&gt; <i>he leads a party that openly called for shooting children at the border.</i><p>My understanding is that<p>1) he is not leading the party, he is one of the speakers for the party in the local (state) assembly. And I understand he is actually repeatedly clashing with the actual AfD leadership.<p>2) any comments about &quot;shooting children&quot; or even generally changing rules of engagement regarding firearms are not, as far as I know, an AfD party position, as the party leader responds in [0]<p>3) I understood the comments about using firearms were for a context where authorities are under a violent attack when performing their duties. Specifically, did they mention children? I didn&#x27;t think so, but I could be mistaken.<p>I don&#x27;t need to like what the &quot;fringe&quot; says, but I wouldn&#x27;t like to make it bigger than it is. Because precisely this kind of exaggeration is what is undermining the credibility of legitimate criticism of AfD (the most devastating kind being, &quot;hey, what would you really do instead?&quot; because that is a question that is very hard to answer.) Its supporters see the opponents as just twisting the truth.<p>(I&#x27;m not experiencing this in Germany, but there are very similar discussions going on here in the Nordic countries: enormous straw men constructions are built all the time around criticism of immigration policies, and people are really quite fed up with that. If you keep repeating to people that they are racists, they may eventually start to believe you. In Sweden, the political consensus to &quot;exclude the extreme right fringe from politics&quot; seems to be resulting in the &quot;extreme right fringe&quot; now having the second largest electoral support of all parties [1], and continuing to grow. Once they go near 50 % it&#x27;s going to be hard to talk about &quot;fringe&quot;.)<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;german-right-leaning-afd-leader-calls-for-police-right-to-shoot-at-refugees&#x2F;a-19013137" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dw.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;german-right-leaning-afd-leader-calls-f...</a>
[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aftonbladet.se&#x2F;nyheter&#x2F;article22117739.ab" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aftonbladet.se&#x2F;nyheter&#x2F;article22117739.ab</a>