Latest news with #Petry
Local Germany
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Local Germany
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". Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Shifting targets, growing support: The rise of Germany's AfD
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's domestic security agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist" on Friday, allowing for closer monitoring of the country's largest opposition party, which condemned the move as a "blow against democracy". Here is a timeline for the AfD, Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two. 2013 February 6 - Founded by right-wing economists, the party opposes Germany helping to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, rejecting then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's assertion that there was "no alternative". Headed by Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, the party grows quickly, fuelled by ample donations from small businesses and attracting disillusioned conservative and neoliberal politicians and voters. September 22 - It narrowly misses the 5% threshold for winning seats in that year's parliamentary election 2014 May 25 - The party wins 7% in European Parliament elections, allowing it to send seven members to Brussels. Though nativist overtones are never far from the surface, the party denies any racist motivation for its opposition to bailing out Greece and other heavily indebted countries. August - A string of regional election victories in eastern Germany fuels the AfD's move further to the right, and Bjoern Hoecke, the party's nativist leader in the state of Thuringia, becomes one its most emblematic figures. 2015 The refugee crisis sees more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrive in Germany, propelling the AfD's nativist wing to the fore and giving the party a toehold in western Germany. 2016 March 13 - The AfD scores double-digit results in west German regional elections for the first time and wins nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt - at the time the best result ever for a far-right party. 2017 January - Hoecke achieves notoriety for describing Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame". A court overrules Petry's attempts to kick him out of the party the following year. January 21 - The party's growing prominence is signalled by its presence at an international gathering of far-right politicians in Koblenz, where Petry rubs shoulders with France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders. September - Petry is ousted, in a defeat for the economic libertarian wing of the party, and is replaced by Alice Weidel, who leads the party to this day, and Alexander Gauland, a right-wing former Christian Democrat. September 24 - The party wins 12.6% in Germany's federal election, entering the national parliament for the first time and becoming the largest opposition party. 2019 January 15 - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) places the AfD under examination, and labels The Wing - a nativist grouping within the party led by Hoecke - and the party's youth wings as suspected far-right cases. 2020 April 30 - The Wing is dissolved. 2021 January 20 - The AfD mounts a legal challenge against being classified as a suspect far-right case. February 25 - The BfV confirms the party is suspected far-right. September 26 - Partly as a result of growing concerns about the cluster of far-right figures at the top of the party, and partly thanks to a buoyant economy, the party falls to 10.3% in the parliamentary election. The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowing economy subsequently give the party a boost, and it also benefits from infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unwieldy three-way coalition. Leaning heavily into culture war issues with demands for enquiries into alleged mishandling of the pandemic, critiques of modern architecture or rejection of supposed "gender ideologies", the party is able to secure and expand its base. 2022 April 5 - The party's youth wing is declared officially right extremist. 2024 January - A series of scandals - a bombshell report that senior figures had discussed deporting citizens of non-German ethnicity, the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy in one politician's office, and allegations that another had taken money from pro-Russian propaganda outlets - sparks months of protests but fails to sustainably dent support. Increasingly, the party relies on a strategy of attempting to gum up government, peppering courts and ministries with filings and questions that critics regard as frivolous, in a way that seems designed to slow and discredit the state. Hoecke is the leading champion of this strategy, deploying slogans that resemble those used by Adolf Hitler's Nazis in a manner guaranteed to command attention. May 13 - A court rules that the classification as suspected far-right - one step short of Friday's confirmed far-right classification - is justified. The party had called members from ethnic minorities to testify that it was not. May 22 - Le Pen distances herself from the AfD after Maximilian Krah, one of its most popular figures, fails to condemn Hitler's paramiltary SS in a newspaper interview. 2024 September 1 - The party becomes the first far-right party to top a regional election since World War Two. 2025 January - Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, interviews AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, declaring weeks ahead of a federal election: "Only the AfD can save Germany." February 23 - The AfD comes second in the federal election, the best result for a far-right party since the German Federal Republic's founding. March 31 - The party's youth wing is dissolved to make way for a replacement under closer supervision of party headquarters.
Straits Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Shifting targets, growing support: The rise of Germany's AfD
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party wear morph suits and wave flags during an event to rally support for Sunday's European Parliament elections at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin May 23, 2014. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo BERLIN - Germany's domestic security agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist" on Friday, allowing for closer monitoring of the country's largest opposition party, which condemned the move as a "blow against democracy". Here is a timeline for the AfD, Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two. 2013 February 6 - Founded by right-wing economists, the party opposes Germany helping to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, rejecting then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's assertion that there was "no alternative". Headed by Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, the party grows quickly, fuelled by ample donations from small businesses and attracting disillusioned conservative and neoliberal politicians and voters. September 22 - It narrowly misses the 5% threshold for winning seats in that year's parliamentary election 2014 May 25 - The party wins 7% in European Parliament elections, allowing it to send seven members to Brussels. Though nativist overtones are never far from the surface, the party denies any racist motivation for its opposition to bailing out Greece and other heavily indebted countries. August - A string of regional election victories in eastern Germany fuels the AfD's move further to the right, and Bjoern Hoecke, the party's nativist leader in the state of Thuringia, becomes one its most emblematic figures. 2015 The refugee crisis sees more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrive in Germany, propelling the AfD's nativist wing to the fore and giving the party a toehold in western Germany. 2016 March 13 - The AfD scores double-digit results in west German regional elections for the first time and wins nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt - at the time the best result ever for a far-right party. 2017 January - Hoecke achieves notoriety for describing Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame". A court overrules Petry's attempts to kick him out of the party the following year. January 21 - The party's growing prominence is signalled by its presence at an international gathering of far-right politicians in Koblenz, where Petry rubs shoulders with France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders. September - Petry is ousted, in a defeat for the economic libertarian wing of the party, and is replaced by Alice Weidel, who leads the party to this day, and Alexander Gauland, a right-wing former Christian Democrat. September 24 - The party wins 12.6% in Germany's federal election, entering the national parliament for the first time and becoming the largest opposition party. 2019 January 15 - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) places the AfD under examination, and labels The Wing - a nativist grouping within the party led by Hoecke - and the party's youth wings as suspected far-right cases. 2020 April 30 - The Wing is dissolved. 2021 January 20 - The AfD mounts a legal challenge against being classified as a suspect far-right case. February 25 - The BfV confirms the party is suspected far-right. September 26 - Partly as a result of growing concerns about the cluster of far-right figures at the top of the party, and partly thanks to a buoyant economy, the party falls to 10.3% in the parliamentary election. The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowing economy subsequently give the party a boost, and it also benefits from infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unwieldy three-way coalition. Leaning heavily into culture war issues with demands for enquiries into alleged mishandling of the pandemic, critiques of modern architecture or rejection of supposed "gender ideologies", the party is able to secure and expand its base. 2022 April 5 - The party's youth wing is declared officially right extremist. 2024 January - A series of scandals - a bombshell report that senior figures had discussed deporting citizens of non-German ethnicity, the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy in one politician's office, and allegations that another had taken money from pro-Russian propaganda outlets - sparks months of protests but fails to sustainably dent support. Increasingly, the party relies on a strategy of attempting to gum up government, peppering courts and ministries with filings and questions that critics regard as frivolous, in a way that seems designed to slow and discredit the state. Hoecke is the leading champion of this strategy, deploying slogans that resemble those used by Adolf Hitler's Nazis in a manner guaranteed to command attention. May 13 - A court rules that the classification as suspected far-right - one step short of Friday's confirmed far-right classification - is justified. The party had called members from ethnic minorities to testify that it was not. May 22 - Le Pen distances herself from the AfD after Maximilian Krah, one of its most popular figures, fails to condemn Hitler's paramiltary SS in a newspaper interview. 2024 September 1 - The party becomes the first far-right party to top a regional election since World War Two. 2025 January - Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, interviews AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, declaring weeks ahead of a federal election: "Only the AfD can save Germany." February 23 - The AfD comes second in the federal election, the best result for a far-right party since the German Federal Republic's founding. March 31 - The party's youth wing is dissolved to make way for a replacement under closer supervision of party headquarters. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Reuters
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Shifting targets, growing support: The rise of Germany's AfD
BERLIN, May 2 (Reuters) - Germany's domestic security agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as "extremist" on Friday, allowing for closer monitoring of the country's largest opposition party, which condemned the move as a "blow against democracy". Here is a timeline for the AfD, Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two. 2013 February 6 - Founded by right-wing economists, the party opposes Germany helping to bail out Greece at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, rejecting then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's assertion that there was "no alternative". Headed by Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry, the party grows quickly, fuelled by ample donations from small businesses and attracting disillusioned conservative and neoliberal politicians and voters. September 22 - It narrowly misses the 5% threshold for winning seats in that year's parliamentary election 2014 May 25 - The party wins 7% in European Parliament elections, allowing it to send seven members to Brussels. Though nativist overtones are never far from the surface, the party denies any racist motivation for its opposition to bailing out Greece and other heavily indebted countries. August - A string of regional election victories in eastern Germany fuels the AfD's move further to the right, and Bjoern Hoecke, the party's nativist leader in the state of Thuringia, becomes one its most emblematic figures. 2015 The refugee crisis sees more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa arrive in Germany, propelling the AfD's nativist wing to the fore and giving the party a toehold in western Germany. 2016 March 13 - The AfD scores double-digit results in west German regional elections for the first time and wins nearly a quarter of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt - at the time the best result ever for a far-right party. 2017 January - Hoecke achieves notoriety for describing Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame". A court overrules Petry's attempts to kick him out of the party the following year. January 21 - The party's growing prominence is signalled by its presence at an international gathering of far-right politicians in Koblenz, where Petry rubs shoulders with France's Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders. September - Petry is ousted, in a defeat for the economic libertarian wing of the party, and is replaced by Alice Weidel, who leads the party to this day, and Alexander Gauland, a right-wing former Christian Democrat. September 24 - The party wins 12.6% in Germany's federal election, entering the national parliament for the first time and becoming the largest opposition party. 2019 January 15 - The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) places the AfD under examination, and labels The Wing - a nativist grouping within the party led by Hoecke - and the party's youth wings as suspected far-right cases. 2020 April 30 - The Wing is dissolved. 2021 January 20 - The AfD mounts a legal challenge against being classified as a suspect far-right case. February 25 - The BfV confirms the party is suspected far-right. September 26 - Partly as a result of growing concerns about the cluster of far-right figures at the top of the party, and partly thanks to a buoyant economy, the party falls to 10.3% in the parliamentary election. The COVID-19 pandemic and the slowing economy subsequently give the party a boost, and it also benefits from infighting in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unwieldy three-way coalition. Leaning heavily into culture war issues with demands for enquiries into alleged mishandling of the pandemic, critiques of modern architecture or rejection of supposed "gender ideologies", the party is able to secure and expand its base. 2022 April 5 - The party's youth wing is declared officially right extremist. 2024 January - A series of scandals - a bombshell report that senior figures had discussed deporting citizens of non-German ethnicity, the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy in one politician's office, and allegations that another had taken money from pro-Russian propaganda outlets - sparks months of protests but fails to sustainably dent support. Increasingly, the party relies on a strategy of attempting to gum up government, peppering courts and ministries with filings and questions that critics regard as frivolous, in a way that seems designed to slow and discredit the state. Hoecke is the leading champion of this strategy, deploying slogans that resemble those used by Adolf Hitler's Nazis in a manner guaranteed to command attention. May 13 - A court rules that the classification as suspected far-right - one step short of Friday's confirmed far-right classification - is justified. The party had called members from ethnic minorities to testify that it was not. May 22 - Le Pen distances herself from the AfD after Maximilian Krah, one of its most popular figures, fails to condemn Hitler's paramiltary SS in a newspaper interview. 2024 September 1 - The party becomes the first far-right party to top a regional election since World War Two. 2025 January - Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, interviews AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, declaring weeks ahead of a federal election: "Only the AfD can save Germany." February 23 - The AfD comes second in the federal election, the best result for a far-right party since the German Federal Republic's founding. March 31 - The party's youth wing is dissolved to make way for a replacement under closer supervision of party headquarters.
USA Today
25-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Detroit Red Wings activate defenseman and former Spartan Jeff Petry off of IR
Detroit Red Wings activate defenseman and former Spartan Jeff Petry off of IR The National Hockey League is in the heat of a playoff push, with the regular season hitting the final 12ish games of the season. For the local team in the state of Michigan, the Detroit Red Wings, are five points out of the playoffs with 13 games to go. Jeff Petry, a former Spartan and longtime NHL defenseman, is a member of the Red Wings and has been out almost three months. After playing his last game on Jan. 2, it looks like Petry will be returning to the lineup for the last push the Red Wings will have. After playing in just 34 games early this season, the veteran defenseman has been cleared and activated off of injured reserve by the Red Wings. It is unclear if he will be making his return in tonight's game against the Utah Hockey Club. Petry is just 29 games away from playing 1,000 career NHL games and will start making progress towards that career milestone. Contact/Follow us @The SpartansWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Michigan State news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Cory Linsner on X @Cory_Linsner
