Massive change is afoot within Europe’s far right. Just as voters across 27 countries prepare to go to the polls in EU elections, a split over the German far right’s allegiance to the Third Reich is driving a realignment.
The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament last week expelled the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction from its ranks after a furore involving the leading AfD candidate Maximiian Krah.
The unprecedented move, initiated by Marine Le Pen, was officially a reaction to remarks Krah made in an interview with an Italian newspaper. Asked if his demand that all Germans take pride in their forbears would include those who were in the SS, the Nazi’s main paramilitary force, Krah said that “not all SS were criminals”.
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The suspicion of mere tactics also hangs over the head of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who seems to actively encourage the ambivalence by nodding to the middle ground some days and to the extreme on others.
In fact “Melonisation” – catering to the middle ground, appearing to be “pro European”, supporting Ukraine, being kissed on the forehead by US president Joe Biden – has become a dirty word among their rank and file.
But the Krah case, as well as allegations about corruption by AfD figures and spying for Russia and China, along with the revelations about “remigration” after an ominous meeting in Potsdam, seem to have turned the tide.
When pretty much everything the AfD has to say about the federal republic in the 75th year of its democratic constitution is filled with disgust, but warm words are found for Putin’s Russia or the Chinese Communist party, voters may find it hard to see the love in any of this.
Krah himself recently published a book called Politik von Rechts, and aims at presenting himself as “erudite, friendly, elegant”, not as brooding and “bad tempered” as the old.
The reshuffling initiated by Le Pen could end up lumping her together within a new “super group” with Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party heads up the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
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