The AfD separates from its right-wing extremist youth organization. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the “Junge Alternative”. It is quite possible that it will continue to exist – fed by the AfD’s assets.
Anna Leisten is angry. The Brandenburg state leader of the “Young Alternative” walks quickly through the Sachsenhalle in Riesa. She doesn’t want to talk to normal media and brusquely blocks reporters. She only wants to speak a statement into the camera for the right-wing extremist compact media. A statement for the scene.
Leisten’s anger has a good reason: 600 delegates at the AfD party conference in Riesa have just decided by a majority that the “Young Alternative” (JA) should no longer be the AfD’s youth organization. There will be a new youth organization that is strongly embedded in the structures of the AfD. A youth organization that can be more closely controlled by the AfD leaders at the federal and state levels.
The AfD wants to draw a line under its responsibility for the “Junge Alternative” (JA), which has been classified as “certainly right-wing extremist” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2023. But the YES doesn’t mean the end of it. There is a danger that it will continue to exist as a gathering place for hardline extremists. And the AfD bears a lot of responsibility for this: despite the radicalization of the JA, it promoted it and – this is rarely discussed – pumped a lot of money into the JA.
From the AfD’s perspective, there are many good reasons to end the relationship now. One of the most important of them is: The AfD’s leading officials have had enough.
Enough of the problems that members of their youth organization keep causing the party. Enough of them not wanting to be disciplined. The last incident that became public gives a feeling for the quality of these problems: three members of the JA, who were also AfD members, were arrested in a raid because they were part of the suspected terrorist group “Saxon Separatists” (SS). They prepared for a coup with shooting training. The party and JA quickly excluded the three.
But apparently that didn’t always work. High-ranking AfD officials secretly say: Each of the 16 AfD state executives has had numerous experiences with blatant misconduct by JA members. Fortunately, a good part of them was kept under wraps and they never became public. But every AfD state chairman has had the experience that the JA does not want to rein in or sanction its members.
So far, the AfD has not been able to change that. The JA benefited enormously from its status as a youth organization of the AfD – but from a legal point of view it is an independent association. Free to organize yourself. Free to draw the red line on extremism much later than the AfD, which already tolerates a lot. Or not to draw any red lines at all.
Nevertheless, the AfD massively supported the JA until the end. The most radical officials in particular maintain close contacts with the “Junge Alternative”, appear together with them and receive support from them in the election campaign. They use their platform and at the same time provide them with a platform.
Among them: the Thuringian state chairman Björn Höcke or Christoph Berndt, Brandenburg AfD parliamentary group leader and top candidate in the last Brandenburg election campaign. Both are classified as right-wing extremists by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and both were massively supported by the JA, especially by the Brandenburg JA Association under the leadership of Anna Leisten.
But another component is more important, and materially speaking, for the right-wing extremist club: money. Only thanks to financial resources can the JA actually exist and, for example, hold its own conventions. This is the only way she can finance the material for posters, flyers and T-shirts, which are popular in the right-wing extremist scene and are intended to attract new, young fans.