KINSELLA: Conservative MPs wrong to meet with German extremist
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Christine Anderson is a member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany party (AfD)
Conservative MPs, from left, Colin Carrie, Leslyn Lewis and Dean Allison. Postmedia files Article content
Governments defeat themselves.
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But opposition parties can defeat themselves too. And, this past week, the Conservative Party of Canada was busily doing just that.
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Three well-known Conservative MPs — one of them a two-time leadership contender — met with Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament from the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). The three Ontario Conservative MPs, Leslyn Lewis, Dean Allison and Colin Carrie, are seen smiling as they stand alongside Anderson, who is on a cross-Canada tour.
Big deal, some might say, and have. But Anderson — and the AfD — are extremists, and the meeting led to a condemnation by Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).
Wrote CIJA: “We’re deeply concerned by CPC MPs Leslyn Lewis, Dean Allison [and] Colin Carrie meeting with Anderson – a member of the far-right German AfD party known for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views. We raised this directly with [the Conservative Party].”
Lewis, Allison and Carrie can be (and have frequently been) dismissed as fringe kooks within their own party. Last year, when leadership contender Lewis likened vaccination to — as another Conservative leadership contestant put it, “being tortured in a Nazi concentration camp” — she was condemned widely. The Jewish Independent, among others, called her words “irresponsible and base.”
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German MEP Christine Anderson of the far-right Alternative for Germany party meets with three Conservative Party MPs – and also with the neo-Nazi group Diagolon. Wow. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/IQyfoA89zA
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) February 23, 2023
Colin Carrie, for his part, last achieved fame when he told the Commons the “subversive” World Economic Forum (WEF) organization had “infiltrated” the Liberal government — adding that the WEF had “penetrated more than half of Canada’s cabinet.” Which earned Carrie condemnations by other opposition MPs.
Allison, meanwhile, has promoted his links to anti-vaccination types — among them Paul Alexander, a Canadian who worked for the Donald Trump administration in the U.S., and who famously called for American health officials who advocated for vaccines and public health measures to be imprisoned.
So, a trio of Canadian kooks met with a European kook. Does it matter? When one examines the words and deeds of Anderson and her AfD it does.
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A summary:
— Anderson has attacked Muslims on social media, calling Muslim immigration “billions in costs for the welfare state.” She supports Russia over Ukraine. She’s participated in street marches organized by PEGIDA, a group whose acronym stands for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident.” PEGIDA has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “far-right, anti-immigrant street movement.”
— Her AfD is anti-immigrant, anti-Islam and — often — anti-Semitic. Formed in 2013, the AfD has already established itself as a force in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, and the European Parliament.
— Two years ago, the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution called the AfD “a right-wing extremist endeavour against the free democratic basic order” and as “not compatible with the Basic Law,” and actually placed it under intelligence surveillance for being an extremist group.
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— Evidence of the AfD’s extremism isn’t difficult to locate. The Anti-Defamation League has described it as “proudly extremist, anti-immigrant, and anti-minority [and] its leaders have made anti-Semitic statements and played down the evil of the Nazi regime.”
— Its party leaders have called Holocaust memorials “shameful.” They have dismissed the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime as “bird shit.” They have defended former Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, and promoted the notion that “not a single Jew” died in the Nazi gas chambers. They have referred to Jews as “Satanic elements in the financial oligopoly” who have “political control over Germany.” They have said of Auschwitz and refugees: “Both are wrong.” And so on.
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There is much, much more about Anderson and her AfD online. Lewis, Carrie and Allison could have found it in a simple Google search, as this writer did. There, too, they would have found Israel’s ambassador to Germany adamantly refusing to meet with Anderson’s party because they are “highly insulting for Jews, for Israel and for the entire issue of the Holocaust.”
So why did Leslyn Lewis, Colin Carrie and Dean Allison meet with the AfD’s Christine Anderson?
After the Toronto Sun brought the issue to his attention, Pierre Poilievre strongly condemned Anderson and the AfD. The three MPs then rushed out a tweet, claiming they didn’t know about the extremism views of Anderson or her party.
But few will believe that claim.
Do governments defeat themselves? They do, they do.
And, this week, the opposition Conservatives were defeating themselves, too.
— Warren Kinsella is the author of the national bestseller Web of Hate.
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