations, informal party wings and individual opinions. In addition to the national conservative, economic liberal, value conservative, Christian fundamentalist, and direct democratic forces that remained after the party splits, members have organized within the party who represent authoritarian, nationalist, homophobic, anti-feminist, anti-Semitic, and historical revisionist positions. The völkisch-nationalist wing is considered the rallying point of right-wing extremist forces within the party. Several state associations and other parts of the party maintain links to new-right groups, such as the Identitarian movement and the Islamophobic organization Pegida. They have been monitored by various state offices for the protection of the constitution since 2018. The AfD is the only party represented in the German Bundestag whose environmental and climate policy is based on the denial of man-made global warming.

In 2014, the AfD succeeded in entering a supra-regional parliament for the first time in the European elections. Subsequently, it entered all German state parliaments and, after the 2017 federal election, the 19th German Bundestag with 12.6% of the vote. There it is the third strongest force and has been the largest opposition faction since the formation of the Grand Coalition.

Profile

At its founding party conference on 14 April 2013, the AfD adopted its first election manifesto, followed in 2014 by political guidelines, and later by strategy papers and resolutions - including on the tightening of asylum law, on euro and foreigner policy, on Islamism and on gun rights.

At the beginning of May 2016, the AfD adopted its basic programme at the members' party conference in Stuttgart, based on a draft that had been developed in working groups with the participation of around 1,000 members. At a party congress in 2019, it was to be expanded, among other things, in terms of social policy. Due to considerable differences of opinion - especially on the pension issue - the so-called "social party congress" was postponed until April 2020.

European, financial and economic policy

In its "Political Guidelines" of 2014, the AfD advocated the policy of the social market economy in the sense of Ludwig Erhard. In its 2016 manifesto, it rejected the EU as a political alliance and advocated only an economic community similar to the EU's predecessor, the EEC. The euro was described as an experiment that should be ended; the party wanted to call a referendum on remaining in the eurozone.

Individual representatives are calling for Germany to leave the European Union, analogous to the British Brexit. Officially and by the party leadership, withdrawal is seen as the last resort in the event that fundamental reforms of the European Union fail to materialise. Due to a "lack of legitimacy" of the EU, the AfD calls for the renationalization of policy areas. It rejects a joint liability of the Eurozone. In 2015, Oskar Niedermayer did not see the AfD as an "anti-EU party", rather its criticism of the euro and policies in the euro crisis was "purely socio-economic". He saw it "embedded in a [...] market-liberal, one could almost say market-fundamentalist position in the welfare state conflict." In 2016, Dieter Plehwe identified a "new right-wing liberal" politics that goes back to the critique of the Maastricht treaties. Marcel Lewandowsky highlighted the postulate of a "crisis of one's own, national identity and sovereignty" and identified four dichotomies: "sovereign nation versus European superstate", "subsidiarity versus Brussels centralism", "citizens versus elites" and "German payers - foreign takers".

The AfD strives for a further reduction of Germany's national debt. Liability risks from guarantees, as in the case of the euro and bank rescue measures, should be shown in financial planning. Tax law should be simplified, as in the Kirchhof model. The AfD wants to abolish inheritance tax and review trade tax.

Foreign and defence policy

Apart from European policy, the AfD's foreign policy programme remains fragmentary. There are some decisions and resolutions, among others on the Syria issue. The AfD is committed to NATO; this should serve the defence of the nation.

In its 2019 defense policy concept, the AfD parliamentary group called for a "restoration of the Bundeswehr" through the reintroduction of compulsory military service, missions in the interior and for border protection, and concentration on national and alliance defense within NATO. In addition, a German general staff, a separate military jurisdiction and a new understanding of tradition are to be introduced.

Environment and climate policy

The AfD's positions are based on a fundamental denial of man-made global warming. In its manifesto of 2016, for example, it fundamentally rejects climate protection policy. This is based on unsuitable computer models, and since the end of the 1990s there has been no increase in temperature (pause in global warming). _CO2 is not a pollutant, but "an indispensable component of all life". The Renewable Energy Sources Act, the Renewable Energies Heat Act and the Energy Saving Ordinance are to be abolished without replacement and the lifetime of German nuclear power plants extended. In the EU Parliament, the AfD rejected all climate change proposals since the Paris Agreement in December 2015 (as of February 2019). In September 2019, Alexander Gauland called criticism of the German government's climate protection policy the third central AfD issue, along with the euro and immigration.

The AfD's energy policy, developed in the "Federal Energy Policy Committee", was co-drafted by members of the lobby organisation "European Institute for Climate & Energy", which denies man-made global warming.

In 2016, the AfD rejected a coal phase-out and a _{CO2 tax and} advocated research in the field of nuclear energy / nuclear reactors. The nuclear phase-out should be reversed. Fracking should be researched. Marine protected areas should be created and the construction of offshore wind farms in the open sea should be stopped. In 2019, the AfD called for a fight against "invasive species" because they were a danger to native plants and animals. The wolf population in Germany should be "sensibly" regulated.

Family and gender policy

The AfD represents conservative-antifeminist positions in gender policy and rejects gender equality policy and gender mainstreaming. In doing so, it relies, among other things, on Christian fundamentalist and folk ideas. The AfD considers demographic issues to be relevant. It advocates the traditional family of man and woman and opposes both quotas for women and a supposed abolition of gender identities. The AfD attracts attention through campaigns such as "Stop the Gender Delusion", especially in social media. In 2016, the party's state parliamentary groups opposed sex education in kindergarten and primary school and specifically sexual diversity education in the Magdeburg Declaration. Parts of the pro-life movement find points of contact here and exert influence on the party, especially in the southern German state associations.

In several places in its programme, the AfD calls for the abolition of gendering, and in a 2016 resolution explicitly calls for the abolition of gender-equal language and "the return to the generic masculine as well as the renunciation of all gender-ideological turns of phrase (artificial gerund forms, superfluous masculine-feminine double forms, etc.)".

labour and social policy

Labour and social policy should be part of the national tasks of the member states. The AfD advocates social security for low-wage earners. Since 2016, it has been in favour of maintaining the minimum wage. Before the 2014 European elections, the AfD's European programme stated that a statutory, nationwide minimum wage could not provide this protection and would also endanger jobs. The AfD demanded that the state should provide social support in the form of income subsidies.

Six years after its foundation, the party has not yet developed a unified pension concept; a pension party conference planned for 2019 was postponed to 2020. A total of seven different concepts existed. The social researcher and mathematician Gerd Bosbach assumes that the party "in important parts even wants to sacrifice the statutory pension in favor of the unsocial private pension".

The pension concept of Björn Höcke's Thuringian AfD, for example, envisages retaining the contribution assessment ceiling for the time being. According to Bosbach, this is anti-social, because top earners would have to pay a lower share of their income than lower earners. The beneficiaries of this concept would be the employers. In addition, he said, the aim is to extend the working life both by abolishing the upper limit for retirement and by lowering the retirement age. Tax-financed supplements for recipients of small pensions should only be available to German citizens. This concept violates Article 3 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.

A concept advocated by party leader Jörg Meuthen envisages the abolition of the state pension, which is to be replaced by a tax-financed basic pension just above subsistence level.

Migration and asylum policy

The positions on migration policy are described as an ambivalent mixture of conservative and neoliberal understanding: On the one hand, the importance of freedom of establishment, but also of the free movement of workers in Europe is emphasised; "qualified" and "integration-minded" immigration according to the Canadian model is affirmed. On the other hand, "discourses with racist connotations" are being taken up. The AfD demands "clear criteria" for immigration; "immigration into the German social systems" is rejected. Only those who pay social security contributions can also be beneficiaries of unemployment and child benefits. However, asylum seekers in Germany should be granted the right to work.

In its first election manifesto, adopted at its founding party conference in 2013, the AfD had called for both a more generous asylum policy and a stricter immigration policy. In response to the sharp rise in refugee numbers, the federal executive board presented a strategy paper on migration and asylum policy in early September 2015. In it, the party calls for the reintroduction of controls at German borders, a 48-hour asylum procedure near borders, and the abolition of so-called "pocket money" for asylum seekers. In addition, people from countries classified as safe countries of origin should no longer be allowed to apply for asylum.

In November 2015, the federal party conference passed a resolution in which the party called for the right of asylum to be subordinated to the security of the state and its population, as well as for upper limits on the admission of refugees and an abolition of family reunification.

According to a September 2017 analysis by Human Rights Watch, the AfD's election platform on migration policy calls for a tightening amendment to the Basic Law and wants the Geneva Convention on Refugees revised to adapt it "to Europe's threat of population explosions and migration flows."

Positions on Islam

The AfD's manifesto, adopted in 2016, states that "Islam does not belong to Germany". In particular, the party calls for a ban on minarets, the call of the muezzin and the full-face veil. In contrast to the French law from 2010, which refers to visible signs of all religions, the AfD wants no head coverings to be allowed in the public service, no burkas or niqabs in public. According to its own statement, the AfD is committed to freedom of religion, which, however, must be lived out in accordance with the law and human rights. Muslims who are law-abiding and integrated are to be regarded as accepted members of society. Associations hostile to the constitution should be prohibited from building and operating mosques, as should foreign financing by Islamic states or private donors. In addition, imams in Germany would have to be trained at universities in the German language. In the Bundestag in 2018, the AfD parliamentary group requested that the federal government take "appropriate measures" against allegedly illegal content of the Koran, without specifying which content was meant and what should be done.

Direct democracy

According to Alexander Häusler and Rainer Roeser (2016), the demand for "direct democracy" is central to the AfD's election platform. The AfD refers to the popular initiatives of the right-wing populist SVP "Against the construction of minarets" and "Against mass immigration". In doing so, it is "clearly approaching right-wing populist demands". The party programme delegitimises the elected elite of the Federal Republic by claiming that the sovereign in Germany is not the people, but "secretly [...] a small, powerful political leadership group within the parties", a "cartel", which is responsible for the undesirable developments of recent years and has a large monopoly on information. This illegitimate state of affairs must be brought to an end. This statement is brought close to a conspiracy theory by the Americanist Michael Butter, as it is claimed that all parties secretly cooperate, while only the AfD represents the "true interests of the people".

Authoritarian model of society

According to sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer, the AfD is "against the open society and liberal democracy". Based on group-related misanthropy, discrimination and violence against immigrants, for example, are passed off as self-defence. In response to personal or economic losses of control, such as a "rabid globalised financial capitalism", rigid control is sought. This "authoritarian national radicalism" targets social and political institutions such as parliaments, courts, police, schools, clubs and theatres. "It wants to destabilize, create fear pressure and initiate systemic change."

Statements in Björn Höcke's book Nie zweimal in denselben Fluss (Never twice in the same river) were cited in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as an example of "contempt for democracy". In it, he develops the idea that German democracy is "in the final stage of degeneration", in ochlocracy, which, in the sense of Niccolò Machiavelli's phase model, can only be overcome by an autocrat. This mediator of the people had to get rid of his "atrophied masculine self-confidence" and learn to cultivate again the virtues of fortitude, wisdom, relentlessness, hardness against himself and especially against others. In a "bloodletting", political opponents should be expelled from Germany. Höcke sketches a strategy for the "reconquest" of Germany from "foreign peoples", quotes Hegel with the statement "Burnt limbs cannot be healed with lavender water. Life close to decay can only be reorganized by the most violent procedure" and, referring to Peter Sloterdijk's "politics of 'well-tempered cruelty'", calls for a "large-scale re-migration project". Hajo Funke concluded from an analysis of these remarks: "So if we judge Höcke by his language, he is concerned with not only ethnic but also political 'cleansing' and the use of state violence against arbitrarily defined enemies."

Reference to the peaceful revolution in the GDR

In the 2019 state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia, the AfD repeatedly referred to the peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1989. Höcke, for example, claimed at a meeting of the wing that it "feels like it did back then in the GDR". With this and slogans such as "Complete the turnaround" or "GDR 2.0", the AfD equated the political system of the Federal Republic with the SED state and called for resistance against political representatives who would not implement a popular will allegedly represented on the streets. This was sharply criticized by former GDR civil rights activists in an open letter, who saw it as a "historical lie". Historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk accused the AfD 2019 of not only trivializing the GDR dictatorship with such slogans, but aiming to "destroy [...] what the revolution of 1989 and the civil rights activists of 1989 stood for and stood up for: The establishment of an Open Society".

Election poster on the euro rescue

Connections to the extreme right

The AfD's political offer, with "restrictive positions on immigration policy, a conservative social policy" and a stance against the political establishment, is suitable as a "radical substitute for the disoriented political centre" and serves, among other things, "resentment, elite hatred and alienation from the system". As a result, right-wing small parties have in some cases lost considerable numbers of members to the AfD.

In response to this development, the then federal spokesman Bernd Lucke wrote to the regional associations in autumn 2013 recommending a nationwide ban on the admission of former members of right-wing splinter parties. Membership in the AfD was incompatible with xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, right-wing and left-wing extremist sentiments. Frauke Petry, then chairwoman of the Saxon state association and member of the federal executive committee, as well as other eastern German state associations contradicted Lucke and announced that they would continue to consider applications for membership from defectors from the radical right-wing party Die Freiheit.

Incompatibility list

There is indeed a list of incompatibilities, in which, among other things, various right-wing extremist groups are listed whose members are not to be accepted into the party. However, it is neither consistently observed nor is it a mandatory requirement for the recruitment of members of parliament.

Of the 91 AfD deputies represented in the 19th German Bundestag, 13 maintained contacts with right-wing extremist parties or associations such as the Identitarian Movement. According to research by Die Zeit, at least 27 members of the parliamentary group and members of parliament have "a clear right-wing radical to right-wing extremist background". The newspaper speaks of a "Nazi network in the German Bundestag".

The AfD member of the Bundestag Jan Nolte employs in his office a Bundeswehr officer who was suspected of having planned a right-wing terrorist attack with the former lieutenant Franco A.. Despite being classified as a right-wing extremist by the MAD and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, he was given a house pass to the Bundestag and thus access to information and files relating to his case.

In the AfD state association of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Haik Jaeger, a member of the right-wing extremist prepper group Nordkreuz, was elected deputy chairman of the state committee "Internal Security, Justice and Data Protection". The suspended police officer is under investigation on suspicion of "preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state". He is alleged to have used his office computer to obtain reporting data for Nordkreuz on persons on a death list of the right-wing extremist network.

Many AfD members of parliament and AfD staff belong to right-wing fraternities, including those of the Deutsche Burschenschaft (DB), a völkisch-nationalist umbrella organization of Austrian and German student fraternities.

The freedom

According to estimates by the chairman of the party Die Freiheit, René Stadtkewitz, about 500 members of his party joined the AfD by September 2013, some of whom took up leadership positions in the AfD. After the 2013 federal election, the small party refrained from participating in further elections in favor of the AfD. Stadtkewitz and Matthias Wohlfarth, spokesman for the Thuringian AfD, agreed that the programs of both parties coincided on many points. The former Bavarian state chairman of Die Freiheit, Christian Jung, as the person in charge of the AfD-affiliated media portal Metropolico/JouWatch, is sounding out "synergy effects and cooperation possibilities" with selected media for the AfD parliamentary group.

Identitarian movement

Although the AfD passed a resolution of incompatibility regarding the racist Identitarian movement in 2016, AfD members of the Bundestag still employ supporters of this movement in their parliamentary offices, according to research by Die Zeit, for example the former state chairman of the Junge Alternative in Brandenburg, Jean-Pascal Hohm, and the federal chairman of the Identitarians, Daniel Fiß. According to the report, AfD federal spokesman Gauland also repeatedly employed supporters of neo-Nazi groups.

Holger Arppe, then state spokesman for the AfD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, advocated cooperation with the Identitarians. Petr Bystron, head of the Bavarian AfD until 2017, had described the Identitarians as an "apron organization of the AfD" and was observed by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution because he wanted to see the AfD as a "shield" for Identitarians and Pegida. The observation was discontinued because With Bystron's election to the Bundestag, higher legal hurdles apply.

At the federal level of the AfD, the right-wing nationalist Patriotic Platform demands "closer cooperation between the Identitarian movement and the AfD, because the AfD is also an Identitarian movement and the Identitarian movement is also an alternative for Germany". The AfD's up-and-coming organization, the Junge Alternative, also has a variety of ties to the Identitarians. For example, JA leader Markus Frohnmaier openly expressed support for the spokesman of the Identitarians and head of the Identitarian Movement Austria, Martin Sellner.

NPD

AfD members of the Bavarian parliament employed staff with links to the NPD.

In the run-up to the 2016 state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, AfD top candidate Leif-Erik Holm did not rule out voting for motions of the NPD parliamentary group in the state parliament. In an interview with the Mannheimer Morgen, party leader Meuthen also opposed the so-called Schwerin Way, which provides for the united rejection of all motions by the far-right. In doing so, he said, he had "shelved the previous official line of the federal party in the form of strict demarcation from the NPD".

Björn Höcke, prominent representative of the völkisch-nationalist wing and chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament, was proven, according to the AfD federal executive committee at the time, to have "written articles under the name 'Landolf Ladig' in the NPD publications Volk in Bewegung and Eichsfeld-Stimme" in which he not only praised the extreme right-wing ideas of the NPD, but also glorified the Nazi regime. He showed "an excessive closeness to National Socialism". An application for party expulsion by the federal executive committee from February 2017 was rejected in May 2018 by the regional arbitration court of the AfD Thuringia, as Höcke had not violated the statutes or party principles. The Federal Executive Committee, which has since changed its composition, unanimously waived its right to appeal in June 2018.

Pegida

A decision of the Federal Executive Board in May 2016, which rejected cooperation with Pegida, was partially overturned by the Federal Arbitration Court at the beginning of August 2016 at the request of the Patriotic Platform. A general ban on appearances at Pegida inadmissibly interferes with members' rights. Pegida has not yet been monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - which is not true, at least for Bavaria and Thuringia. Moreover, a position paper of Pegida adopted in December 2014 shows a considerable degree of agreement with the AfD's basic programme. A ban on appearances by Pegida representatives at AfD events, on the other hand, was permissible.

According to Felix Korsch (2016), the relationship with Pegida developed in four phases of "attraction and rejection". AfD supporters would have understanding for the Pegida demonstrations according to a survey from December 2014, but there was no "actual cooperation" until then. The Dresden AfD had supported the Pegida rallies since November 2014, and the völkisch-nationalist "Patriotic Platform" under the then Saxon AfD board member Hans-Thomas Tillschneider also supported Pegida from the beginning. While Lucke and Henkel in particular took a distanced stance on the federal executive committee, Gauland attended a Pegida rally with several faction colleagues in December 2014 and described its supporters as "natural allies" of the AfD. Frauke Petry met with Pegida's executive committee in the state parliament of Saxony and saw "intersections" in terms of content. In other state associations, the attitude remained ambivalent: the Hessian AfD criticized the participation in "Fragida" because this Frankfurt Pegida offshoot was co-organized by the NPD, but not the participation in "Kagida" in Kassel, which was led by an AfD member. In the end, there were several "restrained-approving statements".

In July 2015, the then NRW state chairman Marcus Pretzell referred to the AfD as a "Pegida party" in his welcoming address to the Essen party conference. In 2016, Häusler sees the AfD as a "party-political anchor" for "initiatives directed against immigrants and refugees" such as Pegida; the demands "articulated at the demonstrations in Dresden [were] congruent with AfD positions on many issues". Of all parties, the AfD is closest to Pegida.

Pro Germany

On 11 November 2017, the far-right citizens' movement pro Deutschland decided to dissolve itself and called on members and their local elected representatives to join the AfD. They wanted to make the AfD strong and pursue their own goals within the AfD in the future. AfD faction spokesman Christian Lüth stated that Pro Deutschland was on his party's incompatibility list, and that its members could not be accepted.