Alexander
Gauland
Immigration
German
Bundestag, March 21, 2018, Plenarprotokoll 19/22, pp. 1821-1823
[Alexander Gauland is a national chairman of
the Alternative für Deutschland as well as a chairman of the AfD delegation in
the German Bundestag. Gauland’s speech was in response to Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s declaration of government policy following the renewal of the
coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. Donald Tusk is president
of the European Council of the European Union. Christian Lindner is chairman of
the FDP.]
Herr
President. Ladies and gentlemen. Dear colleagues.
The
film “The Darkest Hour” about the English war premier Winston Churchill is
currently playing in German cinemas. It is a message picture about the power of
words in an almost irremediable situation, as England must defend itself simply
with passionate words and almost empty hands. Now, far be it from me to want to
compare the eloquent Winston Churchill with the Frau Chancellor, but a bit more
pathos, a bit more depth, or what Helmut Schmidt called “my critical vision” –
Christian
Lindner (FDP): You wrote that before you heard the government’s statement. What
political games-playing!
–
I would have and I already had wished for, Herr Lindner.
You,
Frau Chancellor, yet again assert a desire to reconcile a divided society, also
with the power of an address, which is really nothing more to the so-called grand
coalition than lubrication for the integration of each day’s new arrivals into
the community of those who have long lived here. Of the Germans has there long
since been nothing more in the rhetoric. In the manuscript of your statement I
have not found that word but you have for the first time again spoken of the
Germans. That is the result of the AfD.
Yes,
I know, once in the legislative term you swear an oath. It reminds you of the
duty to keep the German people from harm. That, in our view, you have not done,
as evidenced by the coalition negotiations. The mass immigration, Frau
Chancellor, continues further unhindered. Of a maximum limit [Obergrenze], once
required by your interior minister, is there nothing. Alone, happenstance and
weather conditions in the Mediterranean determine the number of new arrivals.
“The
rule of injustice”, as your interior minister once named it, has therein been
confirmed by a German court, the Koblenz court of appeal, which in support of
its decision of February 14, 2017, makes the remarkable statement, I cite with
permission of the president:
The accused
indeed made himself culpable by his unauthorized entry into the Federal
Republic. The constitutional order of the Federal Republic in this area has however
been unenforced for about a year and a half and illegal entry into federal
territory will, de facto for the moment, no longer be subject to criminal
prosecution.
Ladies
and gentlemen, Frau Chancellor: Lawbreaking as a permanent condition and no end
in sight!
When
I consider your coalition contract and before my eyes unfolds that pathos
(especially for the Social Democrats) of the astonishing project of family
reunification for subsidized probationers, that is, for men who have no long
term right to residence – 1,000 [euros] per month and hardship cases in
addition – then I ask myself, what saleswoman in Dresden or what assembly line
worker in Wolfsburg takes even the least interest in that? Yet, you must know
for whom you are practicing politics.
Neither
in the election campaign nor in the coalition contract nor in the government
declaration play assaults, knife murder or rape any role. Neither does the fact
that the crime rate among immigrants is substantially higher than that among
natives. Nor has been reckoned the crazy cost of 50 billion euros a year for
illegal immigration, which indeed has not been presented, as reported by the
German economic institute. In the country in which you good and gladly live
[gut und gerne leben], Frau Chancellor, receives a Syrian with two wives and
six children in Pinneberg an entire house and generous welfare benefits, while
ever more Germans become homeless – just here, in Berlin, there are 6,000…
Ever
more pensioners are impoverished and must take their meals at community tables.
When that is not suitable, then the volunteer helpers at the tables must suffer
insult, as recently in Essen.
Yes,
Frau Chancellor, the society is disintegrating. You yourself on the television
have warned of no-go areas. You have said, I cite you:
There are such areas. One must call
them by name and do something about it
Who
please, Frau Chancellor, is “one”?
The
consequences of your policy of open borders are not confined only to domestic
policy, since no one in Europe wants to bear the consequences of this policy.
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czechs, properly say, When Frau Merkel brings
people to Germany, that does not go for us. We have not issued the invitation.
These people and politicians are right. A people’s right to self-determination
naturally includes the right to determine with whom they want to live and who
into my society I accept. There is no duty of diversity or variety. There is
also no duty to share my national territory with foreign people.
In
that you make ever new effort, Frau Chancellor, to burden others with the
failure of your policy, you split Europe. By this way have you already lost
Herr Tusk and others will follow. That ruins already from the start your claim
to bring the Europeans together. And since in the world of diplomacy nothing is
for free, must you now go far to meet Herr Macron – with all possible policies
of financial indigestibles leading to a transfer union with its new German
burdens.
With
your refugee policy, you have so far isolated yourself in Europe, Frau
Chancellor, that you must be thankful when the French president benevolently
accepts your financial offerings. That, ladies and gentlemen, has long since
not served German interests. But we do not indeed attend to the German interest
but to an imaginary European one which is always being re-defined.
And
so one can only remind the Chancellor and her new foreign minister of a warning
once issued by – yes, now laugh – Otto von Bismarck:
I have always
found the word “Europe” in the mouth of any politician who requires something
which he, in his own name, dares not claim.
Perhaps
you may ask your colleague President Macron about that quotation.
Ladies
and gentlemen, even if you see it otherwise, in foreign policy basically
nothing has much changed since Bismarck’s day and so one may do very well to
remember that. Thanks.
Christian Lindner (FDP): Two world
wars since then!
[Translated by Todd Martin]
