Right-wingers land populists in trouble

GERMAN populist party AfD was caught in a new storm yesterday after it emerged that a recently elected Berlin deputy had called refugees “disgusting worms”, while another key member reportedly sold Nazi paraphernalia.

AfD candidate Kay Nerstheimer was elected to Berlin’s state parliament on Sunday.

However, he quickly came under pressure over controversial posts he had made on Facebook, as well as his background as a former member of the far-right German Defence League.

After labelling Syrian refugees “disgusting worms” last year, he said this year that asylum seekers were “parasites feeding off the German people”.

Public outrage over the offensive statements forced the Berlin chapter of the AfD to distance itself from Nerstheimer yesterday. He had garnered one in four votes in the capital’s suburban electoral district of Lichtenberg.

The party decided to drop Nerstheimer from its parliamentary group, but he would keep his seat in Berlin’s parliament as an independent deputy, AfD Berlin chapter spokesman Ronald Glaeser said.

However, the AfD had not begun any proceedings to kick Nerstheimer out of the party altogether, he said.

Meanwhile, in western Germany, the party is battling another controversy after Stern weekly and broadcaster ARD published reports accusing AfD member Rudolf Mueller of selling Nazi paraphernalia.

Mueller, AfD’s lead candidate for next year’s state elections in the western state of Saarland, was selling money from Nazi concentration camps and swastika medals at his antiquities shop, the reports said.

Under German law, it is illegal to trade in Nazi paraphernalia.

The AfD was formed more than three years ago by economics professor Bernd Lucke as an anti-euro party.

But Lucke was forced out of the party this year.

That began its transformation into an anti-migrant and Islamophobic party, capitalising on public anger over the million refugees who arrived in Germany last year.

It rejects being labelled as an extremist or neo-Nazi party, but its members have been caught out for offensive speech on several occasions.

Different factions within the party are also jostling for power.