German conservative party want to kick out former Nazi hunter from party over racial comments

Ex-Nazi hunter Hans-Georg Maassen is about to be kicked out from the German conservative party due to alleged antisemitic and racist tropes.

German conservative opposition wants to kick out former domestic security chief Hans-Georg Maassen from their party over allegedly repeating antisemitic and racist tropes, reports the EuroNews.

Hans-Georg Maassen headed the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution until 2018, chasing down extremist threats to Germany’s constitutional order during his service, including foreign spies, religious fundamentalists, the far right or the far left.

However, the long-time member and one-time parliamentary candidate of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) lost the position after being accused of ignoring a far-right incident, which was caught on camera.

Since then, Maassen has continued doubling down on culture war tropes and antisemitic and racist tropes, saying in interviews on several occasions that “a green-leftist race theory” that casts “whites as inferior” and promotes “immigration by Arabic and African men” which made him a cult figure on the right fringes.

The CDU has lost patience. “He keeps using language from the world of antisemites and conspiracy theorists, even ethnic supremacist terminology.” The party gave Maassen a deadline of Sunday to leave the party or face expulsion.

Maassen criticised the announcement. “What I said wasn’t racist, but what many people think,” he said. “I reject ideological positions that demand the extinction of ‘whitebreads’ – those with white skin colour – through mass immigration,” Maassen added in his comments to the Die Welt that there is no legal basis for expelling him.

If Maassen chooses not to quit, his expulsion could become a long process. Expulsion can only follow a series of quasi-judicial hearings to establish whether a member is in conflict with the party’s values.