Generation Germany: AfD youth organization is looking for its place

The AfD youth organization Generation Germany (GD) feels strong. It has installed four of its members on the party's federal executive board. She has excellent international connections, as she showed at her federal congress in Magdeburg: almost a dozen speakers from other European countries addressed the young AfD politicians there.

What is perhaps causing the greatest emotions these days: Ulrich Siegmund is one of them. Until recently, the top candidate for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt was still a member of the dissolved Junge Alternative. He hopes to become Germany's first AfD prime minister after Sunday's election.

The GD, which AfD officials call the “future vanguard of the party,” also wants to show this strength. It wants to be “neither a toothless tiger nor a recipient of orders from the parent party,” as its leader Jean-Pascal Hohm says. He made an attempt at the federal congress to fulfill this claim - and failed.

Hohm wanted to give the AfD a pro-European update. The only substantive proposal at the Federal Congress “commits to the European idea” and wants to reform the euro. This doesn't suit AfD leader Alice Weidel; she wants to get rid of the euro, this “soft currency”. If the motion had passed, the DG would have taken the opposite view of what the parent party is demanding on the European issue.

This in itself is not an expression of moderation - the leadership of the DG is simply convinced that their goals (“remigration” and “Fortress Europe”) can be better achieved with European partners. Maybe they also think that the authoritative tone opens up new social layers and that after international networking and recognition comes also that in their own country. After all, Hohm wants to be “capable of governing”, that’s what he says himself.

But the application failed. One amendment called for “the dismantling of the centralist, redistributive and identity-destroying euro.” A completely different language. A completely different line. The Weidels. Hohm then withdrew the lead proposal.

Weidel always has the last word

He lacked the troops for his advance. Weidel, on the other hand, has hers behind her - be it recently at the party conference of the “big” AfD in Erfurt, where she activated her network in a critical vote, or in the ranks of the youth.

So isn’t this youth an independent “avant-garde” after all? Maybe she shouldn't be. The predecessor organization Junge Alternative was dissolved with the aim of using the new organization to bind the youth more closely to the party so that they could be disciplined.

The GD has already had to experience this: one of its former board members was banned from holding office and had to resign from the board because he had made a slogan that the Hitler Youth had also used a “lodestar” - which led to investigations. This caused discontent in the ranks of the GD. They still remain loyal to Weidel.