The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) approved this Sunday an electoral program that includes promises to close borders and “remigration”, as well as leaving the euro or reintroducing compulsory military service, at a time when polls They give it its best results in a year and place it as the second force ahead of the February 23 elections.
After long debates, the program was unanimously approved on the second day of the federal congress held this weekend in Riesa (eastern Germany), where AfD co-leader Alice Weidel was officially nominated as a candidate for the chancellorship on Saturday.
Unlike the initial draft, the program approved today includes the controversial term “remigration,” coined by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis to refer to the mass expulsion of migrants and people of foreign origin, after Weidel—which until now had avoided—wearing it in public yesterday.
AfD officially maintains that by “remigration” it refers only to the expulsion by legal means of migrants in an irregular situation, but in its circles the use of the term in the first sense is common, together with racist and xenophobic iconography.
The program promises, among other things, the closure of borders to migrants and asylum seekers, a large-scale “deportation offensive” of people in an irregular situation, the exit from the European asylum system and the acquisition of German nationality only for children. of German parents and other extraordinary cases.
In addition, it includes a ban on the construction of mosques in Germany and on wearing the Islamic veil in public buildings.
Return to the German mark
The AfD also maintains its project of abandoning the common currency, the euro, although it does not explicitly demand exit from the European Union, but instead proposes transforming or replacing it with an “alliance of European nations” with a common market that in the long term would mean an alternative to NATO for the defense of the continent.
The program also promises to lift sanctions on Russia and re-import gas from that country, while delegates rejected a motion to include an explicit condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A motion to include the reintroduction of compulsory military service was also passed at the last minute, against the wishes of co-leader Tino Chrupalla, who has unsuccessfully tried to profile the AfD as a “peace party”.
Defense of the “traditional family”
Although the candidate Weidel has another woman as a partner, with whom she is the mother of two children, the delegates voted in favor of including in the program that the heteronormative family composed of “father, mother and children” is the basic cell of the society.
They also spoke out against the mandatory measles vaccination for school-age children, currently in force in Germany.
Finally, the congress approved the founding of a new youth organization integrated within the party, after tensions grew with the Young Alternative (JA), which was classified as extremist by the German authorities in 2023.
#German #extreme #approves #elections #promise #leaving #euro #defense #remigration
