I know I have written a lot about German politics recently. I promise to return very soon to other themes, but what is happening in the Federal Republic right now is very important and it deserves attention. While I have a small readership, I must do what I can to help the rest of the world understand the state of politics in my country. We have, quite simply, descended into a DDR-lite regime in the space of less than ten years, without anybody noticing and with the full collusion of the media and the government. I am starting to get a little bit worried.
At the start of January, I wrote about the WerteUnion (‘Values Union’), a small faction within the CDU, and the plans of its co-founder Hans-Georg Maaßen to break this faction off into its own party. With this announcement, Maaßen has called the entire fury of the media-political-industrial-complex down upon himself, because he has pledged that the WerteUnion will cooperate with Alternative für Deutschland. Maaßen is not just anybody; he’s a prominent CDU politician who presided over the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) under Angela Merkel from 2012 to 2018. Yesterday, the media reported that the BfV has classified Maaßen, its former President, as a “Right-wing extremist”.
This is a direct response to Maaßen’s latest political project. As a party the WerteUnion does not even exist yet, it has no members in the Parliament, and it is highly uncertain whether it’ll succeed in any elections. Nevertheless, the current president of the BfV, Thomas Haldenwang (CDU), has taken enforcement measures against Maaßen for the sin of even daring to found a party that threatens to peel votes from the union ahead of the elections in Saxony, Thüringen and Brandenburg. This is another step to criminalise the German political opposition, and that is bad enough, but it is only the beginning.