German right-wing leader blasts ‘dictator’ Merkel

Berlin / AFP

A German right-wing populist politician has attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel as a “dictator” who is trying to “replace the German people” with migrants, a Sunday newspaper reported.
Alexander Gauland, of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told a rally outside Berlin that Merkel’s liberal asylum policy was radically transforming the face of the country, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said.
He called Merkel a “chancellor-dictator” to applause from the crowd and said Germany’s mainstream parties were pursuing a policy of “human flooding”, an “attempt to gradually replace the German people with a population coming from all parts of the earth”.
The remarks could later be seen in a video posted on YouTube from the rally in the town of Elsterwerda on Thursday.
Gauland, 75, is seen twice reading from a sign held by a member of the crowd: “Today we are tolerant and tomorrow foreign in our own country,” a far-right slogan used by the neo-Nazi NPD party.
The hardline deputy AfD leader drew widespread condemnation late last month by saying most Germans would not want footballer Jerome Boateng, whose father is Ghanaian, as a neighbor—a comment Merkel’s spokesman slammed as “vile and sad”.
Gauland followed up Friday by saying the national team is “no longer… German in the classical sense”.