If the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution does not go of his own accord, he must be expelled, demands JU chairman Kuban. Maassen has been criticized for sharing anti-vaccination statements by a suspected anti-Semite.
Tilman Kuban, the head of the Junge Union, is urging the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, to leave the CDU – and otherwise threaten expulsion proceedings. “This man has no place in the CDU,” said Kuban mirror. Maassen, who spreads statements critical of vaccination, should leave the party himself “if he really cares about the CDU”. That’s appropriate, said Kuban. If you get stuck in talks with Maassen, there must be a party exclusion procedure, even if this is always a lengthy process. The former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had unsuccessfully run for the Bundestag in Thuringia.
Last week, the CDU leadership distanced itself from Maassen, but had not initiated such a procedure. “We clearly distance ourselves from the content that he has shared on social networks, and we reject it in the strongest possible terms,” said CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak last week after appropriate consultations with the Presidium and the Federal Executive Board. This was the unanimous opinion.
According to Ziemiak, this applies to statements against vaccination in the corona pandemic. “We also think it’s dangerous.” On the other hand, it applies to the sharing of content by Sucharit Bhakdi – “an anti-Semite evident through his statements,” as the CDU general secretary said. “We also condemn that in the strongest possible terms, distancing ourselves. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with CDU and CDU politics or positions.”
Maassen had distributed a video by the microbiologist Bhakdi, in which he called for the corona vaccinations to be stopped. Maassen described this as a moving appeal. The public prosecutor’s office in Schleswig-Holstein is investigating Bhakdi on charges of incitement to hatred. Several prominent CDU politicians such as Saarland’s Prime Minister Tobias Hans or Lower Saxony’s CDU leader Bernd Althusmann have asked Maassen to leave the party.
On the other hand, JU boss Kuban spoke out in favor of appointing ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel as honorary chairwoman of the CDU: “Anyone who has led Germany so successfully for 16 years deserves it.”