German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/153, pp. 19512-19513.
Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear colleagues.
The core of every democracy is the opposition, not the government. There are governments in China, North Korea, Iran; however, there is opposition only in democracies.
Norbert Röttgen (CSDU/CSU): In Russia also!
Make a note!
Russia has been deprived of its most important oppositionist. On Alexei Navalny, millions of cultured Russians in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk had placed their hopes. They wanted a fatherland that would be a part of that common European house of which Michail Gorbaschev spoke and for which Navalny fought.
For this fight, he first needed to pay with his health, then with his freedom and finally with his life. The convictions he tangibly represented thereby played a subordinate role; for thoughts are not crimes. When anyone is unjustly confined or is persecuted, one should also then stand up for him when one does not share his convictions – in the case of Navalny as also in the case of Assange.
Nevertheless, a look today at Navalny’s tangible positions is worthwhile, especially since the old parties ably ignore these positions. Alexei Navalny was a patriot – according to green-left standards, even a nationalist. He fought against a prevailing corruption and the erosion of the state of law. While for ethnic Russians an infrastructure is scarcely available, party bosses enrich themselves without limit. And the political competition is either not permitted for election, or is similarly banned. Yet Navalny also fought against excess foreign influence. He never forgot that the murderers of the oppositionists Politkovskaya and Nemzov were the Moslem handymen of the regime. He criticized illegal immigration and the spread of Islam on Russian territory. He criticized the accompanying criminality and religious radicalization. He also wanted no building of mosques in Moscow, since he was a patriot. The sympathy of the Ampel parties and of the Union at the death of Navalny thus appears more than questionable; since against anyone like him, they would have immediately introduced a party expulsion proceeding on account of so-called hostility to Islam or foreigners, and in no way would have celebrated him as a hero.
Let us recall in remembrance: For what was Navalny officially condemned? For so-called “extremism” and the propagation of “narcissistic ideology”. Does that perhaps remind you of something, dear colleagues?
Agniesczka Brugger (Greens): To compare yourself with Alexei Navalny! That is an impudence!
With a cunning similar to Putin’s, you proceed against the only opposition in this country.
Frank Schwabe (SPD): Unterirdisch!
Minister Faeser even openly discusses an AfD ban and sics the domestic secret service on us.
Omid Nouripour (Greens): There is no secret service in Germany! There is only an intelligence service!
That no longer has the least thing to do with legality. The Internet Enforcement Act of the preceding government even finds official applause in Russia and China – thus, internet censors. For years there in Russia, opposition gatherings were forbidden, as were demonstrations against Navalny’s imprisonment, and in fact under the pretext of Corona. And that we also know from the best Germany ever.
Frank Schwabe (SPD): Mein Gott!
Derya Türk-Nachbaur (SPD): Shabby!
Sick!
And not least: The state media in Germany increasingly attempts to generate a climate of non-contradiction [Widerspruchlosigkeit], a political unity brew.
Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such stupidity! Such rubbish!
Stephan Brandner AfD): Completely
right!
In the face of the farmers’ protests against the Greens, the journalist Knut Bauer just last week raged on the compulsory financed state radio that one dared to disturb the event of a – I cite – “government party”. This same mentality in the GEZ media is similarly found in the Russian state media.
Agniesczka Brugger (Greens): Your AfD-mimimi has nothing to do with the debate’s subject.
Stephan Brandner (AfD): Just listen
for once! That is the truth!
And there, it is held to be criminal when the government is criticized.
Julia Klöckner (CDU/CS): Here, no one is imprisoned!
And there, judicial positions are politically appointed. And there, movements of private citizens’ finances are controlled. Frau Faeser has again done so as before. Minister Faeser thus wants Russian conditions in Germany.
Renata Alt (FDP): Shame on you!
Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such stupidity!
Frank Schwabe (SPD): Yet it is your
friends who sit in Moscow!
There are governments everywhere, even in dictatorships. The decisive difference between dictatorships and democracies is not in the existence of a government, but in that of an opposition, of a free and unrestricted acting opposition.
Till Steffen (Greens): What are you afraid of?
Frank Schwabe (SPD): Yet you drive to Moscow for Herr Putin!
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Putin’s
sychophant!
Stephan Brandner (AfD): Excellent!
[trans: tem]
