Thursday, 2 May 2024

German Lawmakers Oust Committee Chair Over Remarks Seen as Anti-Semitic

BERLIN — After a far-right lawmaker accused Germany’s president of “eroding” the rule of law and circulated remarks widely viewed as anti-Semitic, his colleagues on Wednesday ousted him as chair of a parliamentary committee on the grounds that he was unfit for office.

The decision to remove Stephan Brandner, a member of the Alternative for Germany party, from his post was the first such move in the nation’s post-World War II history. It comes as the country’s mainstream parties are struggling with how best to handle the party amid a growing fear over the rise of radicalization in the country.

The persistent popularity of the far-right party, known as the AfD, and its representation in state and municipal assemblies across the country, has forced traditional parties to debate whether to isolate it or cooperate with it.

Mr. Brandner, who was chairman of the legal affairs committee in Parliament, provoked outrage among lawmakers when he reposted a comment on Twitter that questioned the outpouring of solidarity with Jews and Muslims that followed a neo-Nazi’s thwarted attack last month on a synagogue in Halle.

The Twitter post asked why politicians were “hanging around synagogues and mosques,” when the two people who were killed were Germans — wording that the committee members said in a statement “assumed that Jews and Muslims can’t be Germans.”

Although he apologized for circulating the remarks, Mr. Brandner refused to step down. On Wednesday lawmakers from the governing Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, along with those from the opposition Free Democrats, Greens and the Left party, voted unanimously to remove him from his post.

“Brandner’s firing sends a clear signal against hate and harassment,” Jan-Marco Luczak, a member of the conservative Christian Democrats told reporters after the vote. “With it, we are finally returning the honor to this chair.”

The AfD is not part of the governing coalition, but in the German system, some committee chairs are assigned to members of opposition parties, to balance the power of the majority. Even before Mr. Brandner took up his post, there had been concerns from legal and judicial associations about his ability to carry out the job.

He rejected the suggestion that his actions had been out of line and accused the other committee members of trying to curb his right to free speech.

“This is a further low point for parliamentary democracy in Germany,” he told reporters after the hearing. “Speak your mind once and whoops, you’ve lost your job.”

After a strong showing by the far right in last month’s election in the state of Thuringia left none of the traditional parties with a clear majority, members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives began urging their party to break its refusal to engage in any way with the AfD. The party’s leadership in Berlin quashed the suggestion, insisting that any cooperation with the far right would betray the party’s values and break an agreed-upon taboo.

A statement written by a Greens lawmaker, Manuela Rottmann, and supported by other members of the legal affairs committee declared that Mr. Brandner was “not qualified to lead this committee.”

“With your comments, you are destroying the bridges of communication to citizens, to the Bar, to professional associations, religious organizations and civil society,” the statement read. “You are destroying every requirement that the chair of the legal affairs committee be able to accept a plural, open democracy.”

Before becoming a lawmaker in Berlin, Mr. Brandner had made a name for himself in his three years in the state legislature of Thuringia, where he racked up a record number of warnings and was once ordered out of the legislature.

He was formally rebuked in Parliament for accusing President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of “eroding” the rule of law during a debate in May commemorating 70 years of the German Constitution.

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