AfD on culture and media

The AfD wants to enshrine German as the national language in the Basic Law and in the state constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia. It rejects gender-inclusive spelling and wants to ban any obligation on public authorities to use it. The party commits itself to a German Leitkultur (guiding culture).

The AfD wants to write German into the constitution as the national language. It is against gender-inclusive language. Public offices should not have to use it. The AfD also wants fewer English words in German.

By guiding culture, the platform means that German culture takes precedence in culturally driven conflicts over values. It says this culture rests on the country's language, history, intellectual life, customs and traditions. The AfD wants to keep the generic masculine form and favors a language free of ideological requirements. Any duty for public authorities to write in a gender-inclusive way is to be prohibited. The party wants to counter the frequent use of English loanwords.

The AfD rejects funding culture according to criteria such as gender, ethnicity or political stance. It wants to preserve orchestras, theaters, museums and other cultural institutions across the state and to maintain customs and heritage protection. Municipalities outside the big cities are to receive help for cultural centers.

The AfD wants to keep funding art and culture. Gender, origin or political opinion should play no role in this. Theaters, museums and orchestras should stay. Small towns should get cultural centers too.

According to the platform, artistic freedom means freedom from state requirements and repression, limited only by criminal law. Inherited art and cultural assets are to be maintained regardless of taste or political views. The AfD counts high culture as well as folk culture, customs and heritage protection among these. It supports keeping and running orchestras, theaters, libraries, museums and monuments throughout the state. Municipalities are to be supported in setting up and running cultural centers.

The AfD wants regional building traditions to serve as the guiding model for architecture and urban planning. It justifies this with its concern about declining town centers, urban sprawl and monotonous functional buildings.

The AfD wants new buildings to fit their region. It thinks many towns look dull today. Builders should get advice on this.

Builders would get support from advisory offices when they want to build in a regional style. Public design competitions would develop criteria for urban planning that, in the party's view, creates identity. The AfD wants to back initiatives along these lines.

The AfD rejects the revision of North Rhine-Westphalia's monument protection law because, in its view, it weakens the specialist heritage offices of the regional associations. It also opposes renaming streets and removing monuments for reasons it calls ideological.

The AfD does not want to change the law on protecting monuments. It says the expert offices would lose influence. Streets should keep their names. Monuments should stay.

According to the platform, the change would mean the expertise of the regional associations' heritage offices might no longer be drawn on. The party favors what it calls an enlightened approach to historical heritage. It rejects renaming streets and squares and removing monuments where it sees ideological motives.

The AfD demands full disclosure of ownership stakes and board memberships at the public broadcaster WDR, local radio stations and daily newspapers. It wants to admit more providers to the radio market and have the state media authority check content only for violations of the law.

The AfD wants to know who owns media. Parties should also show their shares in media. There should be more different radio stations. The media watchdog should not control content beyond what the law says.

The platform argues that parties or government members acting as owners or board members could influence content. The AfD opposes another publisher-owned station in the Radio NRW group and wants doubly assigned or reserved FM frequencies opened to other providers. Internet radio stations should be able to broadcast without registration. The state media authority should mainly oversee youth protection, advertising, competition and licensing and counter concentration in the media market; the party calls any further content control censorship.

The AfD wants to fundamentally restructure and slim down state film funding in North Rhine-Westphalia. Support for video games would be moved out of the film foundation into a separate fund and expanded.

The AfD wants to reorganize public money for films. It says too much money goes to the wrong films today. Video games should get their own fund. That fund should grow.

In the platform's view, millions in tax money currently go to productions for particular interest groups or to ineffective sponsorship of well-funded international films. The party points out that the state leads Germany in esports. The separate gaming fund is meant to strengthen the state as a location for the industry.

The AfD wants to fundamentally restructure and shrink public broadcasting. It would offer only a basic service of information, culture and regional programs and operate without the mandatory broadcasting fee.

The AfD wants to make public broadcasting much smaller. It should only offer news, culture and regional programs. People should no longer pay a fee for it. The AfD calls this model Grundfunk.

The platform points to an annual budget of more than 8 billion euros and says the WDR is Europe's second-largest broadcaster. The party considers public broadcasting in its current form outdated and ideologically slanted. Under the label "Grundfunk" (basic broadcasting), it would be slimmed down and the current compulsory fee replaced.