this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
130 points (98.5% liked)

Europe

8485 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out [email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
130
German intel: AfD taken over by extremist factions (www.dw.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://mlem.a-smol-cat.fr/post/77878

The far-right Alternative for Germany party has become increasingly influenced by extremist conspiracy theorists, according to the head of German domestic intelligence.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're extremists now. They used to be extremists too, and they still are.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

My understanding is that they used to be driven by people with primarily economic issues with the euro, some economists. I don't think that that's really what I'd call extremism.

googles

Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany?wprov=sfla1

AfD was founded by Gauland, Bernd Lucke, and former members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) to oppose the policies of the Eurozone as a right-wing and moderately Eurosceptic alternative to the centre-right but pro-European CDU. The party presented itself as an economic liberal, soft Eurosceptic, and conservative movement in its early years. AfD has subsequently moved further to the right, and expanded its policies under successive leaderships to include opposition to immigration, Islam, and the European Union. Since 2015, AfD's ideology has been characterised by Islamophobia, anti-immigration, German nationalism, national-conservative, and Euroscepticism.

Yeah, WP doesn't describe the euro issue, but does talk about the shift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Lucke

Bernd Lucke (born 19 August 1962) is a German economist and politician. Lucke was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in 2014.

Lucke lost the leadership of the AfD to Frauke Petry in July 2015. Petry's election was considered a shift of the party to extremist positions; Lucke subsequently left the party. In July 2015 he and other former AfD members founded the political party Liberal-Konservative Reformer (formerly Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch, "Alliance for progress and renewal", abbreviated ALFA).

Also, that shot of Lucke reminds me of the MAD kid, Alfred E. Newman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Lucke#/media/File%3ABernd_Lucke_(2014).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Neuman