Com­ment: A mem­ber of Angela Merkel’s CDU has warned that a seri­ous, far-right pop­ulist par­ty might emerge in Ger­many. This is in the wake of Merkel ally Eri­ka Stein­bach’s state­ment blam­ing World War II on Poland.

Is Octo­ber­fest to be replaced by “Tea Par­ties”?

“Merkel Ally Warns that Threat of New Far-Right Par­ty is Gen­uine” by Richard Con­nor; dw-world; 9/19/2009.

Excerpt: An ally of Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel has warned that her Chris­t­ian Demo­c­rat CDU could face a chal­lenge if a new par­ty were to emerge on the right.

In response to fears that the par­ty could face a chal­lenge on its right flank, Wolf­gang Boehmer — who is CDU pre­mier of the state of Sax­ony Anhalt — warned against com­pla­cen­cy.

The dan­ger that a pop­ulist right-wing par­ty might emerge always exists,” said Boehmer in the Ger­man dai­ly news­pa­per Ham­burg­er Abend­blatt on Sat­ur­day. “even if at the moment we can­not rec­og­nize who could lead it. We must always be on our guard and under­take every­thing to avoid the found­ing of anoth­er par­ty to the right of our own.”

. . . .  Sug­ges­tions that a par­ty to the right of the CDU would attract pop­u­lar sup­port were made by par­ty con­ser­v­a­tive Eri­ka Stein­bach, who is to stand down from her post on the par­ty’s nation­al exec­u­tive board.

Stein­bach, head of the Ger­man Fed­er­a­tion of Expellees, announced her res­ig­na­tion from the board after mak­ing com­ments about Poland’s part in the build up to World War II ear­li­er this month.

The politi­cian, whose fed­er­a­tion rep­re­sents eth­nic Ger­mans who were forced to flee east­ern Europe at the end of the war, was accused of his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism and said she felt increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed on the par­ty’s right.