CDU leader Friedrich Merz no longer sees a place in his party for the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen. “This is the limit. We asked Mr. Maassen to leave the party,” Merz told the “Bild am Sonntag”.
“Excluding a party is not easy, but we are currently examining carefully what options we have.” Maassen’s language and ideas no longer have a place in the CDU.
Maassen was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2012 to 2018. He had to vacate the post after questioning right-wing extremist riots in Chemnitz. On Saturday, Maassen was elected chairman of the right-wing conservative union of values.
The grouping is not an official union association. It claims to have around 4,000 members. For years, Maassen – a member of the Thuringian CDU – has repeatedly caused controversy with controversial statements. In the past few days he had again come under heavy criticism. In a tweet he claimed that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”.
In an interview he spoke of a “red-green racial theory”. As a result, several CDU politicians called on him to leave the party or threatened to apply to be expelled from the party. The federal CDU announced on Tuesday that it was examining a party exclusion procedure against Maassen. (AFP, dpa)
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