German neo-Nazi party in EU parliament says it is 'on the side of Iran'

NPD supporters have participated in the annual al-Quds Day rally in Berlin that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and promotes the boycott,divestment,sanctions movement against Israel.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Updated: FEBRUARY 18, 2018 01:57
Udo Voigt speaking before a likeness of Rudolf Hess at a march honoring the Nazi official in Wunsiedel in north-western Bavaria (photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS MAREK PETERS / WWW.MAREK-PETERS.COM)
Udo Voigt speaking before a likeness of Rudolf Hess at a march honoring the Nazi official in Wunsiedel in north-western Bavaria
(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS MAREK PETERS / WWW.MAREK-PETERS.COM)
Germany's largest neo-Nazi party NPD declared at a European parliament debate last month in Strasbourg that his party fully supports the Islamic Republic of Iran and wants all sanctions lifted on the regime in Tehran.
"Where are the sanctions against other states that violate human rights and commit war crimes: the United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Israel?. It is time to lift all sanctions against Tehran, and give Iran another chance!," said the neo-Nazi MEP Udo Voigt, who was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.
The 65-year-old Vogit, who lives in Berlin, is a member of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
He further lashed out at the US government in a January post on his National Democratic Party (NPD) website: "The world is witnessing a sad tragedy these weeks: while the EU and the Tehran government are holding on to the so-called nuclear deal with Iran, the US government under President Trump does everything to try to sabotage the fragile agreement. Only recently, Washington used the recent riots in Iran as a pretext for new sanctions on Tehran."
Iran's regime incarcerated nearly 5,000 people, according to an Iranian MP, during the protests against the lack of social and economic freedoms in the tightly controlled society. Iran's clerical regime is believed to have murdered 29 people during the wave of mass protests in December and January that blanketed the country.
NPD supporters have participated in the annual al-Quds Day rally in Berlin that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and promotes the boycott,divestment,sanctions movement against Israel. The al-Quds Day rally was called into a global action campaign in 1979 by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. German Hezbollah members are strongly represented at the rally in Berlin. In 2009, Jürgen Rieger, a Holocaust denier and then-deputy chairman of the NPD, called on Germans to boycott Israel.
In 2012, the NPD submitted a legislative initiative in the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to sanction Israeli products. Udo Pastörs, an NPD leader in the state, has declared Germany a “Jew Republic.” The NPD branch in the state of Thuringia honored the Social Democratic Party mayor Albrecht Schröter of Jena for signing a petition to demand mandatory labeling of Israeli goods.
A photograph showing an euphoric Voigt meeting with David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the racist KKK organization, can be viewed on Voigt's German-language Wikipedia webpage. Voigt gave an interview to Iranian journalists in 2007,in which he belittled the Holocaust. As the then-head of the NPD, he said" "Six million cannot be right. At most, 340,000 people could have died in Auschwitz."
Voigt added."The Jews always say: 'Even if one Jew died that is a crime.' But of course it makes a difference whether one has to pay for six million people or for 340,000." According to conservative historical estimates, the Germans murdered more than a million people at Auschwitz.