The Nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party said on Tuesday that it would file a motion with a regional court to expel one of its lawmakers.
Wolfgang Gedeon, a physician, turned AfD-lawmaker was accused of playing down the Holocaust in works published several years ago.
He was repeatedly coming under fire for his anti-Semitic writings, while the party Chief, Joerg Meuthen has failed to take action.
The party said that once a motion to expel Gedeon from the AfD’s parliamentary group is filed in court, that he will have five working days to leave the group.
If he fails to do so, members can force him out with a two-thirds majority.
In the works in question, Gedeon defines Judaism as the domestic enemy and Islam as the external enemy of the Christian West.
He takes issue with a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, arguing that drawing attention to certain crimes in such a prominent way is wrong.
In Germany, it is illegal to endorse, deny or play down the genocide of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi regime.
A law passed in 1985 makes such acts punishable by a fine or up to five years in prison.
Peter Steinbach, the head of the German Resistance Memorial Centre, said that Gedeon’s writings were openly racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic and reminiscent of Nazism.
He said that it was an indication of ideological overlap with Germany’s neo-Nazi party NPD.
After unprecedented gains in March elections in three federal states, the AfD is represented in half of Germany’s 16 state parliaments.
It also has two representatives in the European Parliament.
The party has been plagued by infighting since it launched in 2013 as a classically liberal party promoting the dissolution of the euro and a decentralised EU.
It took an anti-immigrant, right-wing turn last summer, after the ouster of its more moderate founder, Bernd Lucke. (dpa/NAN)
Leave a Reply