ZTo the surprise of many observers and numerous AfD members, the Baden-Württemberg state parliamentary group has elected 35-year-old Anton Baron as the new group leader. Ever since the previous incumbent Bernd Gögel announced his resignation, Emil Sänze had been expected to be elected.
Sänze is 73 years old, parliamentary managing director and one of two AfD state chairmen since July 2022. The election of Sänzes would probably have led to a further radicalization of the AfD in the southwest. The former employee of the BMW leasing bank is considered a representative of the disbanded group “The Wing”.
Baron, on the other hand, is considered moderate; he used to be one of the confidants of former parliamentary group leader Jörg Meuthen. In the dispute over an anti-Semitic member of parliament, Baron had distanced himself and joined the ABW parliamentary group led by Meuthen. Sänze, on the other hand, invited the Thuringian AfD parliamentary group leader Björn Höcke to Stuttgart and denied the Turkish-born parliamentary speaker Muhterem Aras (Greens) the right to speak critically about the Nazi dictatorship. A spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group announced that Baron was able to prevail against Sänze “in several runoff elections”. In the AfD, Baron’s election is interpreted as a “rebellion of the young deputies”. Apparently, the younger deputies joined forces to prevent Sänzes.
So far no right-wing extremist statements
Baron was born in Niedernhall in 1987. He comes from a Russian-German family, studied industrial engineering and trained as a process mechanic. Since 2016 he has represented the Hohenlohe constituency via a second mandate in the state parliament. Within the national association, he is considered a mediocre speaker; so far he has not attracted attention with right-wing extremist statements.
The election of Baron is seen within the AfD as a strengthening of the parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Alice Weidel, and as a weakening of the radical wing around the Bundestag member Dirk Spaniel, who many members of the dissolved “wing” and formerly observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as well as officials of the group “Automobile Center ‘ is said to have gathered behind him.
About 60 percent of the AfD district associations are assigned to the radical and right-wing extremist part of the party; Baron should not have a majority in the national association. The politician told Südwestrundfunk that he “stands in the middle of the AfD”. Many comments from the party base about Baron’s election were critical. “The Baden-Württemberg AfD parliamentary group is waging a war of aggression against its own party,” it said on Twitter.
The re-election of the parliamentary group leader had become necessary after Gögel had resigned from office because of investigations against him. The public prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe accuses the former owner of a forwarding company of not correctly taxing the salaries paid to his employees.
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