The German political grandee has criticized the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, saying it does not "draw a line" to exclude radical elements. AfD politicians have been blamed over this week's killings in Hanau.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/M. Kappeler
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The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is "open to right-wing extremism," Wolfgang Schäuble, the president of the Bundestag (Germany's parliament) told the newspaper Handelsblatt on Saturday.
"The problem is that the AfD does not draw a line," he said, criticizing the party for its affiliation with right-wing extremism.
His comments follow several days of finger-pointing towards the far-right, anti-immigrant party — the third-largest in Germany's parliament — in the wake of Wednesday night's deadly shootings in Hanau, which targeted the patrons of two hookah bars.
Schäuble gave the example of Thuringian AfD state leader Björn Höcke, who he said could be called a fascist, in reference to Höcke's support for another German nationalist and anti-Islam movement, Pegida.
If every problem in Germany is attributed to immigrants, events will quickly escalate to include all minorities, Schäuble warned. "We have known for a long time that words can turn into actions. Elected representatives cannot be released from this responsibility," he added.
The former finance minister said it was up to investigating authorities to quickly determine the motives and background relating to last week's shootings. But it is up to the state to politicians and the state to "not only talk about a well-fortified democracy but also enforce the law," he added.
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
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Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
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Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
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Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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'Racist incitement'
Meanwhile, politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) said that public servants belonging to the AfD should leave their posts. "It is from the civil service that one expects a clear commitment to democracy, and that is what this democracy stands for," said CDU parliamentarian Patrick Sensburg. "In my opinion, it is not possible to work with the AfD."
"AfD functionaries have no place in the public service," said SPD politician Ralf Stegner. Those who belong to such a party identify themselves with a nationalistic, right-wing extremist policy that, with its racist incitement, bears a "significant share of the responsibility for right-wing terrorism in Germany."
FDP interior affairs spokesman Konstantin Kuhle expressed similar sentiments. "One cannot be in public service and at the same time want to abolish the free democratic basic order," he said. The more the ideas of Thuringian AfD leader Höcke become "mainstream" in the AfD, "the sooner civil servants and public employees should reconsider their involvement in the party."
