German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/195, pp. 25551-25552.
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Friday afternoon – important themes of freedom of opinion. The Federal Network Agency [Bundesnetzagentur] comes along with a modest name, scarcely anyone knows it, is thereby meanwhile in fact the commanding censorship authority in Germany.
Tobias B.
Bacherle (Greens): That is just rubbish!
What is that for an agency? With the dissolution of the Postal Ministry, in 1998 founded as a regulatory authority for telephone and post, then also competent for gas and electric lines, later for the railway network. Meanwhile, it has almost 3,000 co-workers settled in the work area of green Economy Destruction Minister Habeck, and the chief is the Green party friend Klaus Müller who since 1990 is with the Greens, and since 2022 leads the Federal Network Agency, this censorship authority. He is now in fact the chief of the German commanding censors. He names so-called trusted flaggers. As a member of the German Language Union [Vereins Deutsche Sprache], it is clear to me: Who has something to hide, he speaks Denglish, or tries to with anglicisms, and precisely so is it here.
Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): As
opposed to you, most people meanwhile understand that.
Trusted flagger is officially translated as trustworthy whistleblower [„vertrauenswürdige Hinweisgeber“]. At first, it sounds quite good. Yet for we citizens, they are plainly not trustworthy, but only for those rulers sensitive to criticism; wherefore in our view the better fitting translation is “digital block warden”, “thought police” or “government spy”; since that is what they are.
Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): You
now again show that you do not manage the translations so good.
Here is driven another massive frontal assault on Article 5 of the Basic Law, the freedom of opinion, one of the most important basic rights, and core component of a living democracy. The idea of course is only illegal content shall be reported by internet spies and internet accusers equipped with exclusive access to the platforms. Yet the answer to the question, Who specifically shall that ultimately be?, leaves the worst to be feared. Who can become an internet accuser? Non-government organizations, civil society actors, religious pedagogues, trades union members, thus anyone who in fact emits the left-green thinking.
And so no wonder that the first reporting office, in good Denglish manner, is named “REspect”, in which is sheltered one of the Islam teachers trained in the notorious and suspected Al Azhar University in Cairo.
Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): Herr
Brandner, we’ve heard all that from Reichelt! What’s new?
The reporting office belongs to the Youth Foundation Baden Württemberg, is nursed with tax money and thus arises – we all know of it – from the left-green swamp. And this troop of, among others, religious pedagogues shall now be qualified to decide over which expressions of opinion are legitimate and which not. Actually inconceivable, or?
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe to go too far when I say: If there had earlier been censorship authorities as presently – there were as is known some better – then would have been unthinkable showbiz greats like Thomas Gottschalk, Harald Schmidt or Rudi Carrell.
Beatrix von
Storch (AfD): And Helmut Schmidt!
They would no longer be allowed on the screen. We of course live in an increasingly homogenized [gleichschalteten] television- and in an increasingly oppressed digital-world, which sets up instructions and limitations, instead of open, substantial discussions. Tutored thought everywhere from the public broadcasting.
The internet was still a bit of a free space. It becomes ever more limited. The rulers are watching. All that is unsuitable is out. Thus alternative media in Germany will be blocked, oppressed and hindered. Trusted flaggers become still more active, and will judge whether something is hatred, fake news or illegal. The worst is to be feared.
And the worst is: There is nothing in the Basic Law in this regard. The state precisely knows it may not censor. Yet so as to attain the opposite, it privatizes the censorship. It circumvents, so to say, the Basic Law’s command, and sets up a terror of unity opinion [Einheitsmeinung], instead of variety of opinion. We of the AfD stand for the exact opposite. We stand for variety and for freedom of opinion, and not for the unity opinion terror.
The FDP participates. It cannot be believed what the former free, liberal party is thus doing. Herr Kubicki, who as President sits behind me, distances himself a bit from that, yet in the end he will again be for it. We, ja, know him; he is something like the Rambo of the FDP, who now and then may blink right, but then is precisely in line. That does not make the matter better.
Alone, the Alternative für Deutschland remains as before a guarantor for democracy, for law, for freedom and especially for freedom of opinion in Germany.
Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens): Blah, blah, blah!
We therefore demand with our motion [Drucksache 20/13364] – you’ve all read it – simply: The Federal government shall block financial grants to organizations which want to effect the deletion of user contributions which fall under the freedom of opinion. We want the Federal Cartel Office to be instructed to know, to look into: How do the arrangements for hate speech function? That would be a mission for the Federal Cartel Office.
Stefan
Gelbhaar (Greens): The Federal Cartel Office should examine the AFD?
Herr President, I come to an end; I see it blinking here. – In addition, the censorship measures on the European level need to be abolished.
Vice-president
Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, come to a conclusion.
And the trusted flaggers, the internet spies, may have no future in Germany.
Many thanks.
Stefan
Gelbhaar (Greens): On what censorship is, you need to read up again.
[trans: tem]
