Terminate the state media treaty, reshape the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, no “fight against the right”: AfD right winger Björn Höcke outlined in a speech how he would turn Thuringia around if he were elected as head of government. The 51-year-old was elected as the top candidate of the Thuringian AfD for the 2024 state election at a state election meeting in Pfiffelbach (Weimarer Land district) on Friday. He received 187 yes votes, 26 no votes, with two abstentions, or 87.79 percent. The Thuringian AfD is classified and monitored by the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution as proven right-wing extremist. Höcke is the AfD state party and parliamentary group leader in Thuringia.
It is currently considered unlikely that the AfD will be able to achieve an absolute majority in the state elections in Thuringia on September 1, 2024. In addition, all parties currently represented in the state parliament categorically reject a coalition with the AfD. In recent surveys, the AfD was in first place in Thuringia, ahead of the Left and the CDU – with values between 32 and 34 percent.
Höcke renewed his claim to government. “The question of power” will be asked in Thuringia in 2024. In his speech, he formulated what it would mean if he came to power with his Thuringian AfD. “There will absolutely no longer be a compulsory contribution,” Höcke told around 240 AfD members. He made it clear that he would terminate state media contracts for public broadcasting. He advocated basic care – “maybe ten percent of what we have now,” as he said.
The Thuringian Constitutional Protection Report 2022 states that the Thuringian AfD regional association has been representing positions for years “that are directed against human dignity, against the principle of democracy and against the rule of law.” There was no political moderation. According to the domestic secret service, the “anti-constitutional positions” that were directed against the free democratic basic order are considered “the dominant and largely undisputed political ideology within the regional association.”
Höcke emphasized that in government responsibility he would reform the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He demanded that he concentrate more on economic espionage. He spoke several times about how people had been living “in a reign of injustice” for years. There is a “permanent coup from above”.
As has been the case for years, Höcke called for a “deportation offensive” and a “family offensive.” He also wanted to push back the “ideological state,” as he said. As head of government, he would end the “fight against the right.” About the time of the corona pandemic, Höcke said: “It was actually a totalitarian state that showed itself there.”
Before the party conference, the AfD’s decision to deny a team from the ARD political magazine “Monitor” access to the event caused a stir. The public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), which is responsible for the magazine, defended itself legally. “Monitor” director Georg Restle criticized the party’s decision as a “revealing oath by a right-wing extremist AfD regional association that shows what the party thinks of critical journalism and freedom of expression in this country.”
After a legal back and forth, the Erfurt regional court ruled in favor of the “Monitor” journalists. The AfD had to grant them access on Friday, and at the same time Thuringia’s AfD state spokesman Stefan Möller announced that he wanted to take further legal steps. “It doesn’t end there,” he said. “We would like to have the question of whether you have house rights or not clarified in principle.”
