Saxony's CDU leader and Minister President Michael Kretschmer is pleading for more precision in argumentation when dealing with the AfD. "We must not just reflexively talk about a firewall," he told the online portal of the "Sächsische Zeitung" in Dresden on Monday. He said he has repeated time and again since taking office as head of government in the fall of 2017 that he does not want to work with the AfD, adding that the party congress resolutions of the federal CDU are "clear on the matter." However, people must also be able to understand "why we as the CDU do not want to cooperate with the AfD."
A mistake in the debate on dealing with the AfD is to repeatedly work with shortcuts, Kretschmer criticized. The AfD is in municipal and district councils and state parliaments "elected like any other party" and local councils according to the Saxon municipal code part of the administration. "We must learn from our dealings with the NPD and not create martyrs with whom supposedly no one wants to talk to solve pressing local problems such as the construction of a kindergarten."
But above that is the essence of the party, which is expressed in party programs, resolutions and the selection of the leadership, Kretschmer said. Here, he said, there is such a clear radicalization, which is a cause for concern and the reason why cooperation is wrong. "The AfD is precisely not a normal democratic party. On the contrary, it is a radically populist party that disregards the many values of our decent coexistence." In the AfD, he said, the far-right forces have been gaining more and more momentum. "It must be clear to everyone what the essence of this troop is."
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