Halle (Saale) (dts) - The CDU politician Wolfgang Bosbach, who is supposed to support the Union in the election campaigns in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, does not believe that the Halle trial will harm the Thuringian AfD state leader Björn Höcke. “Some will say: 'No, that's not possible' and others will say: 'So what? “I’m not voting for the AfD despite Mr. Höcke, but because of Mr. Höcke,” Bosbach told the news channel “Welt.”
Bosbach continued: “It's not just people who say, 'Oh, he's on trial, then I can't vote for him.' There are also people who say: 'What's so bad about the phrase Everything for Germany?' I even assume, at least for the most part, that they don't even know that this is a slogan of the National Socialists' Sturmabteilung and that this sentence constitutes a criminal offense," said Bosbach. “But there will also be enough people who know about the criminal law relevance of the sentence, but who are not bothered by it at all.”
Even the “permanent” negative reporting wouldn’t hurt Höcke, Bosbach suspects. “You have to get rid of the idea that the negative reviews, which he quite rightly receives, are also damaging to Mr. Höcke. There are not only people who vote for the AfD despite Mr. Höcke, but also because of Mr. Höcke.” Public reporting would “make Höcke even better known,” believes Bosbach. “It’s entirely possible that this will benefit him.” Bosbach advocates for less media attention.
Bosbach believes it is difficult to “counter Höcke with sober arguments.” “Because Höcke is the classic representative of the faction that is not afraid to spread half-truths or untruths. If he gets embarrassed, he won't remember anything. Or quotes that are absurd are suddenly taken out of context. He's uninhibited." Bosbach himself doesn't believe that Höcke used the SA slogan without a deeper intention: "I think it's more than unlikely that a history teacher doesn't know that the phrase 'Everything for Germany' is a National Socialist slogan is, more precisely, a slogan of the SA. But you have to prove that he intended to use this sentence. And that is the problem with the criminal process.”
Bosbach does not want to anticipate the legal verdict in the pending proceedings, but politically Höcke is fundamentally targeting a very specific target group: “The fact is that he serves a specific clientele in the population, incites them - and that he of course puts the National Socialist reign of terror into perspective. This is the real danger for our democracy, which was built on the rubble of Nazi barbarism, on the rubble of the Second World War.”
Whether the AfD is a democratically legitimate party or not plays a minor role for Bosbach. What is crucial is that the content is often anti-democratic. “There are quite a few people who say: 'What's the point? The AfD is democratically elected. That's not what matters at all, but whether its policies also correspond to democratic principles. And that's where the real problem lies, that the AfD's politics have nothing to do with the values of the Basic Law." But only education can help, says Bosbach.
