BERLIN – Can an MEP ever not know who his assistant is and what he does? Maximilian Krah, he says, didn’t know, and he certainly couldn’t imagine who the man was took it to China at the expense of Chinese companies, or to meet the emissaries of the «International Department of the Communist Party» (despite the alerts from the German services), was in reality an agent on active duty of the People’s Republic. And therefore, let it be clarified and given (if true) the right punishment, but what belongs to the spy Jian Guo remains to Jian Guo.
He, Maximilian Krah — despite the arrest of his bagman in Dresden on Monday — remains in the running as leader for the AfD. “If you believe – he introduced himself to journalists – that this is the end of my candidacy as head of the list, then I must disappoint you: I am and will remain so.” But the scandal hit the far right of Alternatives for Germany it’s gigantic.
The party is on red alert, or rather in “damage containment” mode. In the popular press and on X, where there is a riot of memes, they have already nicknamed the AfD «Alternative für Diktatoren», or in another version «für Despoten». The party, for its part, minimizes externally and prosecutes internally. Krah was immediately summoned to Berlin. That same evening — as Politico reporters discovered — he was taken to the Le Paris brasserie on Kurfürstendamm by co-leader Tino Chrupalla’s assistants. And while Chrupalla dined in a nearby room without being seen with an American delegation, he tried to agree on a water line.
Yesterday morning at 9, Krah was expected in the direction. Who, “after a constructive speech”, renewed his trust in him. To complete the picture, or the disaster, there is also number 2 Petr Bystron, long accused of receiving funding from the Kremlin. Yesterday it Spiegel published the details of other payments for 20 thousand euros.
The truth is that the leaders of Alternative für Deutschland with Krah and Bystron could not do anything else. The lists are filed, the posters printed. The two leaders cannot be changed – except in the event of death. So all that remained was to close ourselves in a square around the “lame ducks”. On with the patriots, for now notoriously in the pay of foreign states.
Chancellor Scholz described the case, “if confirmed”, as very serious. Berlin finds itself at the center of political and industrial espionage that seemed forgotten for decades. That China, with its manufacturing power, is interested in copying German industry is not surprising. And that Parliament is also part of this game – with the infinite amount of preparatory work, dossiers and details to which parliamentarians and their assistants have access – was perhaps understood late. L’AfD, like any new and poorly structured political force, can be a Trojan horse easier to infiltrate than classic parties.
The question remains: How much will the scandal hurt the AfD? The party, after the pro-democracy demonstrations this winter, is in decline, down to 16%. Nonetheless, it is first among young people between 14 and 29 years old, the most followed on TikTok. It is likely that he will behave as in the past, shifting the blame and going back and forth between victimhood and conspiracy theory. But in Germany the parties, the media, the traditional culture made up of books and discussions are more solid than elsewhere: and they will try to give the “lame duck” another blow.
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