The head of the AfD, Alice Weidel, told a conference of her far-right party: “We are on the right track to creating a new parliamentary group. Anyone who wants to join it will be welcome.” Under various kinds of harassment: the rest of the European far right disavows them as complicit in their extremism, the German parliamentary spectrum keeps it isolated, and, moreover, the federal meeting of its 600 delegates began with tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting against “Nazi propaganda” around the Essen pavilion where The conference is held.
“They are anti-democrats,” Weidel assured his co-religionists. Under the word “they,” he placed the lines of demonstrators that flooded the streets and “(Ursula) von der Leyen or (Giorgia) Melonis.” The fact that the AfD leader threw her sticks at another representative of the European far right responds to the European Commission president’s approach to the Italian prime minister. But also to the fact that his party is excluded as an ally by the European Group of Reform Democrats, to which Meloni belongs. To this exclusion, already known, was added a few weeks ago the expulsion of the AfD as a member of the Identity and Democracy (ID) party, which Marine Le Pen has joined.
Second force
Thus Weidel’s party, which had risen to second place in Germany in the recent European elections, faced the celebration of its federal conference with long faces, despite the achievement of 15.8% in the community bloc elections. The 15 MEPs had no group to join, and the hastily conducted negotiations had yielded no known results. German media reported that it would be called “Els Soberanistes” and that Alvise Pérez’s Se Acabó la Fiesta was among its potential partners. The AfD has its own “red lines,” according to its parliamentary group’s deputy spokeswoman, Beatrix von Storch. She added that she would not accept “foreign nationalisms that run counter to our interests.” The conference re-elected Weidel as president with 79%, slightly less than her colleague in the two-headed dome, Tino Chrupala, who received 82%.
Björn Höcke, the leader of his more radical wing, said in a meeting outside the conference: “It is not democratic to isolate a party that will get 34% or 35%.” He referred to the expected percentages for the regional elections that will be held in September in the east, including his home state of Thuringia. Hockey is one of the party’s most controversial figures, but at the same time a top vote-recruiter. He is a regular “agent” of justice for his racist speeches or for using Nazi slogans at public events. A German court even proceeded to publicly define him as a “fascist”, deeming it appropriate to apply that term to him.
Posters depicting Hockey raising his arm in the Hitler salute and the word “Nazi” were among the most popular at the demonstration, which stretched from Essen’s central station to the perimeter of the conference hall. It brings together between 40,000 and 70,000 participants, according to local media or organizers. They were people of all ages and circumstances, from families with children to so-called Omas gegen Rechts — in Spanish, grandmothers against the right — and teenagers, heirs to the 1968 revolutions and rallies. And also the pillars of the Black Bloc or the Radical Left, champions of abandonment with their very strong police service, made up of 10,000 officers. Essen could not remember such a collapse in decades.
The extremists’ goal was to block access to the delegates. But the overall spectacle of the march was an intergenerational outing, between concerts and raves in the sun.
“Freelance social media evangelist. Organizer. Certified student. Music maven.”
