The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has caused a stir again. Not only with the election program, which its delegates approved at the party congress over the weekend, but also with provocations. For example, migrants were delivered a leaflet called “deportation ticket”, which imitated an airline ticket. The party threatens to expel illegal immigrants from the country. However, even though the AfD’s popularity is increasing and according to polls it should finish in second place in the elections, it is clear that it will not govern because the other parties refuse to cooperate with it.
One of the topics that is often discussed during the election campaign is migration. Although several parties are talking about tightening the asylum policy, none of them has allowed themselves to do what the AfD has done.
Migrants who live in and around Karlsruhe have found leaflets resembling one-way tickets in their mailboxes in recent days. They are marked with “illegal immigrant” as the name of the passenger and the route from Germany to “safe country of origin”.
The flight number is “BTW 2025” (short for Bundestag elections) and the departure date is February 23, which is the date of the snap election. The departure gate (gate) box says AfD and the boarding time 08-18:00, behind which some critics see a reference to the initials of Adolf Hitler (H and AH – according to the order of the letters in the alphabet), but it is also the time when they will be open polling stations.
The location (seat) is listed as 51P, which according to some experts is the “code” for a machine gun from the First World War.
The “ticket” from the AfD workshop has the name “deportation ticket” and the party logo in the corner. At the bottom, there are notes that “only remigration can save Germany” and “it’s nice at home too”.
A QR code is also included, which will link the interested party to the website of the district union of the party in Karlsruhe – it also has the slogan “It’s time to remove the illegals”.
The AfD district union in Göppingen also posted a flyer on Facebook. “It was nice here. But it’s also nice at home. Have a good time. The ticket goes to us,” they added.
AfD The criticized AfD leaflet with the inscription “deportation ticket”, which is supposed to resemble an airline ticket.
Inspired by the Nazis?
According to the German media, the AfD had up to 30,000 of these tickets printed, which it delivers to mailboxes or distributes in public places.
“We distribute the election leaflet freely in Karlsruhe, in as many numbers as possible and without restrictions,” the regional newspaper Badische Neueste Nachrichten (BNN) quoted Marc Bernhard, the AfD’s district spokesman, as saying. As he added, the goal was not to deliver leaflets only to migrants, nor were they looking for mailboxes with foreign language names.
“This election ad is aimed at everyone,” the spokesman said, assuring it was legal. The fact that the police do not agree with his opinion and have started investigating the case on suspicion of a criminal offense does not worry him. According to him, on the leaflet they only demand what is also stated in the law. “What do they want to investigate there?” he asked.
While AfD supporters perceive the “ticket” as a funny part of the election campaign, according to critics, it is not as innocent an action as the party presents it.
Already in the 1930s, after Hitler came to power, the Nazis gave Jews “free tickets to Palestine”, imitating train tickets. The notes on their backs were also in a similar spirit: “Free tickets for Jews and comrades from all countries across the North or South Pole and the Gobi or Sahara desert to Palestine and never back.”
The right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) then came up with a similar idea, which they tried to ban twice, but even though the Constitutional Court recognized that it was undemocratic and close to Nazism and racism, it did not comply with the ban request – on the grounds that the party is already so weak that it does not pose a threat to freedom and democracy.
In 2013, the NPD launched a campaign of fake “return airline” tickets for migrants with a destination of “home” and a departure date of “immediate.” However, the AfD denied that there were any parallels between its leaflets and the NPD campaign.
“We categorically reject any connection with the action of the then NPD, which took place more than ten years ago and is completely unknown to us. They, too, probably put up posters and operated information booths. That’s why we should stop it?” Bernhard told BNN. He also objected to someone looking for hidden Nazi symbolism during the time indicated on the “ticket”.
The hypocrisy of the president
According to Fabian Virchow, an expert on right-wing extremism, whether the AfD incorporated any secret messages into the leaflets is irrelevant. It is obvious that the party is becoming very radicalized, and this was confirmed by its weekend meeting.
As he explained to BNN, the fact that the AfD chose “deportation tickets” as an election campaign is proof that it “uses racist sentiments without restraint” and that it has only one solution to the problem of migration, which is a complex challenge for society – mass deportations .
Photo: SITA/AP, Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert
AfD AfD co-chairs Alice Weidelová and Tino Chrupalla.
“This kind of hateful communication shows very clearly that the AfD long ago abandoned the free democratic order and the system of fundamental constitutional rights,” historian Rolf-Ulrich Kunze assessed for BNN.
He pointed out that the way in which the AfD mocks the values of the German constitution and the European Union is strikingly reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazi Party (NSDAP) campaign against the then Weimar Republic. Kunze is convinced that the AfD threatens the constitution and should therefore be banned.
Politicians also joined the criticism. Marco Wanderwitz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), for example, asks what still needs to happen to finally ban the AfD. According to him, this party is right-wing extremist and the flyers confirm that it is becoming more and more radicalized.
As he also reminded, the district branches of the AfD in Karlsruhe belong to the regional union, from which the co-president of the party and the candidate for chancellor Alice Weidelová emerged.
She was the main star at the party congress, where about 600 AfD delegates adopted the election program. Those interested could watch the session live on the social network X (formerly Twitter), which was made possible by a big supporter of the party, multi-billionaire Elon Musk.
The AfD’s agenda includes, for example, Germany’s departure from the EU (dexit), a return to the German mark instead of the euro, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, but also the cancellation of sanctions against Russia, the restoration of nuclear power plants, or the restriction of abortions. He also places great emphasis on remigration, i.e. the expulsion of illegal migrants to their homeland.
The attitude of Weidel, who behaves hypocritically, is interesting. She is a lesbian and lives in Switzerland with her partner from Sri Lanka, where they raise her two sons. Her partner even voted in favor of allowing “marriage for all” in the referendum there in 2021.
Despite this, Weidel presents herself to German voters as a supporter of the “traditional family”. Even in the AfD parliament, they established that a family consists of a father, a mother and a child. At the same time, the delegates condemned the so-called gender policy, but Weidel did not stand up for the LGBTI+ community.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
