Far-right politician Alexander Müller has resigned from the Swiss People’s Party after a tweet sent from his account called for a repeat of the Night of the Broken Glass, this time targeting Muslims.
The controversial politician stepped down late on Tuesday night, having had his house searched by police and his computer confiscated, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.
A criminal case has also been opened, while Müller’s employer, a credit insurance company, has terminated his contract.
Müller denied writing the offending message, which said: “Maybe we need another Kristallnacht… this time for mosques.”
However, his original claim that screenshots of the tweet were forgeries was quickly disproved as archive searches showed the tweet had in fact come from his @DailyTalk account.
Earlier Müller had tweeted, “we should take this pack out of the country. I do not want to live with such people.”
Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass as it is known in English, was a night in November 1938 when the Nazis burned down Jewish synagogues, houses and shops in a coordinated attack across Germany and parts of Austria.
Over 7,000 shops were destroyed and an estimated 30,000 people were arrested and put into concentration camps. Figures vary as to how many people were killed.
Müller’s comment seemed to condone the 1938 attacks and may be considered as inciting violence against Muslims.
After his resignation on Tuesday, the Swiss People’s Party issued a statement in which they said that there was “no room permitted for comparison or reference to the unspeakable dictator of the Nazi regime.”
The school board on which Müller sits will also ask him to resign, Hannah Leonard, president of the district school board for the Zuriberg area told the newspaper.
Müller has developed a reputation for controversial tweets. Previously he wrote: “Sometimes, I think a war wouldn’t be so bad; then I could sink a bullet into all the arseholes I hate.”
After a recent spate of rapes in Basel, Müller commented: “Pity none of the victims so far have been any of the leftist politicians,” and went on to say, “but they probably look so ugly that they are not pretty enough for the North Africans.”