When chief whip of the accumulation of conservative and right-wing populist European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, uttered his expectations for 2018 on the occasion of his national party CSU’s New Year’s reception in Seeon, Bavaria, he said that, in 2018, “the central European subject-matter is the final solution to the refugee question.”

On 20 January 1941, a clandestine conference was held in a villa outside Berlin located at the idyllic Wannsee. SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich had invited Nazi administrative leaders of various government departments to discuss just one subject-matter, the final solution to the Jewish question. The world got to know about the conference as one copy of the protocol had survived and discovered in 1947. Adolf Eichmann, who was ordered by Heydrich to write the minutes of the conference, gave a detailed account, when having been interrogated while awaiting his trial in Jerusalem in 1961.

Manfred Weber meanwhile dismissed, on Twitter, any “intentional misinterpretation”.

In aller Klarheit: die absichtliche Missinterpretation meiner Aussage hier ist völliger Unsinn und nicht im geringsten von mir beabsichtigt. Es geht gerade im Gegenteil darum, dass es 2018 eine gemeinsame europäische Lösung im Sinne der Hilfe für Menschen in Not braucht. https://t.co/kLu616ohGV

— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) January 5, 2018

European right-wing populists are not very credible when using Nazi jargon for explaining their humanitarian intentions.

6 January 2018 @ 8:32 am.

Last modified January 6, 2018.