The head of Germany’s largest right-wing extremist party is to face charges of denigrating the state. The chief prosecutor of Berlin has filed charges against Udo Voigt, president of the National Democratic Party, for remarks he made in a recent interview with the newspaper Junge Freiheit, or Young Freedom, according to Tuesday’s edition of the Berlin daily newspaper Tagesspiegel. In the interview, Voigt called Hitler a “great statesman” and said the government of Germany today is an “illegitimate system” deserving of “revolutionary change.” Voigt’s party recently saw its biggest electoral success since 1968 in elections in the state of Saxony. Germany dropped an attempt to ban the party in 2003. Observers estimate the party has about 5,000 members nationwide.
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