It took Maybrit Illner well over a long twenty minutes this Thursday evening until it became clear that this group was a larger one and “greatly” (Illner) not only consisted of the AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla, Armin Laschet from the CDU and the deputy ” Spiegel” editor-in-chief Melanie Amann passes.
The BDI chairman Siegfried Russwurm and the writer Juli Zeh are also there, and Zeh sums up the basically predictable talk when she expresses her “discomfort about this discourse constellation” in her first speech: “Everyone explains to Mr. Chrupalla how he should make his party leadership better and more honorable, and everyone gathers around him as if he were the bonfire of horror.”
Chrupalla’s victim role with Maybrit Illner
Chrupalla, one gets the impression, seems to relax for the first time and looks over at Juli Zeh, nodding, who understands! But Zeh immediately adds that she is not sitting here “to support your role as a victim,” but that there are other issues and we should better ask ourselves what will become of Europe. In doing so, it changes the direction of the sometimes more fruitful discussion, which previously followed expected paths.
Chrupalla was invited to the public TV talk for the second time after his visit to Caren Misoga on Sunday, after turbulent days for the AfD due to the Krah-Bystron spy affair. It goes without saying that this time things wouldn’t be as friendly for Chrupalla as they were with Miosga.
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The former CDU chairman Armin Laschet stated that “there have never been such conditions of treason in the Federal Republic.” Melanie Amann said that there had been “no event in German history” “where the candidate for an election was confronted with such hard evidence,” and Chrupalla defended himself with the “presumption of innocence,” which applies with “evidence.” that would be missing, with “would have, would be, could.” etc.
Yes, it should be about the AfD and also its espionage cases in which its two leading European candidates are involved. Even more so, how much the right-wing extremist party actually represents German interests. Thanks to Zeh, who was probably invited as a “citizen”, yes, strangely enough, as a representative of the rural population, because of her novels “Among People” and “Among People” and because she has lived in Brandenburg for 17 years, thanks to Zeh you get to this Evening on the war in Europe, the role of the AfD for Russia and finally on European unification, which is more endangered than ever, on the European project.
And what always resonates in the subtext of this discussion is the ongoing problem of the public broadcaster, which has become ever greater with the AfD’s electoral successes: How to deal with the party and its top people? Invite and demonstrate in a measured manner? Let people speak and refute it with arguments?
TV talk with Illner: Make excuses and don’t let them be excused
Chrupalla evades, refers to von der Leyen when it comes to Krah, prefers not to answer the question of whether Putin is a warmonger, but instead colorfully counters with Barack Obama, Iraq, Syria and Libya and at least manages to say that Ukraine that Russia should not lose this war and that Russia should not win it. He has little to counter Armin Laschet’s almost pleasant differentiations, and at some point the frequent speaker Chrupallas’s “Let me finish” runs on a continuous loop.
Zeh advocates the idea of perhaps thinking about peace negotiations and not just about arms deliveries, which Chrupalla again supports (“I want the dying to stop”), and she expands the discussion again, namely German interests not into antagonism to European ones, like the AfD is doing: “That’s the issue before the European elections!” According to Zeh, we have to convey the European idea more credibly, “otherwise there will be a lot of Europeans sitting on the upper floors and our support at the bottom will be lost.”
Armin Laschet then has the final word that gives hope, perhaps also as advice for the public broadcasters: “The more you act like you do today,” he says in the direction of Tino Chrupalla, “the more cases there are like Krah and others: the citizens will notice. You can also see it in the polls.”