Following a dispute over LGBTQ rights, the secretary of the AfD district association Miesbach, Gabriel Sack, resigned from his post at the end of November and left the party. The 31-year-old had joined the AfD only 20 months earlier.
“I have realized that much of what the Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s domestic intelligence service) and political scientists say about the AfD is true,” Sack explained in an interview published on Friday in the Munich daily Merkur. “It’s not the program that’s the problem, but that a large portion of the members tolerate right-wing extremism, homophobia, antisemitism, and hostility toward foreigners.”
The trigger for his move was a queer-phobic Instagram post by Vanessa Behrendt, a Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) AfD state parliamentary member. Sack had spoken out against it on behalf of the Miesbach district association, but was rebuked and reprimanded by the party’s board.
“I never would have thought that the right-wing wing around the Thuringian state chairman Björn Höcke would be so influential,” Sack said in the interview. “You cannot say anything against that wing. The wing controls the vast majority of the party. And those who speak out against it are quickly attacked.” After leaving the AfD, he has now filed a membership application with the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to the Christian Democrats (CDU). (mize)
