Ex-AfD leader to launch new German political party
Former chairwoman of the
right-wing extremist
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Frauke Petry, announced in an interview with
Die Welt
news on Monday that she aims to found a new political party.
In the interview she suggested that the so far unnamed party will be "anti-statist" -- meaning it will work to dismantle state-funded welfare and fight "state authoritarianism".
Petry also said she wants to strengthen "cultural ties to the West", and accused Germany's conservatives of denying a raging culture war.
The former AfD co-leader has already gathered a number of campaigners in a group that she calls "Team Freiheit" (Team Freedom).
According to Petry, the party could be ready to campaign in state elections in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in March 2026.
Who is Frauke Petry?
Frauke Petry's political career goes back to the very beginnings of the AfD party, where she served as the party's first co-chair, along with Bernd Lucke.
Petry and other right-wing economists initially formed the eurosceptic party in direct opposition to then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's initiative to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis. Defending Germany's role in the bailout, Merkel had said there was "no alternative".
In the following years Petry comes to be representative of the the economic libertarian wing of the party, whereas she appears wary of the growing right-wing, nativist side of the party led by the likes of Thuringian AfD state leader
Björn Höcke
.
OPINION:
The truth is out about Germany's far-right AfD - now ban the party
In early 2017, Petry tried and failed to kick Höcke out of the party. Then, following the national election in September, she was ousted from the party herself. Alice Weidel took her position as co-leader, and Petry went on to serve a term in the Bundestag as an unaffiliated MP.
In an
interview with
Die Zeit
at that time, Petry said "she finally felt like herself again" after leaving the AfD. She said she didn't agree with the party's growing emphasis on patriotism based on ethnicity and rejected slogans like "foreigners out", adding that she would "stick to criticism of Islam".
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A second shot
This will not be Petry's first attempt to start a new political party since leaving the AfD.
Almost immediately after being ousted from the anti-immigration party, she founded
Die Blaue Partei
(the Blue Party), which hoped to attract voters who thought the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) had become too liberal under Merkel but also didn't agree with the nationalist wing of the AfD.
But the Blue Party failed to take off, and was dissolved in 2019 after it failed to win a meaningful amount of votes in state elections in Thuringia and Saxony.
Following that failure, Petry had suggested she would take a break from politics after her Bundestag mandate expired in 2021. She reportedly told the
Bild
newspaper, "That's it for me. I will be consistent there."
Frauke Petry gestures in front of an election banner at the presentation of the Blue campaign for the 2019 state election in Saxony on the theatre square. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Robert Michael
Is there a significant gap in the political spectrum?
In her recent interview with
Die Welt
, Petry suggests that the gap her party will fill is not really that between the CDU and the AfD, but "in the void of an anti-statist, liberal offer".
Specifically, she said the new party would aim to reduce the ratio of government spending to gross domestic product. Under the leadership of Friedrich Merz, the CDU has recently led the charge in the opposite direction, pushing through a
massive spending package
to greatly expand government spending for infrastructure and defence in particular.
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She has also pitched the new party's platform as being one of "a renewal of the cultural connection to the West", which is perhaps best understood in context of her previous statements against Islam. In an interview with
NTV
back in 2016, Petry went as far as calling Islam "incompatible with the Basic Law".
READ ALSO:
What's in Germany's giant spending package?
Germany has recently seen another new party emerge from the fringes and gain some traction.
Sahra Wagenknecht's
BSW emerged at the beginning of 2024 after the
Linke
veteran departed from the Left party.
Campaigning on a platform that mixed left-wing social policies with anti-migrant populism and social conservatism , the BSW
achieved some success in state elections
in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. However, the new party fell just a few tenths of a percentage point short of the five percent needed to gain seats in the Bundestag.
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On the right of the political spectrum, the
Werte Union
party founded by controversial ex-CDU politician Hans Georg-Maaßen allegedly
aimed to fill a political gap between the centre-right party and the far-right AfD
. After being founded in February 2024, however, it quickly slipped into obscurity and failed to participate in the Bundestag election the following year.
Whether the latest attempt to pull voters from the fringers of Germany's established right-wing, conservative and economically libertarian parties will succeed remains to be seen.
READ ALSO:
West German foothold of far-right AfD shows challenge for Merz
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