Explosive report

Right-wing extremist employees? AfD defends staff

The AfD leadership duo Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel defend their party's personnel policy.

(Bild: Kay Nietfeld/dpa/picturedesk.com)

The AfD party and parliamentary group leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla have rejected a report by Bayerischer Rundfunk about right-wing extremist AfD staff in the Bundestag. It was about "further discrediting the AfD".

"This is so ridiculous, pulled out of thin air," Weidel said in a press statement on Tuesday in Berlin before a meeting of the parliamentary group. 

Alice Weidel in the Bundestag

(Bild: Kay Nietfeld/dpa/picturedesk.com)

Chrupalla called the research on the employees defamatory. The employees had been checked internally by the parliamentary group "and all those who work here, who have a house pass, have also been checked by the Bundestag. They are innocent citizens with no criminal record".

"What am I to you?"
Chrupalla pointed out that he also belonged to an AfD regional association in Saxony that had been classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. "What am I to you?" he asked the journalists present.

Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) had previously published an investigation. According to the report, more than 100 people work for the AfD parliamentary group and AfD MPs from organizations that are classified as right-wing extremist by German constitutional protection agencies. Such organizations include, for example, the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative (JA).

Consequences demanded
BR based its research on "internal lists of names" from the Bundestag and employee directories from the AfD parliamentary group, which it had been able to view. Politicians from other parties called for consequences.

Weidel said that the whole thing had been "planted" on the day of the court hearing between the AfD and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Münster - where questions of intelligence monitoring of the party are at issue. She spoke of a media campaign.

On the subject of classification as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Weidel said: "I am not at all interested in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution's definition." It is a subjective assessment. The AfD has repeatedly criticized the constitution protection authorities for not being independent and is taking legal action against the fact that the domestic intelligence service is monitoring them.