“We are looking at ways to support actors in the east of Germany who share our values,” said Foundation Director Selmin Caliskan on Thursday in Berlin.
According to Reuters, the Foundation closed its offices in Budapest in 2018 due to the pressure of the Hungarian government and then relocated to Berlin.
The Hungarian-born billionaire Soros supports leftist globalist efforts worldwide. At the beginning of February he praised the Greens in Germany. “The Greens have become the only consistently pro-European party in the country, and they continue to grow in opinion polls as the AfD seems to have reached its zenith,” he wrote in an essay on the online platform “Project Syndicate”.
Last year, he prided himself on providing several hundred thousand pounds for an anti-Brexit campaign, but his funding appears to have been in vain.
His Foundation has already supported projects in Germany on alleged “equal rights” and “anti-discrimination”. It also focuses on the promotion of journalistic organisations, such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The news comes in the wake of remarks by a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU in Saxony Anhalt. Ulrich Thomas, has caused a stir in his party with his statement not to exclude a cooperation with the AfD. “We should not rule out a coalition. Now it is not possible – but we do not know what the situation will be in two or five years,” he told the news agency dpa.
With regard to the different currents in the AfD, Thomas emphasized that one had to wait and see which of the groups would prevail. In the federal state a new parliament will be selected in 2021.
The CDU’s party leadership chided Thomas after his remarks. General Secretary Paul Ziemiak reiterated that there would be no cooperation with the AfD. “For everyone note once again please: The CDU strictly rejects any coalition or cooperation with the AfD!” he wrote on Twitter.
Thomas and his co-group vice-president Lars-Jörn Zimmer have written a memorandum in which they noted that voters from CDU and AfD shared similar goals. In addition, the CDU/CSU lost voters by not sufficiently resisting left-wing ideas. The CDU would be well advised, to counter “the left mainstream of controlled humanism and understanding climate through a clear policy with clear statements”.
The coal exit and the climate policy are both wrong, according to Thomas. “The current climate debate is without correction the death knell for industry, agriculture and mobility in Germany.”
The yearning for patriotism and national identity should be countered by a “clear demarcation against the multicultural tendencies of left-wing parties and groups” Thomas added.