Opinion
The AfD employee of the month is Thomas Haldenwang
The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution wants to enter the Bundestag for the CDU. In doing so, he is helping the AfD and damaging the reputation of his authority.
It was known in Berlin that Thomas Haldenwang would no longer be President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: the report expected at the end of the year, which would consider the AfD’s right-wing extremism to be proven, would be his legacy as head of the office.
But what Haldenwang would do afterwards was unclear; After all, at 64, he is not yet ready to retire. Now it turns out: He plans to run for the Bundestag as a CDU candidate – and now has to act quickly in view of the upcoming new election.
Like the , Haldenwang has already informed Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) about his career plan. His local Wuppertal CDU also confirmed his intended direct candidacy.
Election campaign gift to the AfD
So while there is a proposal to ban the AfD in the Bundestag and a preliminary dictum from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is expected, the head of the office is aiming for his late political self-realization in the Bundestag and possibly in a future federal government. What a campaign gift to the AfD!
The party’s narrative about the protection of the constitution is simple, but effective among its own supporters. The intelligence service, Alice Weidel, Tino Chrupalla and Björn Höcke have been claiming for years, is above all an instrument of political power of the so-called cartel to discredit the only bourgeois and by no means radical opposition party.
This is, of course, a conspiracy theory. The suspicion that the AfD is increasingly a right-wing extremist party has not only been officially confirmed since the Münster Higher Administrative Court’s ruling. If anyone needed proof of this: the recent arrest of suspected right-wing terrorist AfD members provided it.
Haldenwang makes the Maaßen
At the same time, however, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the state offices have done a lot over the years to feed the AfD’s attempts at defamation: with half-baked reports, indiscretions or political statements.
And then there was Hans-Georg Maaßen: a former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution who took over the propaganda of the AfD – precisely at the moment when, what irony, his CDU candidacy for the Bundestag had failed. After Haldenwang finally did him the favor of storing him in the official information system as a right-wing extremist, the victim’s story was complete.
Now Maaßen’s successor himself wants to enter the Bundestag for the CDU. That is his right, the Federal Republic is a free country.
Nevertheless, he is putting his personal advancement above the already precarious reputation of the office he served for decades. At the same time, the top official, who is committed to neutrality and holds one of the most sensitive positions in the Federal Republic, reveals himself to be a party politician.
As a result, the AfD can happily demagogize away everything that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution says in the next few months. Weidel’s announcement already wrote itself. “As a reward for the abuse of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to disadvantage the AfD,” Haldenwang was given a mandate in the Bundestag, she explained. The “party infiltration” must come to an end.
In short, the AfD has a new employee of the month. And his name is Thomas Haldenwang.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
