The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s co-chair and spokesman Jörg Meuthen is leaving the party altogether, he confirmed to German public broadcasters on Friday. The 60-year-old,who said he was planning to step down from the party leadership last year and is considered a comparative moderate in their ranks, said that he was dissatisfied with the right flank of the party and felt that the AfD’s “democratic foundations” were not solid. “The party’s heart is beating very far to the right today, and permanently at an elevated rate,” Meuthen said. “I do see quite clear totalitarian echoes there.” The economist, who was elected co-leader of the party in 2015, said he wants to keep his job in the European Parliament. Meuthen has long been at odds with much of the rest of the AfD and had, over the past two years, repeatedly argued for his party to take a more moderate course. In doing so, he made enemies, especially in the far-right movement around the central state of Thuringia’s leader Björn Höcke. In his interview with public broadcaster ARD on friday, Meuthen also complained that the AfD had become something of a sect in its politics around the COVID-19 pandemic. mm/msh (AFP, dpa, Reuters)