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Former AfD activist to face legal action over exposé book

According to a Spiegel report, prominent figures close the far-right AfD are set to take legal action against former party activist Franziska Schreiber, whose insider account of the AfD was published this week.

Published: 10 August 2018 17:03 CEST
Former AfD activist to face legal action over exposé book
Erika Steinbach (pictured) is set to take legal action against former AfD activist Franziska Schreiber. Photo: DPA

Former CDU MP Erika Steinbach and an ally of controversial Thuringian Björn Höcke are among those who are reported to be taking legal action against Schreiber, after her book “Inside AfD” was released on Monday.

Schreiber, 28, had been a leading figure in the party’s youth wing until she left the AfD just before last September’s parliamentary elections.

She presented her book on Monday, saying that “people can change”, and that she hoped to reach current AfD supporters.

Her book, published by the Europa Verlag, contained a number of dramatic allegations about the inner workings of the party, most notably that a member of Germany’s intelligence services had given advice to the party.

She claimed that Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, had met with former AfD leader Frauke Petry and told her that the party could avoid observation by throwing out Höcke.

Steinbach and others, though, have taken issue with different accusations, Spiegel reported, and are taking legal action to prevent the sale of the book. 

Right-wing publisher Götz Kubitschek, who is close to Höcke, has disputed a passage in which Schreiber claims that the two men studied speeches by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in detail, in search of “the formula that had lead to success in the 1930’s”.

“Franziska Schreiber is one of those people who thinks that they can easily sling mud at me and Mr Höcke,” said Kubitschek, who is reported to have sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Europa Verlag. “She should have checked the mud first.”

Former CDU MP Erika Steinbach, who now leads the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung, a foundation with links to the AfD, also declared that she is looking into legal action, due to Schreiber’s claim that she had donated to the AfD as early as 2013.

“This claim is a lie,” Steinbach told Spiegel.

Further claims in Schreiber’s book include the allegation that some in the AfD were hoping for a terror attack on German soil, in order to turn the public mood against immigration.

The AfD is a “very, very dangerous party”, she said on Monday, and predicted that they would only become more radical in the future.

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POLITICS

Scholz says attacks on deputies ‘threaten’ democracy

Leading politicians on Saturday condemned an attack on a European deputy with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Published: 5 May 2024 08:34 CEST
Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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