Leaving the party was his last move, with which Jörg Meuthen took himself out of a hopeless game shortly before mate.
In the power struggle with right-wing extremists like Björn Höcke and his party enemy Alice Weidel, he liked to stylize himself as a shrewd political chess player who is always a few moves ahead of his opponents within the party.
After all, Meuthen has been able to stay at the top of the AfD longer than anyone else.
Politically, the economist with his middle-class demeanor survived his predecessors Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry by years because for a long time he was more accommodating than the two of them with the radical forces of the AfD and allied them with less scruples.
In the AfD, which is mobilizing against this state, the professor from Karlsruhe acted as the friendly face of the party.
The fact that Meuthen justifies the flight from the AfD with the fact that the “heart of the party beats very far to the right” and parts of it “are not based on the free-democratic basic order” is the height of hypocrisy.
After almost six years at the helm of a permanently right-wing party, to allegedly discover that you are surrounded by extremists is ridiculous.
But it may also have been the investigations in the course of his donation affair that prompted Meuthen to resign and leave.
That doesn't fit the legend of the resistance fighter.