With three shots from an assault rifle, the Hessian AfD politician Müger declared war on migration. Now his party is drawing conclusions from the TikTok video. He can remain a member of the parliamentary group for the time being.
Müger has been a member of the Hessian state parliament since 2024 and is a member of the Young Alternative. Image © picture-alliance/dpa
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00:35 Min.|03.09.24
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“We must finally fight this migration,” says AfD state parliament member Maximilian Müger in a TikTok video. At the end of the clip, he fires three shots from an assault rifle with the demand “Free weapons for free citizens.”
A few days after a report by Hessischer Rundfunk about this martial appearance, the 31-year-old resigned from his party posts and also as a member of the Interior Committee of the State Parliament with immediate effect, according to the Hessian AfD.
As party leaders Robert Lambrou and Andreas Lichert announced, Müger has resigned from his position as chairman of the AfD in the Offenbach district and as head of the Neu-Isenburg local association. He has also given up his position as vice-state chairman of the youth organization Junge Alternative (JA), which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as definitely right-wing extremist.
AfD state leaders: “Unspeakable video”
“We expressly distance ourselves from this unspeakable video,” Lambrou and Lichert said in their statement. The state executive committee and the AfD parliamentary group will discuss further consequences at the beginning of next week.
The move was preceded by meetings of the state executive committee on Monday evening and of the parliamentary group on Tuesday. The withdrawal is not complete: Müger still remains a member of the Petitions Committee and the Legal Affairs Committee in the state parliament.
Two mandates are already gone
The initiation of party exclusion proceedings and expulsion from the parliamentary group did not take place on Tuesday. If he were to be separated, the AfD would lose its third mandate in the state parliament.
With an original 28 seats, it became the strongest opposition force in the Hesse elections last autumn. This gave it a fifth of the parliamentary seats and it could easily have used minority rights to set up investigative committees. That has changed.
MP Sascha Herr was not even accepted into the parliamentary group because of his neo-Nazi contacts and later left the party. Then MP Dirk Gaw resigned. Officially, the AfD does not want to work with Herr. However, it was dependent on his support for the establishment of a Corona investigation committee.
Müger: “For private use only”
The video of the assault rifle performance was briefly visible on Müger’s TikTok channel and could not be found again quickly. However, HR has a complete recording. Müger confirmed the authenticity of the video to HR upon request.
It was filmed under the supervision of a shooting instructor at a shooting range in Poland, Müger told HR. He says he wants to become a sports shooter. The video recording was intended for “private use” and its publication was an oversight.
Too much understanding at the beginning?
Immediately after the video became known, AfD co-state leader Robert Lambrou criticized it to the hr as “crossing the line” and announced: “This video will have consequences.”
Lambrou initially said, however, that Müger “got to the point in terms of content” in the video. The AfD chairman did not repeat this later.
Shooting training in Poland
In the one-and-a-half minute long clip, Müger began his assault rifle appearance by complaining that, unlike in Poland, people can no longer feel safe in German cities. The knife attack in Solingen had shown this once again after previous attacks.
The AfD politician attributed Poland’s safety to two reasons: there are no “Talahons and Afro-Arab migrants” there. In addition, the gun laws are much more liberal.
FDP speaks of alibi action
Politicians from other parties in the state parliament were appalled by the video after the hr report. The content of the video was not worthy of a member of parliament, said FDP politician Oliver Stirböck on Tuesday and concluded: “The partial withdrawal is a half-hearted alibi action.” Müger has no place in the state parliament and must resign from office. In his opinion, the AfD man is “crazy in the truest sense of the word.”
Broadcast: hr1, 03.09.24, 19:00
Source: hessenschau.de
Published on 03.09.24 at 15:29
