Frank ZELLER -
The far-right Alternative for Germany, battling stagnant poll results and suspicions of illegal funding, is now torn by a deepening rift between its party leadership and its most radical wing. The turbulence comes as falling migrant arrivals have deprived the ultra-nationalist protest party of its main rallying cause, while the ascendant Greens have replaced them as the strongest opposition force.
The six-year-old AfD, which has seen splits and leadership coups before, is now torn between backers and foes of hardliner Bjoern Hoecke, months ahead of crucial state polls in its heartland in the ex-communist east. Hoecke, 47, is party chief in eastern Thuringia state and leads the most extreme party faction, “The Wing”, which is officially under surveillance by the domestic intelligence service.
The former history teacher once called Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial a “monument of shame” and has marched arm-in-arm with the anti-minority street movement Pegida in a rally joined by neo-Nazis in the city of Chemnitz.
Last weekend at a meeting of his grouping, Hoecke dramatically marched into the hall flanked by flag-waving supporters and went on to sharply attack the party’s national leadership. He vowed that after the autumn elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia states that he would devote himself “with great passion” to the election of a new national party leadership.
Days later, 100 AfD politicians in a letter attacked Hoecke’s “excessive personality cult” and declared that “the AfD is not the Bjoern Hoecke party”. Criticism also came from AfD co-chiefs Joerg Meuthen and Alexander Gauland, who fear The Wing’s hard-right rhetoric is scaring off voters who see themselves as conservative patriots worried about immigration.
Gauland said he found both Hoecke’s performance “inappropriate” and argued that if the party does not act “professionally,” it will never win over the “middle-class majority we need to change this country”.
Similar battles have flared in several German regions, including Bavaria where an internal party panel declared The Wing to be in a “competitive relationship” with the AfD. — AFP
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