The CDU has set a deadline for Hans-Georg Maassen to leave the party. The reason: In an interview, Maassen commented on “racism against whites” and made problematic “racial theory” statements.
Update from January 30: The CDU has now given the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution a deadline for leaving the party. This is reported by the “Spiegel” and relies on internal information from party circles. According to this, the party leader Friedrich Merz wants to present a resolution to the federal executive board on February 13th by asking Maassen to voluntarily leave the party. If he fails to do so, an expulsion procedure would be initiated immediately.
Original message from January 24th: After the most recent “racial theory” statements by former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, the CDU is now examining whether Hans-Georg Maassen could be expelled from the party. Secretary General Mario Czaja commissioned “the examination of party order measures up to and including party exclusion”, said a CDU spokeswoman on Tuesday on request in Berlin. Accordingly, the party in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus is now in exchange with the Thuringian CDU in order to initiate a party exclusion procedure, the “Spiegel” previously reported.
Maassen himself considers a party exclusion procedure against him to be hopeless. “I will not be intimidated or impressed by the demand for a party exclusion procedure, because I do not believe that I have in any way fulfilled the requirements for a party exclusion procedure,” he told the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit. “I represent the positions of the basic program of the CDU and the positions of the CDU of Adenauer, Erhard and Helmut Kohl – and not those of an eco-woken party elite,” he said. He has the backing of many party friends. If you don’t like what you stand for, you have to leave the CDU.
Even CDU boss Merz, who has always rejected these demands, has now sharply criticized Maaßen for his claims. “Mr Maassen’s statements are again unacceptable,” said Merz on Tuesday before a meeting of CDU/CSU MPs in Berlin. He added: “We will continue to deal with this case and also assess it from this point of view.” When asked, Merz added that there would be no hasty decision on an exclusion procedure.
The head of the Berlin CDU, Kai Wegner, had previously demanded that Maassen be expelled from the party. This is reported by the ” Tagesspiegel “. It is not the first time that Maassen has made controversial statements and his party colleagues have called for his exclusion. Among others, the CDU politician Karin Prien campaigned for this last year.
The Secretary General of the CDU, Mario Czaja, meanwhile distanced himself from Maassen’s statements and called on him to leave the party. Czaja writes on Twitter: “Again and again he uses the language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues and places himself again and again close to the AfD.” However, Czaja does not demand an expulsion from the party.
The triggers are the recent controversial statements by Maassen, who again polarized in an interview with theses close to a conspiracy. In it he talks about racism against white people. Not recognizing this is “an expression of a green-red racial theory, according to which whites are regarded as an inferior race and that Arab and African men must therefore be brought into the country.”
These are not the first controversial statements for which Hans-Georg Maassen has been criticized. The former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution attracted attention again and again with questionable claims about migrants or Corona. Only at the weekend did Maassen praise a YouTube channel run by conspiracy ideologues from the Reich bourgeois milieu. Maassen wrote on Twitter that “these smart and brave young people” are the future.
For the parliamentary group leader of the Berlin CDU Kai Wegner, who is currently running for election to the House of Representatives in the capital, the former president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has now finally disqualified himself as a party member. “Mr Maassen has crossed another line. It has to be over now. Anyone who makes such statements has no place in the CDU,” Wegner explained to the medium. In the past, the Berlin CDU boss had protected Maassen. He said the CDU must also accept uncomfortable opinions, even if he doesn’t share Maassen’s views. Now, however, Wegner seems to have had enough.
Author Ralph Bollman
The CDU leader at the time, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, also criticized Maassen and explained that she did not see any attitude in him that connected him to the CDU. However, she did not want to express a call for expulsion from the party. In January 2022, some high-ranking CDU members called for this.
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