Alexander
Gauland
Criticism
of Government
AfD
Kompakt, August 6, 2020
[Alexander Gauland
is honorary national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and is a
chairman of the AfD delegation in the German Bundestag.]
In
regards the discussion over the Corona demonstrations of the past weekends, we
must take care that our state of law is not damaged. Since the suspicion ever
more imposes itself that, for many of the critics of the demonstrations in
Berlin, it is about neutralizing undesired criticism of the Corona precautions.
For politicians like the CDU interior expert Armin Schuster or Bavaria’s
Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, it must be unbearable when people, even in
the time of a pandemic, cast doubt upon the sensibility of government
directives and peacefully protest against them. Yet it ought not to be that
criticism of the Corona precautions is re-interpreted as an attack on the
democratic system and thus the Constitution Defense is to be summoned. Thereby is
the axe put to the right to demonstrate as guaranteed by the Basic Law.
It
cannot be sufficiently often emphasized: Whatever the demonstration, for or
against is no concern of the state. What is decisive is whether the
demonstration’s participants conduct themselves peaceably. And of that, there
is no doubt in regards the Corona demonstrations of the past weekends.
Criticism of the government must also be possible in the time of Corona. Even
in the streets. Similarly, it becomes ever more clear measuring that with two
small standards. If, for example, a basketball player is dismissed from his league
because he has taken part in the Corona
demonstrations in Berlin without a mask and, on the other hand, a football
player, who is shown in a film excerpt at a Black Lives Matter demonstration
without a mask, need fear no sanctions but will even be invited by Dunya Hayali
onto the current Sportstudio, then something has gone terribly awry.
[trans: tem]
