Farage says Germany should revolt against EU as he joins far-right AfD election rally

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage says Germany
should spearhead a revolt against Brussels as he
joined a rally for the anti-immigration Eurosceptic
AfD party.
Mr Farage said it was amazing that Brexit had hardly
reared its head in debates between Chancellor Angela
Merkel and her centre-left challenger Martin Schulz,
the former European Parliament president who he
labelled "a pro-EU fanatic".
Speaking ahead of the 24 September election, Mr
Farage said: "It's all too embarrassing to admit that
their beloved European project is now about to be
exited by one of the big countries."
He said he was at the Alternative for Germany (AfD)
event at the "personal invitation" of his fellow
European Parliament member, the AfD's Beatrix von
Storch, the granddaughter of Hitler's finance minister
Lutz von Krosigk.
Mr Farage told the rally he wanted "to get a proper
debate going in the biggest, richest, most important
and powerful country in Europe about not just the
shape of Brexit but perhaps even the shape of the
European project to come".
He said Germany was the EU's biggest economy and
should "say to Brussels: look, the reason the Brits
left is because you're behaving so badly, you're
taking away so much of people's freedom, liberty and
democracy".
Germany "hasn't had the debate" about Europe and
"about breaking the closed shop" of EU bureaucrats,
he said.
Mr Farage said: "We managed to break it in the
United Kingdom. At the moment Germany is at a
point where it is very, very tough to break through."
However he added: "I predict, in Germany, it will
probably start in Bavaria."
Ms Von Storch - whose party opposes "the United
States of Europe" and wants Germany to introduce
Swiss-style referendums - praised Mr Farage for
"showing that doing the impossible is possible".
The AfD rejects immigration and Islam and is on
course to become the first hard-right nationalist party
to enter the country's parliament in the post-World
War Two era and is now polling around five to 10%.
Its leaders have sparked outrage by saying German
border guards should open fire on illegal immigrants
"if necessary".
They have also dubbed Berlin's Holocaust memorial a
"monument of shame" and suggested a Turkish-origin
German politician be "disposed of in Anatolia".
At Friday's event at the Spandau Citadel, a 16th
century military fortress surrounded by a moat, the
AfD displayed a campaign poster that said: "For a
Christian Occident".
Mr Farage said that the AfD "have had their
problems, as new political parties do" but added that
"we're on the verge of something very interesting
happening" and that Germany "is about to get a voice
of opposition in the Bundestag".

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