At its party conference, the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has decided to drop its youth organisation and create a new one.
With well over the required two-third majority, the party voted to get rid of the Young Alternative (JA) on January 12.
That came after the youth wing was accused of having right-wing extremist tendencies, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
A court later confirmed that. The Higher Administrative Court of Münster ruled in mid-2024 that “JA represents a ‘völkisch-descent concept of the people’ and agitates xenophobia.” völkisch can be described as “ethnic-chauvinist”.
JA had enjoyed significant autonomy and had always stressed its independence from the AfD, leading to friction between the party and the youth wing.
Other German political parties have similar loose ties with their youth organisations.
This has allowed them to focus on youth-specific issues, promote political engagement among younger generations and, sometimes, challenge or critique the positions of their parent parties.
The JA youth branch had long been a thorn in the side of the AfD and was said to have caused reputational damage.
With its successor, the AfD said it aimed to have more control and better integrate the new youth wing into the party.
Those within the new entity will also have to be members of the party, which was not the case with JA, where they could choose to opt-out from AfD membership.
According to its own data, JA has about 2,400 members – only half of whom were said to have joined the AfD itself.
An AfD state chairman told German Conservative outlet Junge Freiheit in the run-up to the vote that the party needed a disciplined and attractive youth organisation to train future cadres, and not a “Greenpeace from the right”.
A name for the new youth organisation has not yet been determined. At the party conference over January 11-12, the AfD federal executive committee proposed the name “Patriotic Youth”.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has held its party convention in Riesa, Saxony, where violent protests by hard-left demonstrators broke out. https://t.co/GUVmqVj5MZ
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 13, 2025
