2024-03-02 04:48:17
According to a report, the well-known right-wing extremist Martin Sellner is said to have visited the AfD party office in Berlin-Pankow. The event was “promoted solely by word of mouth.”
Martin Sellner is a right-wing extremist and is being monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. For years he was spokesman for the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement (IB) in Austria. As the newspaper “taz” has now found out, he gave a lecture in the rooms of the right-wing populist AfD party.
Sellner is said to have been a guest at the Berlin AfD party office in the Blankenburg district of Pankow on November 7, 2023. The event was only promoted internally via “word of mouth”. This is proven by emails and documents available to the “taz”.
“Distributed by reliable, tough guys from JA Berlin”
This also includes a four-page letter from former AfD leader Michael Adam. “The (co-)chairman of the Pankow district association, Christian Buchholz,” gave Sellner “a stage in the rooms of the Pankow district association, knowing full well that the IB is on the AfD’s incompatibility list and that Mr. Sellner himself is classified as a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and is therefore observed”.
According to Adam, the event was deliberately planned and carried out in secret. “At Andreas Geithe’s request, the invitation should be distributed primarily by reliable ‘tough guys’ from JA Berlin,” wrote Adam. Buchholz denied his involvement to the “taz”: “The organizers were neither the AfD nor the Junge Alternative nor I personally.”
Embed
What consequences does the event have now? According to the report, Olaf Busch and Adam turned to state chairwoman Kristin Brinker and asked what she was doing. She replied: “We cannot cancel the event”. However, she had a conversation with the house owner, the former AfD supporter Andreas Geithe, and “explicitly explained to him why such events cannot take place in the Blankenburg premises”. It is unclear whether there will be further consequences.
Adam then requested that the state board address the case at its meeting on March 1st. He did not provide any further details to “taz”. In his letter to Brinker, he demanded that the board “take a stand” and impose “appropriate disciplinary measures against the responsible official, Christian Buchholz.” Kristin Brinker did not respond to a request from “taz”.