A good two weeks before the European elections, the AfD leadership is breaking with its top candidate Maximilian Krah. A party spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that the federal executive board had imposed a ban on Krah appearing.
Krah himself stated on Platform The background is Krah’s controversial statements about the SS and a dispute that broke out with the French right-wing party Rassemblement National.
Krah had said in the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” that not all members of the SS were criminals. “I will never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” Krah told the newspaper. When asked whether the SS were war criminals, he replied: “There was certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were criminals.” The National Socialist SS guarded and managed, among other things, the concentration camps and was largely responsible for war crimes. At the Nuremberg Trials after the end of the Second World War it was declared a criminal organization.
After the interview, Rassemblement National announced that it no longer wanted to work in a group with the AfD in the European Parliament in the future. RN party leader Jordan Bardella justified his party’s decision on broadcaster TF1: “I think that the AfD, with whom we have worked in the European Parliament for five years, has crossed lines that are red lines for me.” After the election You therefore have new allies and no longer sit on the side of the AfD. When asked which of the two parties would leave the group, Bardella said the groups would be reset to square one after the election.
Krah explained on X, formerly Twitter: “You can never fall any lower than into God’s hands. I acknowledge that factual and differentiated statements of mine are being misused as a pretext to harm our party. The last thing we need at the moment is a debate about me. The AfD must maintain its unity. For this reason, I will refrain from further campaign appearances with immediate effect and resign as a member of the federal executive board.”
It is unclear what will happen next with the AfD’s European election campaign. According to the wishes of the party leadership, number two on the European list, Petr Bystron, will no longer appear due to public prosecutor’s investigations. The AfD works in the European Parliament with the Rassemblement National and the Italian Lega in the ID faction. There have been disagreements between the AfD and the RN for a long time. After the revelations by the media company Correctiv about a right-wing extremist meeting in Potsdam in January, Le Pen expressed clear criticism.