Before the federal election

Too radical? AfD founds new youth organization

AfD leader Alice Weidel wants to open up her party to the conservative middle class. However, many points in the election manifesto remain radical.

(Bild: APA/AFP/JENS SCHLUETER)

AfD leader Alice Weidel, who was unanimously elected as candidate for chancellor on Saturday, has declared that she wants to make her party electable for the conservative middle class. With this in mind, the right-wing populist party wants to separate from its youth organization Junge Alternative. At the national party conference in Riesa, Saxony, on Sunday, it was decided to dissolve the old organization and found a new youth organization.

The Junge Alternative, an independent organization with only loose ties to the party, is apparently too radical for the party leadership itself. Apart from the executive board, members do not necessarily have to belong to the AfD. The JA is considered a secure right-wing extremist organization nationwide and is under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Many of its political positions are not compatible with the German constitution. There are anti-constitutional aspirations, according to an assessment. Many of the approximately 2,500 JA members have close links to right-wing extremist groups - including the Identitarians.

The successor organization is now to be tied more closely to the party. This is intended to enable the party leadership to take action in the event of misconduct on the part of AfD offspring. However, there are also observers who suspect a different reason behind this: Under the umbrella of the AfD, the youth organization would be better protected from a possible ban.

"Children don't come from anywhere"
With resolutions on family policy, abortion and history, the AfD adopted its election manifesto at the party conference in Riesa in the German state of Saxony on Sunday. The delegates decided to include the following sentence in the program: "The family, consisting of father, mother and children, is the nucleus of society". The draft program had initially only stated: "The family is the nucleus of our society." 

AfD leader Alice Weidel wants to open up her party to the conservative middle class. However, many points in the election manifesto remain radical.

(Bild: APA/AFP/JENS SCHLUETER)

Thuringian AfD politician Wiebke Muhsal said: "Children don't come from anywhere, but family is where a man and a woman have children together." With regard to Chancellor candidate Weidel, who lives with a woman and raises two children, Hamburg delegate Krzysztof Walczak said that the formulation of a mission statement does not imply that other life and family models are rejected. "Our candidate for chancellor is a mother herself. She knows what family life looks like, and this model does not contradict tolerance in a liberal society," Walczak continued. 

A participant at the AfD federal party conference

(Bild: APA/dpa/Sebastian Kahnert)

AfD wants to leave the euro and the climate agreement
Key resolutions for the election manifesto had already been passed on Saturday. As in its program for last year's European elections, the party calls for a strict migration policy, a reinstatement of compulsory military service, an exit from the euro and the Paris Climate Agreement under the controversial keyword "remigration". It also advocates a new European confederation of states, but avoids explicitly calling for Germany to leave the EU (Dexit).