Tag: afd

The AfD is spinning the Poggenburg split as a purge

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AfD: split, not purge

Yesterday, Andre Poggenburg, formerly the AfD’s head honcho in Saxony-Anhalt announced that he had left the AfD and launched a new party further to the right: the “Awakening of German Patriots”. Before his fall from grace, Poggenburg was one of the more visible members of the party’s ultra-nationalist “völkisch” wing, which is particularly strong in…

The AfD splits again. This is why you should care. Perhaps

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Putsch in the AfD?

Putsch in the AfD! This morning, I woke up to the news that Andre Poggenburg, former leader of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt and former chair of the AfD’s delegation in the state parliament is now also a former member of the AfD. And thanks to @TheDanHough, I quickly learned that he has already set up…

My six takeaways from the AfD dropout’s report

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My six takeaways from the AfD dropout's report 2

Back in August, Franziska Schreiber made quite a splash with her memoir of the four years she spent inside Germany’s not-so-new-anymore Radical Right party. Schreiber was in her mid-twenties when she joined only weeks after the party was founded. She helped building up the AfD’s youth organisation – controversial even within the party – in…

Italy, the UK, Sweden, and Russia paying for AfD flights: four European crisis links I liked

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Italy, the UK, Sweden, and Russia paying for AfD flights: four European crisis links I liked 3

Why did the Italian President use a half-forgotten constitutional power to veto Paolo Savona’s appointment as finance minister? Here is why. FAZ: Russia paid 25,000 Euro charter for a private plane for former leader Petry & two other AfD politicians’ visit An unnamed EU official said that the UK’s Brexit negotiators are chasing a fantasy.…

Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration, in one picture

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Update February 5, 2018

In March 2017, I posted a graph which shows how the AfD’s Facebook posts moved away from euroscepticism and Greece-bashing towards immigration and Islamophobia.

This research on the AfD has now been published as part of a larger project.

But trends can change, and local regression smoothers have a habit of behaving strangely at the borders. So I downloaded another year’s worth of Facebook posts and reran the scripts:

Update: How the AfD ditched Euroscepticism and embraced immigration, in one picture 5

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the new graph confirms for 2017 what we have seen for 2016: Muslims and immigrants are all the rage, whereas the Euro crisis is so 2014. I leave the old graph/post below as is for comparison.

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Hardliner Björn Höcke will not be expelled from the AfD

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Hardliner Björn Höcke will not be expelled from the AfD 6

What’s the matter with Höcke? A party tribunal in his home state of Thuringia has ruled that Björn Höcke has not violated the party’s fundamental principles in his so-called “Dresden speech”. In January 2017, Höcke had demanded a “U-turn” in German memory politics, which he deemed “stupid”. In the same speech, Höcke called the Berlin…

Crooked right-wingers, Nazi Grandmas, pesky exam questions, and multiple party identification: four German links I liked

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German media report that about 10 per cent of all MPs for the Radical Right AfD (state and federal level) are currently investigated by the police. Allegations range from incitement to fraud and tax evasion. In dubio pro and all that, but it’s not exactly what you normally mean by a law & order party,…