The CDU Presidium has unanimously called on former President for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, to leave the party. If he does not leave the CDU by Sunday, February 5, at 12 noon, the party’s federal executive should initiate exclusion proceedings against Maassen “and withdraw his membership rights with immediate effect,” the CDU said on Monday after deliberations in the party’s presidium with.
Maassen himself admits that a possible party exclusion procedure against him has no chance of success. The announcement by the CDU presidium that he should leave the party or otherwise have to face a party exclusion procedure surprised him, Maassen told the “Welt” on Monday. “That is unwise from the party leadership, because the conditions for an exclusion process are not available.”
The 60-year-old defended his statements, for which he has been heavily criticized for days. “What I said is not racist, it’s what many people in the country think,” Maassen told the newspaper.
The former constitutional protection officer had claimed in a tweet that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”. In an interview, Maassen also spoke of a “red-green racial theory”.
Maassen’s statements caused outrage
The statements caused outrage and some were classified as anti-Semitic. “There is no place in our party for his statements and the ideas expressed with them,” says the text of the decision by the CDU presidium.
Maaßen now said to the “Welt”: “Among other things, I advocated controlling and limiting migration and reject ideological positions that, by analogy, demand the extinction of “white bread”, i.e. people with white skin, through mass migration.” If if the CDU does not share his criticism, then it is a left-wing party.
Maassen is a member of the Thuringian CDU, but has no office or function in the state association. The state board of the Thuringian CDU had already unanimously asked him on Thursday evening to leave the party.
The text of the decision of the federal body goes on to say about Maassen’s statements: “Again and again he uses the language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues to nationalistic expressions.” He was “obviously not interested in the well-being of the CDU. On the contrary, he constantly violates the principles and rules of the party.”
Secretary General Mario Czaja therefore asked Maassen to leave the party. The Presidium supports the request and has set the deadline for this until Sunday.
In addition, the Presidency “dealt with the so-called ‘Union of Values'” and “expressed its political disapproval of this organization”. Anyone who is a member of the CDU cannot be a member of the “Union of Values” at the same time, it said.
Maassen was elected chairman of the conservative association on Saturday at a general meeting in North Rhine-Westphalia with 95 percent of the votes. He only left the “Union of Values” at the beginning of 2022. According to its own statements, it has around 4,000 members – not all of them are also members of the CDU or CSU. (dpa)
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Source: Tagesspiegel
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