The former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, defends himself against demands for his exclusion from the CDU.
In a letter to other party members, about which the online portal “The Pioneer” reported on Tuesday and which is also available to the German Press Agency, Maaßen defended that he had shared a video of a vaccination critic on the Internet.
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He pointed out that he had suffered vaccine damage as a child: at the age of five he had to undergo emergency surgery after a vaccination, and a year later after a combination vaccination a second time.
Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Education, Karin Prien (CDU), called for Maaßen to be excluded from the CDU at the weekend. “Ça suffit” (It is enough), she wrote on Sunday evening on Twitter and explained to the RN, “I will work towards an exclusion procedure in the next meeting of the federal executive committee, but I hope that the party friends in Thuringia will take action by then” .
With this, Prien reacted to statements by Maassen, who had distributed a video by vaccination opponent Sucharit Bhakdi and who had advocated a “Covid vaccination ban”.
“If a former top official and constitutional protection officer spreads such conspiracy-theoretical nonsense and refers to the anti-Semite Bhakdi, then we as the CDU can no longer tolerate it,” said Karin Prien. Maaßen had “moved further and further away from the basic values of the CDU in the past few weeks and months”.
Maassen responded to Twitter on Monday. “Ms. Prien should leave the CDU. It did her enough harm in the election campaign. With her firmly established left-wing stance and her tendency to fight internal party opponents and enemies, she no longer represents the values of the CDU Adenauer and Kohl. “
Vaccination of children compared to execution
In a post on the social media platform Gettr, Maassen had advocated a “Covid vaccination ban” on New Year’s Eve. The former CDU candidate in the Bundestag distributed a video by the microbiologist and vaccination opponent Sucharit Bhakdi, in which he claims that the corona vaccinations destroyed the human immune system and killed “the young and the old”.
In the video, Bhakdi compares the vaccination of children with executions: “The children are put against the wall and they shoot. These damn people shoot and kill our children ”.
The microbiologist Bhakdi cites alleged examinations by a retired Reutlingen pathologist who, together with “lateral thinkers” activists, organized a “pathology conference”. Experts and the German Society for Pathology had criticized the claims of the conference about the alleged danger of death from corona vaccinations as “not scientifically founded”.
Investigation of sedition
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Schleswig is investigating Bhakdi, who stood for the “lateral thinker” party “Die Basis” in the federal election in 2021, for incitement to hatred. Bhakdi had said in an interview that the Jews had learned and implemented “evil” from the Nazis. That is why Israel is “now living bright – living hell”.
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Maaßen spread his opposition to vaccinations on the Gettr platform. The social network works similarly to Twitter and was founded by a former employee of Donald Trumps. The platform is popular with right-wing extremists and conspiracy ideologues because, unlike Twitter and Facebook, it hardly deletes racist content or false medical information.
With his current statements, it is not the first time that Maaßen shows a closeness to the scene of “lateral thinkers”, which has been observed in parts by his former authority, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, since last year. Last summer Maaßen was represented in an illustrated book of the scene in which, in addition to Bhakdi, Berlin’s Anselm Lenz, who had previously called for the federal government to be overthrown, also has a say.
Prien and Maassen clashed several times
Prien and Maaßen had already clashed last autumn after Prien had criticized Maassen’s position as a CDU direct candidate in the federal election. In the ZDF program “Markus Lanz”, when asked how she rated the candidacy, she replied: “I have to accept that, even if of course I’m not at all enthusiastic about it and ask myself what Mr. Maassen is actually looking for in the CDU . ”
Maaßen then called for Priens to be recalled from the so-called “future team” of the then Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet.
Maaßen is controversial in large parts of the CDU – among other things because of his attitude to the refugee policy of the last federal government. Politicians from the SPD, the Greens and the Left have repeatedly accused the CDU of fishing with measures on the right-wing edge. (Tsp, dpa)
