German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/88, pp. 10804-10805.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
We want an alliance with the U.S.A. That is due to national interests
and to the common cultural roots, but not to the mission of liberating
mankind from all evils of this world.
There are two viewpoints on the 250 year U.S. history. The Transatlantiker
transfigure [verklären] it, and the anti-Americans diabolize it. Both are
wrong. The history of the U.S.A. is like that of every great nation full of
light and shadow. We need not transfigure the U.S.A. so as to be allied
with them.
Our relation to the U.S.A. and to Russia will always be other than that to
China, India, Iran or to the Arab states, because we are branches of a
European stock,
Metin Hakverdi (SPD): “Branches of a European stock”!
because we have the same Christian root, and naturally because 50 million
Americans have German roots. And we are proud of that, what Germans have
achieved by construction of the New World. It could be said: Those were
American-speaking Germans; it’s true all around. The Steuben parade in New
York or the Carl-Schurz-Straße in Spandau recall that.
The migrant German revolutionaries of 1848/49 played just so a decisive role
in the founding of the Republicans as in the fight against the slavery. Thus
my proposal to our leftist post-colonialists: A memorial in Friedrichshain-
Kreuzberg for the white German men in the American Civil War. If anyone
fought against the slavery, then it was them.
250 years of U.S. history also stand for the myth of an immigration society
with open borders in which every unfortunate from all the world was
accepted. Aristide Zolberg in his book “A Nation by Design” has done away
with this myth. The Americans have knowingly selected who they have
wanted as immigrants and who not. Thus 19th Century European immigration
was promoted and the Chinese limited, otherwise the U.S.A. today would be
Chinese. Donald Trump’s immigration policy is thus no break with the
American tradition; but the conscious control of the immigration over 250
years is the basis for the U.S. model of success.
In the last 250 years, there was always two Americas. The America of the
progressive elite and that of the culturally conservative majority – and so it
is also with us. The progressive elites on this and that side of the Atlantic believe
that we have a global mission to free the world from all evils, that we are
responsible for the fate of every citizen on earth as for our own citizens, or still
more, and that our national interests are identical with the interests of all
humanity.
In the U.S.A., this wrong way lead to a long series of disastrous military
interventions as in Iraq or Afghanistan, and in Germany to a self-destructive
refugee and climate policy.
The MAGA movement and the AfD both stand for the same political goals:
The end of this errant global mission and the return to the interests of an
entirely normal nation. The order of our day enjoins: Solve the problems of
Detroit and Gelsenkirchen instead of those of the Ukraine and of Afghanistan.
And I want to close with a sentence of U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson
which is today as valid as then, and unfortunately very current. Where the
government fears the people, freedom prevails. Where the people fear the
government, tyranny prevails.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
