Germany’s Antifa-linked interior minister Nancy Faeser has announced plans to have one of her political rivals fired from his position as a teacher.
Björn Höcke, a senior official within Germany’s increasingly popular Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, is currently on extended leave from his position at a school in the German state of Hesse, where he teaches History and PE.
Speaking to German media, Faeser said that – as part of her efforts to become prime minister of Hesse – she wants to make sure Höcke will never be allowed to return to the position, expressly due to what she sees as his right-wing views.
She also vowed that if elected to the top job, any official sharing Höcke’s views would also be removed from their public-service jobs.
“As Prime Minister of Hesse, I would work to ensure that extremists in Hesse are also dismissed from the civil service as quickly as possible,” said the minister, who is slated to contest the state elections in October.
Faeser also lambasted Höcke as being “inhumane” after he suggested it may be better to teach children with certain disabilities in specialised schools rather than trying to integrate them into the mainstream education system.
The minister stopped short of advocating for the AfD to be banned entirely, saying that such a prohibition was impractical due to “high constitutional hurdles”.
An official within the German Catholic church has demanded that members of the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party be banned from holding lay offices. https://t.co/KBO56usCZ6
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 17, 2023
While rejecting the suggestion herself, calls for the AfD party to be declared illegal in Germany have been growing within the country’s political circles.
Saskia Esken, the chair of the ruling Social Democratic Party that Faeser is a member of, recently advocated for such a ban to be implemented if an investigation by German authorities found the AfD to be “pursuing anti-constitutional goals”.
“If the suspicion is confirmed, then this party must be banned,” Esken said.
Green party co-leader Ricarda Lang has also tacitly supported the AfD being declared illegal, saying that such an option should not be off the table.
“There is a party that deeply despises this democracy – and ultimately this country,” she claimed while also calling the group a “mouthpiece” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Such demands have also received support from the country’s mainstream media, with the popular political magazine Der Spiegel openly endorsing an AfD ban in a recent editorial.
“The strategy of weakening the AfD in parliament and in the political process through exclusion has failed,” wrote Dietmar Hipp, one of the magazine’s editors.
He added that the government should start by banning individual sub-divisions of the party at the local level before implementing a federal ban, as the former option is allegedly easier to achieve, legally speaking.
Antifa Frankfurt has publicised the personal details of AfD members, arguing their action is legitimate as they consider the party to be “far-right” and “fascistic”. https://t.co/hMgMofgBaH
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 9, 2023
