The German ‘satire’ party Die Partei (The Party) has released a European Parliament candidate list featuring the surnames of former Nazi leaders, claiming they hope that populist supporters will vote for them to take votes from the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The list is led by comedian Nico Semsrott and journalist Martin Sonneborn, head of the satirical, often controversial, magazine Titanic. It features the names of several prominent ex-Nazi leaders such as Göbbels, Speer, Bormann, and even the surname of the architect of the final solution, Adolf Eichmann, France’s Le Parisien reports.
While the two men insist that the list is meant to divert votes from the AfD by allegedly tricking voters into voting for Nazi sounding names, some are outraged by the stunt, including the president of a group of German-Israeli MPs, Graf Lambsdorff, who said: “It’s as if a swastika had been scribbled on the ballot.”
Die Partei’s programme lists several policies, including wanting to make climate change scepticism a crime and setting a maximum age for voters, said to be at least 18 years before they die. Despite being a satirical party, Die Partei managed to secure nearly one per cent of the vote in the previous European Parliament elections and won one seat.
The controversy is not the first for Martin Sonneborn, whose Titanic magazine published a cover calling Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz “baby Hitler” and called for the Austrian People’s Party leader to be assassinated.
In another cover, the magazine once again targetted Mr Kurz by posting a picture of “baby Hitler” next to the car wreck that killed former populist Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider with the caption, “Austria on Crash-Kurz: Baby-Hitler gets his driver’s license!”
Die Partei is not the only one in Germany to have invoked Nazi imagery when referring to the AfD. In an attempt at an April Fool’s joke, the magazine Stern created a fake advertisement for a swastika-shaped lamp on Amazon that the magazine recommended for AfD supporters.
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