Roland
Hartwig
Right-wing
Extremism and Hatred
German Bundestag, March 5, 2020, Plenarprotokoll
19/149, pp. 18552-18554
[Roland
Hartwig is an Alternative für Deutschland
Bundestag member from the western German state of Nordrhein-Westphalen. He is a
lawyer.]
Herr Bundes-president. Herr Bundestag-president.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Today
we will again see much unity. Is it not nice when there is a common enemy and
it is agreed where it must be sought; namely, on the right?
Sven Lehmann (Greens): Without
exception, you are not the victim!
Extremism,
however, develops on all fringes, on the right as well as on the left. It
appears quite openly on the internet. It showed itself on the subsequently
banned extreme leftist platform linksunten.indymedia, where violence was routinely incited against those of different thought or also at the leftist
strategy meetings where tales are told of shooting the 1 percent of the rich or
sending them to work camps.
Sven Lehmann (Greens): It is about
the victims.
It
shows itself in racism and a callously maintained, leftist anti-semitism.
Extremism never comes from only one side, ladies and gentlemen, but always from
the left as well as from the right.
When
extremist tendencies in a society strengthen, then it is ascertainable by all
that something is fundamentally awry. Then, before all, must be asked, what has
gone wrong in politics? It is then high time to name the origins of these
maldevelopments and those responsible.
Yet
nothing of this has transpired in recent years. Not once have I heard from a
politician in your ranks the earnest consideration called for by the development
taking place in our country.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): Wrong!
Ladies
and gentlemen, go around the country and see for yourself: Germany is deeply
divided.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You
should be simply ashamed of yourself!
For
one, geographically: The split between east and west further increases. For
another, socially: The distance from one another of poor and rich is wide. And
thirdly, there is in this country a political-moralist division: The good and
the evil. And it is precisely this moralization of the political that is a
fiery danger [brandgefährlich],
ladies and gentlemen.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): You are a fiery
danger.
Timon Gremmels (SPD): You are not
the victim!
You
yourself have done this, by which political discourse is shifted onto the moral
plane where it is no longer amenable to factual argument and a reason-based
debate.
Dagmar Ziegler (SPD): Hello! Still
at it?
Jan Korte (Linke): It is about the nine dead!
And
he who criticizes that belongs already to the wicked and will be ostracized.
When you permanently ban the speech of people who do not share your opinion,
when you stigmatize and socially isolate these people, then you yourselves
create the area of radicalization.
With
your politics you have put the axe to freedom of opinion and thereby to the
lifeline of democracy.
Götz Frömming (AfD): So it is!
Saskia
Esken (SPD): Herr Hartwig, be quiet!
Meanwhile,
60 percent of Germans fear they are no longer able to freely express themselves
on all topics in public.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): Words become
deeds!
Your
politics, ladies and gentlemen, has created a climate of angst.
Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): Not
a word of Hanau! Not a word of the
victims!
And
now we of the AfD hold before you the mirror. What you see is hateful…
Michael Grosse-Bömer (CDU-CSU):
Shaking!
Yet
you must once more reconsider what your procedures have to do with the social
climate by which, after all, were made possible the murder of Walter Lübcke and
the horrific attacks in Hanau and Halle.
Michael Grosse-Brömner (CSU-CSU): Will
you ever speak of the victims of
Hanau?
Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): Reconsider for
once your procedures!
When
in Frankfurt a child is tossed in front of a train, one passes quickly on to
the day’s events.
Marco Buschmann (FDP): That is so tasteless!
When
in Hanau, a psychologically sick man fatally open fires, then that becomes
right-wing terrorism.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Inconceivable!
Sven Lehmann (Greens): Wrong!
Then
days later a vehicle drives once again intentionally into a crowd of people and
that subsides into the background noise of the daily reporting.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Phooey!
One
learns little of the background of the victim and the perpetrator.
Marco Buschmann (FDP): Wrong!
Each
of these occurrences ought not to have happened. Yet to ignore the one and
politically instrumentalize the other is to drive forward the division of our
society.
Michael Grosse-Brömner (CSU-CSU): You after all
never do that. I laugh
myself to death.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Hatred is
the poison!
Ladies
and gentlemen, our party chairman Tino Chrupalla warned of a further heating up
of the political climate. Promptly were he and his family the victims of an act
of arson. Today, he is not yet recovered from the harm to his health. This act
was the work of extremists and it once more shows us that extremism is not to
be sought only on the right side –
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Perhaps
now the extremist knows where he stands
with you!
– but
that only with a common exertion by all democratic powers can the extremists’
social safe space again be successfully closed off; on the right and on the
left.
I thank you.
Timon Gremmels (SPD): Not a word for
the victims!
(Alexander Gauland (AfD) rises and
shakes the hand of Roland Hartwig)
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): That is
the poison!
Götz Frömming (AfD): Every
schoolroom behaves better than you, Frau
Haßelmann.
(Shouts from the Linke: Nazis!)
[Translated by Todd Martin]
