The anti-euro (both currency and organisation) sentiment was at the core of the founders of the AfD in 2013. It got quickly supplanted by a more straight up hard-right-nationalist ideology and has not played much of a role since then, but has always been on the back burner and showed up in singular positions of its deranged members. Them picking it up now seems like a calculated political move to find another scapegoat after refugees, muslims, “Genderwahnsinn” (literally “gender insanity”, which would be a great name for a queer punk band tbh) or what have you.
Is this an actual position they hold? Who knows, they are fucking fash and will say and do anything to get into power and are not beholden to anything, once in power.
IIRC from reading Quinn Slobodian’s books on free market radicals the precursor to the AfD were right wing libertarians, and those people used to be afraid that the EU would “smuggle in socialism” through regulations and stuff. Nowadays those type of ideologues mostly love the EU and like you said the AfD itself abandoned that for more protectionist policies and nationalism/scapegoating migrants.
But I’m sure the leadership understands that germany IS the EU and the euro, and its institutions are set up to make the german economic model the chief beneficiary, so abandoning it entirely instead of reforming it to be even more beneficial to germany seems like a thing they wouldn’t actually follow through.
Nevertheless it’s dreadful that this type of statement from the article:
Regarding the exit from the euro, the document states that “AfD is aware that the reintroduction of a stable national currency cannot happen without conversion costs. However, these will be lower than the permanent costs of remaining in the euro system”.
The anti-euro (both currency and organisation) sentiment was at the core of the founders of the AfD in 2013. It got quickly supplanted by a more straight up hard-right-nationalist ideology and has not played much of a role since then, but has always been on the back burner and showed up in singular positions of its deranged members. Them picking it up now seems like a calculated political move to find another scapegoat after refugees, muslims, “Genderwahnsinn” (literally “gender insanity”, which would be a great name for a queer punk band tbh) or what have you.
Is this an actual position they hold? Who knows, they are fucking fash and will say and do anything to get into power and are not beholden to anything, once in power.
IIRC from reading Quinn Slobodian’s books on free market radicals the precursor to the AfD were right wing libertarians, and those people used to be afraid that the EU would “smuggle in socialism” through regulations and stuff. Nowadays those type of ideologues mostly love the EU and like you said the AfD itself abandoned that for more protectionist policies and nationalism/scapegoating migrants.
But I’m sure the leadership understands that germany IS the EU and the euro, and its institutions are set up to make the german economic model the chief beneficiary, so abandoning it entirely instead of reforming it to be even more beneficial to germany seems like a thing they wouldn’t actually follow through.
Nevertheless it’s dreadful that this type of statement from the article:
Is coming from the far right and not the left