What next after the raids on a right-wing conspiracy network? Should the AfD be banned, which the Greens leader sees as a parliamentary arm of right-wing extremists? Your own party friend Winfried Kretschmann is less convinced.
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – In contrast to his party leader, Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann rejects a ban on the AfD party. “Of course I don’t want to rule that out, but we have to fight the AfD politically,” said the head of government of the German Press Agency. The hurdles for a party ban are enormously high, he pointed out. After the anti-terrorist raid against so-called Reich citizens and individual AfD politicians, a ban was discussed.
From the point of view of the Green Party chairwoman Ricarda Lang, however, an AfD ban should not be taboo. “That has to be checked very carefully, because what we do see is that right-wing extremism has a parliamentary arm – and that’s the AfD,” Lang said in an interview with the newspaper “Welt” after the raid. In fact, there are good reasons for a ban.
A month ago, 25 suspected “Reich citizens” were arrested. 22 of them are accused of being members of a terrorist organization that wanted to overthrow the political system. “Reich citizens” are people who do not recognize the Federal Republic and its democratic structures. Weapons were also seized during the raid. Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of the AfD Bundestag, was among those arrested.
“The AfD is moving further and further to the right and lives only on xenophobia,” Kretschmann also accused the party of. “In the state parliament, they almost always end up with foreigners – they don’t have anything else to offer.” He thinks it is likely that supporters of the party underestimated their dangers.
Above all, the political and social debate on the topic and the party is important. This is primarily the task of the political parties: “We pay too little attention – especially to people who have no academic education,” said Kretschmann. But it is crucial to make sure that all important population groups are on the radar.
The understandable language is also an important tool: “We have to speak a language that everyone understands. There is a serious lack of that,” said Kretschmann. The majority of the population does not understand the many foreign words and Anglicisms that we use as a matter of course. “They don’t even know what we mean by that.”