Also with AfD hesitant
Maassen apparently braked at the right institute
2/4/2022 2:54 p.m
As President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, his employees recommend Hans-Georg Maassen to take a close look at the so-called Institute for State Politics as well as the AfD. According to a report, the then head of the authorities declined. Later, both of them become cases for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
According to a report, the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, put the brakes on his authority’s involvement with the right-wing “Institute for State Politics”. In 2017, Maassen did not follow the recommendation of his department’s right-wing extremism department to take a close look at Götz Kubitschek’s organization and his magazine Secession, reports the “Spiegel”.
According to the report, the then head of the authorities is said to have rejected the request because there were not enough employees for it. Kubitschek is considered an advisor to AfD politicians and is said to maintain close contacts with the right-wing extremist “Identitarian Movement”. It was not until 2020 that the “Institute for State Policy” under Maassen’s successor Thomas Haldenwang became a suspected case of right-wing extremism for the protection of the constitution.
According to the report, Maaßen also apparently slowed down an earlier referral at the AfD: At a meeting of the heads of department in 2016, the head of a state office is said to have asked why nothing was being done about the AfD. The statements made by the Thuringian AfD boss Bjorn Hocke, for example, were sufficient for a test case. Maassen replied that there was nothing, so nothing was being done.
Only after a meeting of five state leaders in early summer 2017 and after further urging did Maassen’s federal office finally request a collection of material on the AfD for “open-ended examination”. But only after Maassen left office in January 2019 were parts of the AfD declared an object of observation.
Maassen ran unsuccessfully for a direct mandate in the Bundestag in southern Thuringia last year. The CDU is now discussing a party expulsion, but party leader Friedrich Merz sees little chance of this.