German farright leader pans Bannon’s antiEU Movement
BERLIN: A leader of the farright Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has poured cold water on plans by Steve Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former political strategist, to forge a wide populist alliance to undermine the European Union.
‘‘We’re not in America,’’ Alexander Gauland, one of two coleaders of the antiimmigrant party, told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain in an interview published yesterday.
‘‘The interests of the antiestablishment parties in Europe are quite divergent,’’ he added in comments that amounted to a blunt rebuff to Bannon from one of Europe’s most influential farright parties.
Bannon announced last month he had created a Brusselsbased political organisation called The Movement to rally nationalist and populist voters in European Parliament elections next May, the goal being to undermine and paralyse the bloc.
But Gauland said that while his coleader, Alice Weidel, had met Bannon once, he saw no possibility of cooperating with him.
‘‘Mr Bannon will not succeed in forging an alliance of the likeminded for the European elections.’’
Raheem Kassam, a spokesman for The Movement, responded: ‘‘The Movement is a clearing house of ideas, not a campaigning organisation that would seek to have anything to do with AfD’s national policy or election campaigns. . . We look forward to working alongside those who want to do so, for the causes we all believe in.’’ — Reuters