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Weidel admitted meeting Wu but said she met him once in months. As for their discussions, Weidel said that she sought an understanding of China’s position on Germany.
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The damning findings come days ahead of German parliamentary elections in which AfD has rattled mainstream politicians. As per latest opinion polls, the party stands second in popularity and way ahead of incumbent SPD. While AfD’s links to the neo-Nazi movement have led to widespread concerns and contributed to its ostracisation by German parties, the links to China have led to fresh concerns whether a top contender for German chancellorship has been groomed by China.
The findings are all the more damning as European far-right has long been supported by Russia and China is Russia’s principal ally. The AfD is so extremist that even French far-right party, National Rally (RN), broke ties with it in the European Union (EU) elections last year. Moreover, AfD has previously been charged with spying for China and such allegations contributed to the RN-AfD split.
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AfD leader Alice Weidel’s long relationship to China
In light of revealation of Weidel’s secret meetings with the top Chinese diplomat in Germany, fresh attention has come on her long relationship with China that goes back to decades. It is bound to be explored whether she has been groomed by China to do the Communist Party’s bidding in Germany and Europe.
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As an economist, Weidel worked for the state-owned Bank of China and lived in China for six years. It has been reported that she was on scholarship during those years. Her doctoral thesis was also written on Chinese pension system.
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In China, Weidel worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
While Weidel today leads a party linked to neo-Nazis, her grandparents were members of the Nazi Party. Her grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a prominent Nazi judge who persecuted political opponents of the Nazi regime. He was appointed by Adolf Hitler himself.
How damaging is this likely to be for them? A corruption scandal two days before an election seems like it ought to hurt, and I would assume as an outsider that AfD voters are not exactly pro-China
Their voters live in a different reality by now. Likely it won’t be damaging at all.
Yeah, and let us not forget that many of their voters receive their ‘information’ exclusively from social media, and here primarily from Tiktok and Xitter. The algorithms likely don’t show them anything bad of China, Russia, AfD, …
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That’s exactly what I meant by “different reality”. They are spoon fed their “news” and “information” by US and Chinese disinformation platforms AKA “social media”. And by German papers and TV cannels owned by the Axel Springer Corporation, which is pretty much the German equivalent to Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate.
You don’t have to mention people when replying to them. They’ll get a notification automatically.
But they also wanted to notify other users than the one they were replying to. From my experience, you only get notified if someone directly replied to you.
I’m not blaming you or op, just jokingly wondering am I the only one who feels getting notified is rude
Idk, seems like those people mainly wants as much disruption as possible and just don’t care what exactly they are supporting with their vote.
They produce scandals each day to get attention. Same as Musk, Trump, etc… At some point, the fans just don’t care anymore.
That, or distract, overwhelm. When we have 10 appalling things every single day, we lack the energy to connect the dots between the lesser ones. Or care. It’s both a flood and exposure therapy.
They can’t read so it won’t have much of an effect on their votes
It is very funny that “Literally Neo-Nazi” isn’t disqualifying in any respect but “Doctoral study of the Chinese pension system” is what puts your head on the chopping block.
Also, now might be an important time to mention that De-Nazification was a myth. Nazis were quickly reincorporated into the bureaucracy on both sides of the Iron Curtain (Allen Dulles’s CIA loved German defectors almost as much as Wilhelm Pieck’s Stasi).
Yeah… don’t think the thesis on Chinese pension systems is what this is about.
The PhD was already public knowledge and is therefore clearly not the issue here.
Sure. The “China” appears to be what has people upset. Had she been working for JP Morgan Chase and taking private meetings with Jamie Diamon, the AfD voting base wouldn’t care.
What should seemingly be disqualifying is being a Nazi. But if she’s working with Chinese bureaucrats on an economic plan, I suspect the response she’ll get is “Oh no! She’s going to let more Chinese workers into the country to steal our jobs!”
Basically the same reactionary response American fascists had to Vivek’s Urkele rant.
You have again (maybe intentionally?) misunderstood the issue. China is working to undermine democracy in Germany (as well as it does elsewhere, btw). What the AfD and China have in mind has nothing to do with an ‘economic plan.’ The China-related scandals of AfD politicians and arrests of their AfD staff last year are only a faint spark of the ‘plan’ they pursue.
This is not for, but against Germany and its democratic institutions what they are doing.
I agree, I doubt the AfD base would care. However, I would like them to reach the conclusion of “Don’t vote AfD” within the next two days even if they wouldn’t have done so on the basis of other corruption
The problem with fascist parties is they tend to be as skeptical of outside news as they are gullible towards insider news. “She’s a Chinese Fifth Columnist who will turn Berlin over to Beijing!” is the sort of thing fascists eager to believe about outsiders but very reluctant to accept of one of their own.
The problem with fascist parties like the AfD, CCP, and all the others is that they don’t care about democracy and human rights.
Just fucking wild to see what does and doesn’t qualify as fascism in the Western brain.
You toss out the AfD and the CCP but forget to mention the Likkud, United Russia, the La Libertad Avanza, or the GOP.
It’s even crazier to see liberals scream and cry about the Genocide in Ürümqi for over a decade, then insist any kind of student protest over the flattening of Gaza City or the brutal rape and murder of hospital chief Abu Safia is the result of Iranian produced pro-Trump propaganda.
But, to quote Dr Lubinda Haabazoka, Director of the University of Zambia Graduate School of Business and former President of the Economics Association of Zambia
How long until the Chancellor of Germany is repeating this verbatim?
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You clearly have misunderstood the whole thing here.
Intentionally.