Hans Georg Maassen ignores the order to leave the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) because of his flirtations with the extreme right
Hans Georg Maassen, 60, former head of the German secret service, decided to ignore the order to resign from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party he joined 40 years ago.
The urgency to leave their ranks expired on Sunday and the reason, according to the current president, Friedrich Merz, is that “it violates the fundamental principles and resolutions of the party”. Mainly the standard approved by successive congresses of the CDU not to cooperate or form alliances with the extreme right.
Maassen was already a figure involved in the controversy in Angela Merkel’s days at the head of the party and in the chancellery. He was appointed head of the Interior Secret Service in 2012 and held this position until his dismissal in 2018 following repeated scandals linked to the far right.
Among them, some “hunts for foreigners” by neo-Nazi gangs in Chemnitz, in the east of the country, went viral on social networks, but which the spy chief apparently did not calibrate as dangerous. It is in that part of the country that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieves the best results. In some of its bastions it has the position of first force.
Merkel, then head of the CDU, kept him in place as long as possible. Maassen had the confidence of the Bavarian Social Christian Union (CSU), a sister party of the CDU. He eventually relieved him, on the orders of his then Social Democratic coalition partners.
Five years later, with the centrist Merkel already retired and the right-wing Merz at the head of the CDU, Maassen is still a problem. Last week, the former chief of the spies was elected leader of the so-called ‘Werte Union’, the ‘Union of Values’. It is an organization without a party structure, but gained a strong influence among the German conservatives. In recent times it has been seen closer to the AfD than to the CDU. Maassen leaked statements from some of their meetings that could fit ultra xenophobic terminology.
From the Junge Union, or Youth of the CDU, it is considered incompatible to belong to that group and to be a member of the party identified with Chancellors Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Merkel. The “Union de Valores” is a focal point of political agitation, now led by someone who had access to secret documents and confidential information for years.
The cordon sanitary around the AfD is fragile. In 2020, Merkel herself intervened to save him by ordering the election of a regional prime minister in Thuringia, which had been achieved by the sum of the votes of the CDU, the liberals and the extreme right, to be “rolled back”. .
Once again, Thuringia, where the AfD is led by its most extremist sector, was again the scene of another complicit vote between conservatives, liberals and ultras a week ago – albeit with minor consequences as it concerned the passage of a regulation.
Thuringia has also become something of a political haven for Maassen, since one of its districts was elected as a candidate for the Bundestag in 2021, from its position as an idiosyncratic element of the party leadership’s rules. Merz, Merkel’s historic rival in the conservative German family, has inherited from the former chancellor a problem she will not easily get rid of. The process of expulsion from a party is a complex process, as the affected party can appeal to various authorities. And he is not the only one among the CDU representatives in the east of the country who defends opening up to dialogue with the ultras as “inevitable”.
Source: La Verdad
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