Europe
Reports: Le Pen wants distance from AfD in EU Parliament
The right-wing extremist party Rassemblement National (RN) around Marine Le Pen is distancing itself from the AfD. photo
© Michel Euler/AP/dpa
France’s right-wing nationalists have been bothered for months by statements made by the AfD, with which they work in Europe. Now the French have probably spoken their word.
France’s right-wing nationalists around Marine Le Pen reportedly no longer want to participate after the European elections AfD sits in a faction in the EU Parliament. The French newspapers “Libération”, “Le Monde” and the broadcaster France Info wrote this with reference to the Rassemblement National. Both parties currently sit in the right-wing national ID group in the European Parliament.
Outrage after Krah statements about the SS
According to the broadcaster France Info, the background is “recent statements by the AfD”. According to reports, the decision follows an interview by the AfD’s top candidate in the European elections, Maximilian Krah, with the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” at the weekend. In it he claimed that not all members of the SS were criminals. “I will never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” Krah said. When asked whether the SS were war criminals, he replied: “There were certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were criminals.”
The National Socialist SS guarded and managed, among other things, the concentration camps and was largely responsible for war crimes. At the Nuremberg Trials after the end of the Second World War it was declared a criminal organization.
There have been disagreements between the AfD and the RN for a long time. After the revelations by the media company Correctiv about a right-wing extremist meeting in Potsdam, Le Pen expressed clear criticism. “So I think that, if that’s the case, we have a blatant difference of opinion with the AfD and that we need to talk together about big differences like this and see whether these differences have consequences for our capacity to be in a faction to ally, or not.” Krah then reassured him that the irritations would be sorted out.
Some AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union took part in the Potsdam meeting on November 25th. The former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, said he spoke about “remigration” there. When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress.