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Hans-Georg Maassen: "It may be that I use terms that are also used in these circles"
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According to a report, Hans-Georg Maassen, who is facing a possible CDU party expulsion, has brought a warning into play instead of an exclusion procedure.
He suggests that the CDU presidium should not expel the party, but speak out for a warning, reported the Berlin "Tagesspiegel" from a statement by Maassen to the CDU leadership.
He would be “ready in principle to accept” this.
He called the allegations against him "unsubstantiated and partly grossly wrong".
Maassen has expressed conspiracy theories in the past and talked about "green-red racial theory".
The Presidium and Board of Directors will meet on Monday morning, and the Maassen case will also be discussed.
The party leadership around Friedrich Merz wants to exclude the ex-constitutional protector from the party, among other things, because of party-damaging behavior.
In his statement to CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja, Maaßen emphasized according to the "Tagesspiegel" that the goals of the "Union of Values", of which he is the chairman, are in line with the goals of the CDU.
In addition, a federal party conference has never passed a decision on incompatibility, Maassen added, referring to the right-wing conservative association.
According to the report, Maassen calls the accusation that he had made “statements in the language of anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists” “perfidious”.
And further: »It may be that I use terms that are also used in these circles, but have a different meaning.
Then it doesn't happen knowingly and not intentionally," the newspaper quoted from Maassen's statement.
According to the former “Bild” journalist Ralf Schuler, the 26-page letter is also available.
According to Schuler, Maassen writes that the accusation of "conspiracy ideology" or "conspiracy theory" is also meaningless because it is a question of legally irrelevant, politically and medially used combat terms for which there is no "legal definition".
At the end of the letter, the former president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who says he hopes “that the content is conciliatory”, still attacks parts of the party, according to Schuler: The political left in the CDU “apparently does not want to allow a political course correction under any circumstances and is involved also willing to destroy people's reputations."
He alone is to blame for "underestimating the extent and possible consequences of an ever-expanding 'culture' of exclusion (so-called cancel culture)".
pbe/AFP
