German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/44, pp. 5087-5088.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
When we today speak on the Interior Ministry’s budget, then we should take a step back and ask ourselves a fundamental question: What is the duty of this Ministry? What is the duty of the Federal Interior Ministry in a free society?
Sebastian
Fiedler (SPD): Yes, when you don’t know that!
Preservation of security, freedom and order, that is the core duty. For that, the Ministry is responsible.
Yet today the Ministry presents us with figures which show: This state ever more loses itself in ideological side shows. Millions flow into projects for social cohesion, to the financing of church conferences, to political foundations, to migration counseling and expensive integration programs. All of this has one thing in common: It does not belong to the core duties of an Interior Ministry.
An example: Over one billion euros for integration courses. My colleague Marcus Bühl has just addressed it. While the Federal Interior Ministry in regards protection of the borders, its original responsibility, fails completely, the consequences of these failures shall be overcome with integration courses. That integration courses prevent parallel societies, the overloading of the sozial state and the escalation of violence is of course an illusion. The entire approach is false. Who comes into the country illegally does not need to be integrated, but returned back. And who legally comes into the country permanently and may remain, he himself primarily needs to take care for his integration. In classic immigration countries like the U.S.A. and Canada, that was always self-evident.
We as the AfD delegation want to save one billion euros in the Interior Ministry estimate. And despite that, we strengthen police, border protection and catastrophe protection. We simply go through the whole: We eliminate ideological expenditures which no one needs. We end the false incentives of the immigration and integration policy. We place the security of our citizens above the socio-political experiments.
Götz Frömming
(AfD): Bravo!
Ladies and gentlemen, this budget is also a mirror image of the situation in our country. There meanwhile prevails in the States an understanding that this is made an ideologized full-service provider. This has nothing in common with a free polity [Staatswesen]. The principle of the people’s sovereignty guarantees the decision making [Willensbildung] from below to above. The state has to preserve strict neutrality and is not to interfere in the democratic discourse. Today, the opposite is practiced. We have to deal with an opinion-forming and an opinion-suppressing state.
Leon Eckert
(Green): Your colleague wanted to storm the Bundestag!
Thus for years the Constitution Defense [Verfassungsschutz] sees as its principal duty a fight against the opposition and citizens critical of the government
Sonja Eichwede
(SPD): Nein, against extremism!
and here even invents a power of observation category of its own: Delegitimization of the state. Here obviously prevails a gross misunderstanding. Therefore, be it again expressly explained: The Constitution Defense is not the arbitrator of democracy.
Sebastian
Fiedler (SPD): Its protector!
That is the people.
And still one thing be said: It is intolerable in a democracy when critical comments lead to house searches. Lately in October it affected the famous media expert Professor Norbert Bolz because he had ironically replied to a tweet in the taz – a renewed attack against freedom of opinion, in the middle of Germany. For democracy, that is fatal. It requires critical citizens with civil courage, not intimidated vassals.
Ladies and gentlemen, over 200 hundred years ago Theodor Körner demanded: “For freedom, a way!” [Der Freiheit eine Gasse!]. That is also today again necessary. We need a state which protects its citizens, yet does not patronize. For that, the AfD stands.
Thank you.
[trans: tem]
