SPD leader Lars Klingbeil has reiterated the Nazi accusation against the AfD and its representatives. “Anyone who consciously gets involved there and says: ‘I want to take responsibility there’ is of course a right-wing extremist, a Nazi,” said Klingbeil in the talk show “Politicians’ Grill with Jan Philipp Burgard” on the news channel WELT TV (broadcast Tuesday at 8:15 p.m.).
The SPD politician cited the Potsdam meeting and the party’s scandals as justification. The AfD is a party that is making deportation plans and wants to throw 20 million people out of this country, whose top personnel for the European elections are paid by China and Russia and which has someone in its ranks, Björn Höcke, “who is described as a fascist,” said Klingbeil.
Klingbeil stressed that “Nazi” does not refer to AfD voters: “I am not insulting voters, but I am insulting officials.” And he continued: “The AfD is not a party that simply stands a little to the right of the CDU.” He stressed: “The AfD wants a completely different country. The AfD wants a completely different way of living together. Many things that we have today in a free, cosmopolitan country would no longer be possible if the AfD were at the helm.”
On election Sunday, Klingbeil, in a discussion with other party leaders on the television channel ntv, used the term “Nazi” to describe AfD leader Alice Weidel and her party. He said: “I also believe that the result of the European elections has once again shaken many people awake, that the Nazis have become stronger in this election – I believe that many people are waking up and fighting for democracy,”
“Who do you mean by that?” Weidel asked sharply. “You know that I mean the AfD and you,” Klingbeil replied. Weidel followed up: “You just called me and the party Nazis?” The SPD chairman followed up with a clear “yes.” Weidel called the statement an “impudence.”
He described the situation on WELT TV as follows: “I sit between Ms. Weidel and Ms. Wagenknecht in this talk show all evening. I see how climate protection is being ignored. I see how Ukraine is being bad-mouthed, how people suddenly act as if Putin is better than the Ukrainians who are fighting for their country and their lives. And at some point all of this is bordering on unbearable.” That is why the AfD needs a clear name: “There is no room to beat around the bush.”
The SPD leader emphatically denied that the AfD could claim to be the new workers’ party because it received significantly more votes from employees than the SPD in the European elections: “It is definitely not that, because it does not represent the interests of workers.” With the AfD’s proposal to leave the EU and return to the Europe of the fatherlands, “one in four jobs in Germany will be lost.” That is why the AfD is “certainly not the workers’ party.”