{"id":303707,"date":"2025-02-17T07:57:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T07:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=303707"},"modified":"2025-02-19T08:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T08:25:09","slug":"us-vice-president-vance-shuns-scholz-and-meets-afd-party-leader-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=303707","title":{"rendered":"US Vice President Vance shuns Scholz and meets AfD party leader instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction \u2013 Feb 16, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

As one, establishment politicians and the media routinely refer to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as \u201cfar right\u201d. It\u2019s true that the party does endorse stricter immigration controls and this probably accounts for its growing popularity; it is now the second most popular German party.<\/p>\n

But does this make the AfD \u201cfar right\u201d as the media and established politicians repeatedly insist?<\/p>\n

Given Germany\u2019s economic outlook and the mounting problems caused by Merkel\u2019s open borders policy, tightening immigration control seems like a sensible option. So why are Germany\u2019s established politicians so reluctant to implement what seems like an obvious solution?<\/p>\n

Have they instructed to keep Europe\u2019s immigration floodgates open, no matter what?<\/p>\n

Is this why Europe\u2019s established political class and their servile media are trying smear the AfD and thwart the threat it poses them by labeling it as \u201cFar Right\u201d?<\/p>\n

US Vice President Vance shuns Scholz and meets AfD party leader instead<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Daniel Bellamy with AP \u2013 Euro News Feb 14, 2025<\/strong><\/h3>\n

U.S. Vice President shunned Chancellor Scholz whilst in Munich on Friday, preferring to meet AfD party leader Alice Weidel, who is widely regarded as far-right.<\/p>\n

U.S. Vice President JD Vance met AfD party leader Alice Weidel during a visit to Munich on Friday, nine days before Germany’s election – but pointedly failed to meet with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz.<\/p>\n

During his visit he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy and said there is no place for \u201cfirewalls.”<\/p>\n

Mainstream German parties say they won\u2019t work with the AfD party, because they regard it as far-right, as do most political scientists and most of Europe’s media. Their stance is often referred to as a \u201cfirewall.\u201d Polls put Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in second place going into the Feb. 23 election with about 20% support.<\/p>\n

Weidel is the co-leader and candidate for chancellor of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, his office said.<\/p>\n

News of the meeting came after top German officials pushed back hard against Vance’s complaints about the state of democracy in Europe, with the defence minister calling it \u201cunacceptable\u201d to draw a parallel with authoritarian governments. He and Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended German mainstream parties’ firewall.<\/p>\n

Vance said at the Munich Security Conference that he fears free speech is \u201cin retreat\u201d across the continent.<\/p>\n

“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don\u2019t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, speaking a couple of hours later, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes,” Pistorius said. \u201cThat is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance also told European leaders that \u201cif you\u2019re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.\u201d He said no democracy could survive telling millions of voters that their concerns \u201care invalid or unworthy of even being considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no room for firewalls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pistorius countered that \u201cevery opinion has a voice in this democracy. It makes it possible for partly extremist parties like AfD to campaign completely normally, just like every other party.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that Weidel was on prime-time German television on Thursday night along with the other contenders.<\/p>\n

But he added that \u201cdemocracy doesn’t mean that the loud minority is automatically right,” and that \u201cdemocracy must be able to defend itself against the extremists who want to destroy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scholz took to social network X to \u201cemphatically reject\u201d Vance’s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the experiences of Nazism, the democratic parties in Germany have a joint consensus \u2014 that is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Bavarian governor Markus S\u00f6der \u2014 a prominent figure in Germany’s centre-right opposition bloc, which leads pre-election polls \u2014 told reporters that \u201cwe take every opinion seriously, but we decide ourselves with whom we form a coalition,\u201d German news agency dpa reported.<\/p>\n

Vance’s meeting with Weidel came after she was received on Wednesday by Hungary’s right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n. The vice president’s office said Vance also met on Friday with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and opposition leader Friedrich Merz, while he met Scholz earlier this week when both were in Paris for a summit on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re took issue with how Vance urged European officials to stem irregular migration in Friday’s speech. Vance said the European electorate didn\u2019t vote to open \u201cfloodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe speaks as though we are not focused on immigration in Europe,\u201d Gahr St\u00f8re said. \u201cI mean, this is the big theme in every country, that we want to have control of our borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argued that Ukrainian refugees accounted for a significant increase in unvetted immigrants in recent years \u2014 and they were accepted \u201cbecause there is a bloody war going on, which he did not mention, which I think is not really addressing reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t agree with him that what\u2019s happening in Ukraine, what\u2019s happening in Russia, what\u2019s happening in China is less important than the presumed loss of freedom of speech in Europe,\u201d Gahr St\u00f8re said.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Vice President Vance has stirred a hornet\u2019s nest by meeting AfD leader Alice Weidel. This must gall Germany\u2019s political establishment, especially when they are trying smear and sideline the party as \u201cfar right\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":303619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303707"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":303718,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303707\/revisions\/303718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/303619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}