He repeatedly provokes people with highly controversial statements. However, the expulsion of the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from the party was rejected at the district level. Now the CDU is upping the ante again.
The CDU leadership in Berlin is pushing forward the process for expelling the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, despite a contrary decision by a district party court in Thuringia. The federal executive board will appeal against the decision of the district party court, CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann announced on Monday after a corresponding decision by the body in Berlin. Now the next instance is the state party court in Thuringia.
“We are still convinced that Dr. Maaßen is causing serious damage to the party through his behavior and is continuing to do so in a blatant manner,” said Linnemann, explaining the decision.
The district party court responsible in the first instance rejected Maaßen’s exclusion from the party in July and advocated that he regain his membership rights. The court issued a “reprimand” against Maaßen because of a guest article in “Die Weltwoche” magazine. It accused him of associating a “left wing of the CDU” with an “ideology of the so-called anti-Germans in the left-wing parties”.
The long-time CDU member Maaßen is head of the Values Union, which is considered to be particularly conservative, but is not an organization of the party. In the 2021 federal election he ran in a southern Thuringian constituency, but failed. Maaßen was also heavily criticized within his own party for several controversial statements – for example because of the claim in a tweet that the thrust of the “driving forces in the political and media space” was “eliminatory racism against whites”.
Source: Stern
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