Merz: We will not let the AfD talk Germany down

A day before Saxony-Anhalt votes, Friedrich Merz demanded a sharper confrontation with the AfD, including over the language used by its officials. “We must conduct the debate with this party better,” the chancellor told a campaign event in Lower Saxony, where local elections will take place the following week.

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We must conduct the debate with this party better.

Merz said the CDU needed to engage with both the AfD’s policies and its rhetoric. He pointed to a statement by Martin Reichardt, the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, who reportedly described the state at an AfD youth organization congress as “a lazy Asian that smells of dope.” Merz said the remark showed “what these people think of our country” and indicated how they should be treated politically.

“We will not let these people talk our country down,” Merz said. The CDU chairman also defended Germany’s record, describing the Federal Republic as a country with almost 80 years of success, despite its many problems and challenges. Germany, he said, remained one of the world’s most prosperous and safest countries, as well as “a stable, consolidated democracy.”

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We must engage with the policies. We must also engage with the choice of words.

The AfD leads the CDU by a wide margin in polls in Saxony-Anhalt and is not far from an absolute majority. Merz visited the eastern German state twice in recent days, traveling to Quedlinburg and Leuna to meet CDU candidates and officials, visit a biorefinery and tour Quedlinburg’s collegiate church. Neither visit included a public appearance before voters. In Hanover, he spoke to about 300 CDU members at a hotel near the airport.

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We will not let these people talk our country down.