Internal chats from an AfD group have come to light again. NDR and WDR received 40,000 contributions from the parliamentary group. Countless insults and openly displayed hatred reveal a partially radical body of thought.
What do AfD MPs say when they think nobody is listening to them? Research by NDR and WDR partially found it out. The broadcasters report that around 40,000 internal chat messages from a group in the Bundestag faction have been leaked to the journalists. The conversations showed that many AfD MPs had repeatedly made statements, some of which were radical. About three years ago, the then Chancellor Angela Merkel was called a “rat” and “traitor to the people”.
There is talk of “Sieger Tribunals (Nuremberg 2.0)”
In a message quoted by ARD on August 25, 2019, there is talk of “Sieger Tribunals (Nuremberg 2.0)” and that “AM
According to the NDR and WDR, “at least 76 of the 92 AfD MPs would have written regularly in the chat, called a “chatter group”, until after the 2021 federal election”. “The chats show the hubris with which the faction started: ‘We are the last chance this country has, and I mean that very seriously!!!’ (July 27th, 2019)”, according to the research of the public broadcaster.
In addition to openly misogynistic and homophobic insults and countless other insults by politicians from other parties, an irritating self-image is revealed again and again: “And the chaos shop wants to save Germany?” Or in December 2019: “Politics is a dirty business and apparently even dirtier in our ranks.”
Weidel: “Things like that don’t work”
The ARD journalists asked AfD faction leader Alice Weidel about the chats, including the fantasies of revolution expressed there: “Of course, such things don’t work at all. And if I had known about them, action would have been taken,” said Weidel to NDR and WDR , who claims to have never been a member of the chat. On the other hand, she is calm about criticism of her person from her own ranks. There are always dissatisfied people. “They have to think about whether they might look for another hobby instead of wasting their time constantly writing in chats.”
At the end of last year, chats from a Bavarian AfD Telegram group appeared. The members, members of the Munich Landtag and Berlin Bundestag, often expressed fantasies of overthrow and revolution there as well. Since mid-March, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been monitoring the entire party as a suspected right-wing extremist.
Sources: Tagesschau, NDR, “Welt”
