His passes were surprising, his political orientation is disturbing. Former football world champion Mesut Özil (32) has revealed who he will vote for in the upcoming federal election on September 26.
He will vote for the radical party “Team Todenhöfer”.
The 80-year-old Todenhöfer, whom Özil calls “Germany’s bravest politician”, used to be a member of the German Parliament for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), but is now considered a conspiracy theorist and political nutcase. He is accused of anti-Semitism and closeness to Islamism as well as autocrats and dictators.
Todenhöfer stood by Özil three years ago when he was criticised after his photo taken with Erdogan at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Özil on Twitter: “Now I stand behind him. On September 26, I will vote for Team Todenhöfer. Good luck.” The party was founded by Todenhöfer in 2020.
Todenhöfer also already commented on Twitter: “We are planning a book together. It will be a surprising one.”
Flashback:Özil came under criticism shortly before the 2018 World Cup in Russia because of a photo of him together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (67). He resigned from the national team after the German team’s exit from the preliminary round. He is currently under contract with Fenerbahce Istanbul.
Islam expert Ahmad Mansour sees Özil’s behaviour as “a normal, consistent development – even after he met with Erdogan at the time”. He is not surprised by the incident. “He has always been involved in such milieus,” Mansour tells the newspaper B.Z.
Todenhöfer himself looks back on a long political career on the outer right fringe in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was always characterised by great sympathy for dictators, Islamists and other mass murderers.
In the 1980s, he supported the radical Islamic Mujahedin in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Todenhöfer was to find his new main enemy: the USA. Todenhöfer repeatedly denounced their intervention in Afghanistan, after 2003 he also lamented the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime by the US-led intervention and interviewed jihadist terrorists in Iraq with great benevolence. However, Todenhöfer had not devoted himself exclusively to Sunni Islamism: in 2008 he travelled to Iran and offered himself there as a “messenger of peace”. There is no evidence that the mullahs took him seriously.
In 2012, Todenhöfer interviewed the Syrian dictator Assad, the interview was broadcast by public broadcaster ARD. Later, emails from Todenhöfer were published in which it became clear how submissive he was to the bloodthirsty regime in Damascus: Assad was “the only leader who can give your country a modern democracy and a stable future without foreign influence. We have to make that clear to the world. And also to your people,” Todenhöfer wrote to confidants of the Syrian dictator.
In mid-2014, when the terrorist militia ISIS overran large parts of western Iraq, Todenhöfer claimed that the majority of the fighters were not jihadists but secular resistance fighters. He said that “politicians and the media” had made a “misjudgement” because they “do not know Iraq”. Although he had obviously disgraced himself once again, Todenhöfer continued to be heard in the media. A few months later, Todenhöfer interviewed the German ISIS jihadist Christian Emde and let him rant for minutes about mass murder by the millions. Critics later called Todenhöfer an “ISIS propagandist”.
In 2016, Todenhöfer travelled to Syria again and interviewed an amateurish alleged commander of the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front. However, the alleged commander was most likely an agent of the Assad regime and claimed to Todenhöfer that the Nusra Front was supported by Israel. Because of the bizarre and unintentionally funny interview, Todenhöfer once again became a laughing stock among experts – but it is unclear whether he was actually deceived by the Syrian secret service or was in on it.
Todenhöfer regularly posted inflammatory attacks on the USA and Israel for his anti-Western and anti-Semitic followers on Facebook. In one post, he played down the Holocaust. It is in line with this that Todenhöfer also praised the Iranian dictator Rohani.
The politician criticised the German Parliament’s resolution on the Armenian genocide several times -which probably also won him sympathy in the Erdogan camp.