Tomasz Froelich, June 16, 2025, Hungary

EU Parliament, Strasbourg,  P10 CRE-REV(2025)06-18(3-0243-0000) 

Herr President. 

Hungary is a sovereign state, Hungary defends traditional values, and Hungary has every right to ban the Pride, for it is right to protect children from sexual exhibitionism. You here contrive a tribunal against Orbán so as to divert from your own problems. Since not in Budapest are women gang raped, the caliphate is not proclaimed in Budapest, but truly in our cities, in Berlin, in Brussels, in Paris. Here, you shut your trap. Yet when Orbán does something which does not agree with you, you turn right around. 

You do not respect Hungary, you expect obedience. Who does not obey, will be sanctioned. That is like a social credit system on a supra-national level. In countries which were under the Soviet knout, that awakens evil memories; yet you don’t get it. You don’t understand how humiliating and arrogant your words act in Hungary, because you lack every cultural sensibility. Your variety is a simple-mindedness. Your tolerance applies only to those of the same opinion. You behave like colonial masters with imperialistic values, and you do not once notice it. Hands off Hungary! 

 

[trans: tem]

Tino Chrupalla, May 14, 2025, Politics and Policy

German Bundestag, May 14, 2025, Plenarprotokoll 21/3, pp. 102-104. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. 

New Federal governments have one thing in common: They bear the burden of the failed Politik made a half-century before. The bad infrastructure in transport and communication, in health and education, has a pre-history, and this is substantially connected with CDU/CSU, SDP, Green and FDP governments. Chancellors come and go, yet one thing remains: There never was the will for courageous and honest reforms. 

Meanwhile, one thing has become more difficult about the political competition. The inconvenient change from the government to the opposition and back is history, since in this parliament more than three parties make Politik. For Politik means: To make compromises. And yes, it is more strenuous that more parties need to be won. Each delegation thereby represents a number of voters, for my delegation following this Bundestag election, over 10 million who have given their votes to the Alternative für Deutschland. Herr Spahn, it is plainly not just the frustrated who have voted for the AfD. We think it is time to engage with these voters with respect. For you to make general accusations, and to thereby curl yourself up in political Berlin, convinces ever fewer voters. We speak now in the third legislature of vice-presidents, committee chairmen, and meanwhile even over whether we can use a delegation hall which corresponds to the occupational safety and evacuation regulations. Last year, the business and house order was passed, ja polished, so as not to need to designate it strategically changed. There were media campaigns orchestrated which want to deprive my delegation of the parliamentary practices in accord with making Politik in the interest of our country. All of that is long since no longer little games, ladies and gentlemen. 

Now the Social Democrats do not want to make available to us a work room, the delegation hall. In that regard, two points: 

First, the historic Reichstag building belongs to no party, but to country and people.

Second, we all, members and parties, are elected by the sovereign, the German people, as it is out there on the building, to a time in this parliament. This maneuver thus discredits this parliament and thereby also the citizens of Germany who elected all of us to this position. In likely four years are the next Bundestag elections. Until then, make good Politik. Then perhaps with a strong delegation, you have a good chance to enter 22^nd Bundestag, and advance a claim to a larger hall for your delegation meetings. Until then, dear colleagues, defend the dignity of the parliament, and end this little game! 

Frau President Klöckner, I hereby expressly request you support my delegation’s ability to work. You said following your entry into office, “There are clear…rules” Precisely that, I hope, applies for all delegations. I take you at your word. 

Ladies and gentlemen, let me briefly enter into the Constitution Defense theme. The staging of  May 2, 2025, as I unfortunately need to designate it, caused not only a quake in the media world, but also left behind an utterly insipid taste of a political exercise of power against an opposition party. The departing Interior Minister used her next to last day in office to announce to the media an opinion which in fact was not evaluated by the Federal Interior Ministry, yet was apparently leaked exclusively to individual representatives of the press, but not to the affected party which learned of it from the press. That contradicts not only the equality of opportunity, but also squanders the trust in state organs and measures. As we today know, the opinion is supported on public sources, whether even by parliamentary connections is presently being examined. Everything else will be clarified by legal experts and the courts. For our parliamentary work, it will have only so much influence as we take seriously the duty of the largest opposition delegation. We stand for the freedom of opinion and for the Basic Law. We will closely pursue the government’s Politik, and comment, and indeed hard but constructive. 

In this connection, I need today to speak to the role of non-governmental organizations. To their role in political decision making processes and the thereby associated state financing, a stop needs to be ordered; since all parties should, according to German party law, cite: “Take care for an […] active association between […] people and state organs.” Certainly therefore are biases not only unacceptable, but also contradict the equality principle. In this regard is to be mentioned the denied, as before, financing of the party-associated Erasmus Foundation. Also here, new reasons will ever again be gathered to forgo the state finances to the Alternative für Deutschland, and to distribute to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Böll, the Luxemburg Foundation, and the Ebert Foundation, etc. It’s gladly kept amongst themselves. 

I want to again expressly point out that on the the day of the Chancellor election, we did not provide for the famous result of two ballots. Those, Herr Chancellor, were clearly your majorities which did not come about, the majorities from CDU/CSU and SPD. Besides, afterwards, the CDU approached my delegation and asked for a vote in favor of a time period waiver so that Herr Merz could still become Chancellor on May 6^th. We besides voted for it. The rest of the story, you all know. We were and are ready for constructive cooperation. All channels of discussion for the sake of the people are for us in all cases open. 

I want at this place to enter into the role and significance of eastern Germany [Ostdeutschland]. In your coalition contract, the word emerges three times. Gratefully, you designate the achievements of the eastern Germans as extraordinary. The five new Federal States were and will still be financially supported, by the billions in debt besides everything else. Only, after 35 years of German unity, most of the citizens in the east have not succeeded to stand there in similar financial independence like those in the territory of the old Federal Republic. Much more, the following generations inherit a debts package which is without equal. Beyond that, you plan nothing to improve the east’s infrastructural basic equipment. To that belongs not only roads which lead in the direction of the east, but also advantageous energy prices so that firms can be founded without years-long subventions, settle in and, before all, survive. 

The Mittelstand was and, in the east, certainly is the backbone of the German economy. Here, training- and work-places are created. Here, taxes are generated and social duties paid. That is value-creating work. Precisely that makes up Germany. Precisely that Germany needs. Instead, we receive ever more state operations which only live from public means. 

Interesting in that regard is the position of the eastern commissioner. Why actually is this again necessary? The CDU in the election campaign regarded the permanent office as superfluous. Do you believe that your new eastern commissioner of the SPD is really representative for the east? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Nein!

It’s now really sporty that an eastern commissioner of a party which in Thüringen, Saxony and Saxon-Anhalt unites behind it between 5 and 7 percent of the voters is clothed with this office. That has nothing to do with acceptance. 

Let alone that: The role of eastern commissioner anyway my party, the Alternative für Deutschland, has overtaken. And here I again invite you: Come along with us into discussion. 

I welcome besides the elimination of commissioners’ posts. You thereby implement an important program point which we also for long demand. A commissioner alone bears no responsibility, makes no laws and, before all things, solves no problems; governments and parliaments do that. 

Still a few words for the foreign policy situation. With interest, I follow your approaches to give to the continent of Europe a perspective. It first required a U.S. President by the name of Trump so as to formulate one’s own goals. And we say that European cooperation is basically right and good. Continual new sanctions and ultimatums nevertheless do not contribute to peace. You work for the most part awkwardly, Herr Merz, when you want to make no statement on weapons deliveries. That unsettles all sides. Your predecessor in office remains on this point with a consistent Nein. You should just so leave it as is. 

Otherwise, I very much hope that with you the Great Forgetting does not become a sustained event. From the firewall word, through securing the borders, to the Bürgergeld, you’ve already left behind some impressions. 

We are besides agreed that we in Germany need investments, yet not only those of the state. Finally make an audit so that unnecessary expenditures can be eliminated, and also private investors may find incentives for investing in Germany. 

For last, yet a glance at the energy supply. The Nord Stream pipelines are, following negotiations with Russia, possibly soon in the possession of the U.S.A. Herr Chancellor, do you then have the power to speak out for advantageous gas? The German business and citizens have deserved it. 

To you and your government remain the famous 100 days – even if Germany does not have 100 days’ time for it – to set the switches for the future. We as the largest opposition party will thereby critically accompany you, hard and honest in tone, and fact-oriented. We as opposition delegation are responsible for control of the government. We need, may and will not say what you want to hear. 

Many hearty thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, May 14, 2025, Democracy, Migration, Extremism

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/3, pp. 89-92. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Weakness and instability are the signals which proceed from your historic false start, Herr Merz. You are the Chancellor of the second ballot, and from this stain you will no more be free. You are weak primarily for one reason: You are a Chancellor of the leftists. 

            Heidi Reichinnek (Linke): We are not to blame for everything! 

            Sören Pellman (Linke): This is an impudence, what you say! That is ridiculous.

Your way to the Chancellor’s office is lined with broken election promises and capitulations before the Linke and Greens. The debt brake, to which you high and holy wanted to adhere, you have removed in a financial policy coup d’état, with help of the Greens, with an old Bundestag voted out of office. 

This manner also shows your character, Herr Merz. Up to 1.7 trillion euros in new debt are thereby authorized at one blow. In sum, that is the doubling of the Federal debt – and this in times of recession, of the shrinking economy and the accelerating impoverishment of the citizens. What you thereby serve up, you know quite precisely, since you yourself before the election warned of it. This money will trickle away in all possible channels. The urgently necessary consolidation of the state finances is thereby sacrificed, and the costs for the taxpayer and consumers will drastically rise. In regards another opportunity, you flirt with new taxes and tax increases. And that is an additional broken election promise. Almost 47 billion euros of tax money was devoured in 2024 by the Bürgergeld – you name it basic security – which has long since mutated into migrant money. 47 billion! Almost every second recipient is a foreign citizen. The naturalized foreigners have already fallen out of the statistics. 

            Luigi Pantisano (Linke): What’s with the foreigners from Switzerland?

Around 4 billion euros go to Syrians. That corresponds to the entire budget of the Federal police. Afghans – the nationality with the highest criminality charge in regards violent crimes – received around 1.6 billion euros, as much as foreseen for the social housing construction. It cannot so continue! You however are too weak to change course. 

It continues: The promised abolition of the heating Verbot and the cold expropriation of homeowners by means of the compulsory heat pump is also already again disowned. Exactly like the combustion engine Verbot. You go further with the destruction of the German automobile industry. And you continue Habeck’s heat pump coercion by other means in which you namely make heating with oil and gas even more expensive by the CO₂ air management. 

Instead of ending the planned economy wrong way of the energy change, you even give it a new push, for you, under pressure from the Greens, have even written climate neutrality into the Basic Law. You have additionally cemented the German wrong way drive into impoverishment and de-industrialization. That is dramatic! Heating now becomes more expensive by around 20 percent – the situation this week in the newspapers – tendency rising. The assets of private households in Germany, which in European comparison as well lie in the lower range, according to the Bundesbank’s newest numbers adjusted for inflation since 2021, sank around 20 percent. 20 percent for private households!  The industrial production is in a dive in any case, while the unemployment rises steeply because the production in Germany recedes. It will be stopped. Why? Because the energy prices are too high. 

Without a reliable and affordable energy supply, no economic reconstruction is possible. That goes only by means of a fundamentally different energy policy. End the energy transition. You need to push the re-entry into nuclear power, coal power and the use of advantageous natural gas from Russia! 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Still going to Moscow!

All of that, you do not want. The election promises to correct the nuclear power exit by a responsible CDU Kanzerlin, you in any case have broken. The rest of the world commits to nuclear power. You cling to the Greens’ fetish, hostile to technology. You thus ruin Germany as a business venue. 

Even when you hit upon something correct, half-measures and chaos come forth. The turning back of illegal migrants who enter from secure third states needs be forcefully pursued. It is not discretionary. Border controls and turning back need to ensue without a break and long-term, and not just as momentary pacification measures. Since the illegal immigration into Germany and into the German social system needs to be driven back to zero. 

Turning back at the borders is just a first step, and you even stumble over that. The migration magnets need to be turned off, which lead poverty migrants from all the world over the EU borders to Germany. The Bürgergeld is only one of them. The family reunifications for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the practices of turbo- and mass-naturalization, need to be immediately completely set aside! Millions of people in illegal ways have come into the country in the last ten years as a consequence of the migration policy rule of injustice which a CDU Kanzerlin set in motion. Hundreds of thousands are immediately obliged to depart, for countless others the residency status needs to be examined and if necessary revoked. To that end, nothing comes from you. 

The migration criminality as a consequence has exploded. The murders, knifings and rapes go on, day by day, week by week. To speak out on these facts is, in the eyes of your subordinated Constitution Defense, allegedly hostile to the constitution. I named named facts, which is urgently necessary so as to finally correct this mis-development. 

The citizens await your plans for sending back and deportation [Abschiebung]. They will well need continue to wait; since your coalition partner, the SPD, does not want to cooperate in any of that. You are stuck in the asylum case, Herr Merz. You yourself have actually built this case because you submitted yourself to the dogma of the anti-democratic firewall which, for the Linke voted out of office here, shall secure a long-term subscription to power. 

And the domestic secret service, the Constitution Defense, which in regards the fulfillment of its actual duties, the defense against Islamic terror and foreign espionage, has miserably failed, arbitrarily and abusively cements this dogma. 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Agent Moscow!

The absurd confidential opinion, which the SPD Interior Minister voted out of office launched shortly before the end of office, is the best evidence for that. Under pressure of the legal situation, the Constitution Defense needed to meanwhile take back its classification. 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Such rubbish! 

            Luigi Pantisano (Linke): That is false!

To you, despite that, it is right to discriminate against our delegation and over 10 million voters, and withhold from us essential parliamentary rights. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): No idea! You would have it gladly!

That the Constitution Defense’s defamations are ludicrous, you know quite precisely. An ethnic term for the people is not counter to the Basic Law; since the Basic Law itself takes it as a basis [Ein ethnischer Volksbegriff ist nicht grundgesetzwidrig; denn das Grundgesetz selbst legt ihn zugrunde]. 

            Saskia Esken (SPD): Then re-read it!

Ah, ja, that was a caesura, because you all have experiences with real extremists. Since an extremist is he who installs and maintains the destructive policy of the open borders. The U.S. foreign minister Marco Rubio certainly needs be recalled: An extremist is he who under the label of Corona preventive measures spreads panic, arbitrarily limits basic rights, and with hate campaigns, with the aid of the public broadcasting, covers, defames and discriminates against those not vaccinated. 

That you laugh, I can imagine.

An extremist is he who destroys the welfare of the citizens and the nation with an eco-socialist transformation. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You’ve gotten lost with your speech!

An extremist is he who, with majorities voted out of office, manipulates the constitution so to present himself with a debts blank check – at the cost of the taxpayer and of the future generations. 

And now you come in!

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): What was that then?

An extremist is he who with a hammer gang attacks those who think differently, and for that, with the blessing of Bavarian Minister-president Söder, receives a culture prize, paid for by the state, for smashing life and limb [Gelenke und Leben zu zertrümmern]. You should be ashamed! 

An extremist is he who like the Linke wants to overthrow the system, and shoot the rich, or stick in works camps, and, despite that, will be flattered by you with submissive pandering. 

An extremist is

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Who speaks like you!

he who wants to abolish our free, democratic basic order – you screech the entire time, I know that it hits you – 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Yet you know what’s what with the theme! Look at your ranks!

the pluralism, democratic basic principles, bürgerliche freedoms and the freedom of opinion. He is an extremist! 

To maintain this mendacious, leftist, double morality, you plan, under the false label of the fight against hate and agitation, an attack on the freedom of opinion which even exceeds the excesses of the Ampel. You want to intimidate and silence the citizens, thereby to still be able for a while to go on in the old, false paths and sun yourself in the shine of power. 

To the same purpose serves the martial rhetoric with which you spread the war mood so as to divert from the mountains of domestic problems and conflicts. The agitators in your own ranks still bloviate, far from every reality, of Ukraine’s victory over Russia, without saying that would be without having a third world war – and with a third world certainly not. You yourself flash with your advances that the European leadership should dissemble [simulieren sollen], just so in Washington as in Moscow. That is no wonder; since vis-à-vis both powers, you yourself have already shattered very much political porcelain. Of a return to diplomatic reason in the Foreign Office under your government, is also not much to see. If it’s up to you, weapons deliveries to the Ukraine should no longer be spoken of in public. Does that mean you want to deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, secretly, silently, easily, so as to manage the escalation of the Ukraine war and make Germany a target? 

The citizens have a right to learn what you propose. You however have no answer. Since your government is not a government for citizens, but a government for warmongers and the maintenance of one’s own power. And before all, you have no answer to the question which most moves the citizens: Where remains the political change for the voters, which the people in this country voted for? When finally comes the break with the false, leftist policy which has thrown our country into prosperity annihilation and de-industrialization, into servitude and insecurity? Should there still be anyone in the Union who still has a sense of responsibility for our country 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Please do not speak of that!

and wants these questions answered, he knows where he may find the alternative majorities. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Bernd Baumann, March 25, 2025, The Will of the Voters

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/1, pp. 1-2. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Today, the new Bundestag finally meets, one month after the election. Why just now? Because Union, SPD and Greens as a party cartel prevented any earlier summons; so they could, with the majorities of the old Bundestag long since voted out of office, as good as three times alter the Basic Law, against the will of the voters. In a newly elected Bundestag, there would never have been a majority for that, no 1,000 billion euros state credit, no end to the debt brake, and no compulsion for climate neutrality in the Basic Law, ladies and gentlemen. 

The voters wanted what was completely different. Millions therefore voted for Friedrich Merz and the CDU; because he had  promised that. Yet the CDU once more confirmed, with its gigantic election fraud: Who votes for the CDU, receives in the end left-green, he receives open borders, mass migration, 72 sexes and the red-green rainbow flag high above the Bundestag. 

            Friedrich Merz (CSU/CSU): Speak to the order of business! 

            Elder-president Gregor Gysi: Dear Herr Baumann –

This unholy power cartel of Union, SPD and Greens, already in 2017 with the entry of the AfD, played a pre-arranged game. 

            Elder-president Gregor Gysi: Dear Herr Baumann, I ask you to speak to                                the order of business, since it is about that presently. 

The order of business was quickly changed so to prevent that the eldest in life experience might open the Bundestag; that would have been an AfD man. Only so as to prevent that, this cartel of SPD, Union and Greens changed the order of business. Not the eldest might open, but he who sits the longest here in the Bundestag. Thereby were all of the AfD excluded, because all were new. How pitiful, how perfidious was this action! 

And because this still applies today, Gregor Gysi opens the Bundestag and plainly not Alexander Gauland who, following parliamentary tradition of hundreds of years, is the legitimate and true Elder-president here in house. Other than Gregor Gysi of the Linke, which is the legal successor of the SED, the Wall defense party, Alexander Gauland for 40 years of his life served in the CDU, among others as leader of the Hesse State Chancellery. Yet for today’s Union is a figurehead of the radical left preferred to a deserving veteran from their own, former conservative ranks. That says everything about today’s CDU, ladies and gentlemen. 

It therefore brings you simply nothing to withhold from us our rights in regards Elder-president, Vice-president, in regards the committee chairmen. 

            Elder-president Gregor Gysi: Herr Dr. Baumann, your speaking time is                                    already past.

The majority of voters have long since had enough of the left-green cartel. 

            Elder-president Gregor Gysi: I ask you to come to a conclusion.

We of the AfD have doubled, are stronger than ever before. With your tricks, you will not prevent our rise, ladies and gentlemen.

            Elder-president Gregor Gysi: That’s right, but it doesn’t double the speaking                        time. 

But in case sometime you want to undertake what is positive for Germany: Our hand is always out-stretched. 

 

[trans: tem]

Marc Jongen, March 31, 2025, Academic Freedom

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-31(1-0158-0000). 

Madam President, so the Trump administration in the United States is threatening academic freedom? This claim by the European Commission and some MEPs here is pure hypocrisy. Where was the outcry from the EU and the academia in Europe when more and more non-leftist scientists in the US were dismissed or forced to resign by their radical colleagues and the left-wing student mob simply because they didn't bow to the woke ideology? Bret Weinstein, Joseph Manson and Mike Adams even committed suicide. The wokeness virus has taken over US academia and in Europe it's also widespread, including its cancel culture. 

If President Trump now takes action against the intolerant and unscientific gender ideology, if he stops DEI programmes that discriminate white people and also restricts the dogmatic, almost religious climate research, then he's taking measures that help restore scientific freedom, not suppress it. We need such measures in Europe too.

 

Alexander Gauland, March 18, 2025, Merz, CDU and Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27761-24462. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

In the course of this debate, on the previous Thursday as well as today, much which is correct and also false has been said. A new assessment by me is therefore not needed. Allow me then to make a couple of personal remarks. 

Herr Merz and I were for many years in the same party. I went, because I could no longer bear the destruction by Angela Merkel of the CDU as a conservative-liberal, bürgerliche alternative to the left-green mainstream. Herr Merz was a victim of her will to power. 

I grant, ladies and gentlemen, that I therefore expected much of his return to politics: A different economic and social policy, a reversal of false developments, like the illegal mass immigration to the exit from atomic power and the combustion engine. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): That is coming! All comes!

My idea – you call it a vision – was that Germany receives a Politik of reason and judgment, thus a middle-right Politik, like many people in this country wish it as evidenced by the election results. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): Yet you have only a hostile goal!

Instead, Herr Merz, you’ve erected a firewall, which today and in the future makes you prisoners of left-green social alterations. So as to get into the Chancellor’s Office, you have sacrificed everything that was still conservative or bürgerlich in the CDU, and your voters to whom you gave your word on the debt brake, you have betrayed with billions of euros at the pump. Seldom, ladies and gentlemen, has bügerlicher decency been so quickly replaced by political cynicism. 

Herr Merz, that you do not listen to me is fully clear. Yet you would have been able to listen to Andreas Rödder, the earlier chairman of your basic values commission, who in the Welt am Sonntag wrote precisely the same in the album of the CDU. 

You will, Herr Merz, apparently become Chancellor with a Politik like we have experienced in recent years. And this Politik will exactly so fail as that of the subsiding Ampel. Not even your transatlantic allies in Washington support your dubious efforts to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s answers. Such a change of times [Zeitenwende], dear Herr Merz, will only be with us, not with the failures of yesterday. 

And if in recent years I ever again had doubt in my own party, today I am proud and glad to have stood with others as godparent to it in the year 2013. For since this week is it clear: The Merz CDU is the continuation of the Merkel CDU – a further so, Herr Merz, in Germany’s downfall, for which you in the future need to answer. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, March 12, 2025, The Will of the People

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-12(3-0020-0000). 

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The European Semester should be concerned with producing stability in Europe. In fact, it would be necessary for us in Europe to again find stability, though what we are planning in the European Union, in the European Commission, is the further disempowerment of the parliament, is a further setting aside of the will of the people. 

We want that austerity does not continue to occur in Europe. We do not want that the European Parliament be further disempowered. We want that the people’s will is really, fully respected. What we presently see in Europe is: The people’s disempowerment itself destabilizes. Look at what just occurs in Roumania: A candidate wanted by the people, who is ahead in all surveys, will be excluded from being a candidate. Look at what has happened in Bulgaria: A referendum for an introduction of the euro is rejected. Look at what has happened in Germany, where is discussed whether a party should be banned, or where a re-count of the results of the German Bundestag election is rejected, even though the entry into the Bundestag of a party will thus possibly be prevented.   

We need to again find in all Europe that the people’s will is brought to bear. We thereby provide for stability, not by additional centralization through the European Commission. 

 

[trans: tem]

Marc Jongen, January 21, 2025, Digital Services Act

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)01-21(2-0148/0150-0000). 

Frau President. 

President Trump signs a decree for the protection of freedom of opinion. And the EU’s answer? Still more censorship. Is that just fear, or is it indeed panic in the face of the responsible citizens? Democracies do not act thus, thus act regimes. We are experiencing the introduction of an EUdSSR, ladies and gentlemen. More and more speakers here said, ja, quite openly, what it is about; namely, not about the fight against real criminal acts – for that, no DSA is needed – but that Elon Musk speaks with Alice Weidel. That is not allowed to be, the citizens could form their own picture and withdraw from the permanent propaganda of the state media. As we hear, there shall now be a seal of democracy for elections and countries which censor and surveille with especial diligence. Without that seal, elections will be annulled, as in Roumania, or next perhaps in Germany. That is Orwell pure. Please no longer the mouth the word Democracy. You defile this term and don’t even notice. From the leftist extremists here we expect nothing other. That the CDU does, which participates in the EVP – that is your betrayal of democracy and of Europe… 

Dear colleagues. 

The message I well hear, the belief alone I lack. We have in Germany state media which systematically discriminate against the opposition, the only opposition in the country – namely, the AfD. We are not invited on the talk shows, we are dramatically under-represented, and now when a discussion with our lead candidate in social media on X with Elon Musk occurs, there is then a great outcry. That is hypocrisy and that is a double standard; and against that, we defend ourselves. And that is democracy… 

(The President withdraws the word from the speaker.) 

 

[trans: tem]

Beatrix von Storch, December 20, 2024, Constitution Defense

German Bundestag, December 20, 2024, Plenarprotokoll 20/208, pp. 27002-27003. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The so-called Constitution Defense in its present form does not defend democracy, it is a danger for democracy. This danger is embodied by two persons: By the former Constitution Defense chief Haldenwang, and by the Thüringen Constitution Defense president Kramer. Haldenwang stands for the reckless instrumentalization of the Constitution Defense for partisan political interests 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): What are you saying here? My goodness!

and Kramer for an obsessive, personal crusade against the AfD. 

We recall the background of Haldenwang’s appointment. In November 2018, the Union had lost votes to the AfD; at the Bundestag election one million, and at the 2018 Hessen State legislative election 100,000. Our polling numbers were climbing ever further. 

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): Hans-Georg Maaßen introduced a test proceeding                        against you!

In November 2018 we were at 16 percent and the Union fell further: About seven percentage points to 25 percent. The Merkel government therefore decided to employ the domestic secret service as a weapon against the AfD, invented the Chemnitz Hetzjagd lie, 

Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): I thought you had always been against the legalization of cannabis!

and replaced Maaßen with the compliant accomplice Haldenwang. The battle order for the true CDU party soldiers was clear: 

            Marc Henrichmann (CDU/CSU): For God’s sake! What stories!

to defame, belittle and ostracize the AfD and repress its election results, 

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): Hans-Georg Maaßen was never a CDU member, or?

and, as you know, – apology – the brainless Haldenwang 

            Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): We cannot accept the apology!

plainly admitted – cite: “The Constitution Defense is not alone responsible for lowering the AfD’s polling numbers.” 

“Not alone.”, he said – yet it is responsible, and indeed essentially. For his true service to the CDU, he is allowed be a CDU candidate for the Bundestag. 

            Marc Henrichmann (CDU/CSU): The local associations present candidates!

And, as we thought it does not get worse, then came the “Apollo” exposure of the Thüringen Constitution Defense president Kramer. It rendered every democrat speechless: In 2015, the social pedagogue from the rocker scene, together with the Putinist, extremist “Night Wolves” network, took part in a wreathe-laying for the Red Army dead. The Constitution Defense knew this – and shortly thereafter made him its president. He had failed in legal studies. It is almost a trifle that he is not only personally but also professionally unsuitable and unqualified.    

As Constitution Defense president, he erected a regime of fear and intimidation. A fifth of the staff left the Thüringen Constitution Defense. The rightist and leftist extremism department leaderships are unoccupied for three years. A disciplinary proceeding is opened against him, and he has been classified as a security risk – the chief of the Constitution Defense. He openly threatened a co-worker with bodily violence. And what happened? Nothing. No denial, no resignation, no comment. A great silence, just like here now. 

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): We have just not yet debated, Frau von Storch!

That the public debate is absent is the real scandal; the total failure of public control by the media, even when the state of law and democracy break. 

Benjamin Strasser (FDP): That was on the MDR and in the “Welt”! Is that also the “Lügenspresse”? 

            Leon Eckert (Greens): Do you after all read newspapers?

Like Haldenwang, Kramer also meddled without limit in the daily political fight. He insulted a fifth of the German voters as “brown dirt”. 

            Marc Henrichmann (CDU/CSU): Not the voters, the functionaries!

He called for the AfD test case – without legal basis. In an internal e-mail, the responsible department leader declared, Herr Kramer had, cite: “knowingly left out” the responsible department. Herr Kramer's gathering of material originated with Herr Kramer himself. Not once did he explain to his officials the origin of these materials and then he made disappear a key juridical opinion in which all of this is condemned. Ladies and gentlemen, that is no substantial examination of a danger for the free, democratic basic order, that is Kramer’s personal, fanatic war against the AfD. 

Kramer and Haldenwang are symptoms of a sick system of institutionalized abuse of power. In no other Western democracy may the domestic secret service be employed against the opposition. Since what distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship? In a democracy, 

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): …complaint can be made of the categorization!

the voters decide the fate of a party; and in a dictatorship, the secret service chief. 

Now for once quite briefly consider in which direction we are directly developing. 

            Marc Henrichmann (CDU/CSU): In that regard, we are thinking directly                                of your speech!

If you do not use this debate today to admit that this Constitution Defense, that Haldenwang and Kramer are a danger for the free, democratic basic order, 

            Fabian Griewel (FDP): You are a danger for the free, democratic basic order?

not even now, in regards to these persons, then you are a danger for the free, democratic basic order. 

Many thanks.

  

[trans: tem]

Marc Jongen, December 17, 2024, Roumania, TikTok, Democracy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE(2024)12-17(2-259-0000). 

Herr President. 

It cannot be conceived: Yesterday this parliament applauded the nullification of the democratic presidential election in Roumania. When the wrong candidate is in the lead, who does not suit the EU elites, then he obviously must go. We are on the way to a totalitarian system, ladies and gentlemen. And what is the reasoning? Manipulation of citizens on TikTok by foreign agents. 

You credit the citizens with so little discernment. You see the citizens as a manipulated mass. That is a declaration of bankruptcy. Following this logic, all elections in Germany need be nullified, since there the state media manipulates without end – but then nothing will be done. Yet when a 14-year-old posts something patriotic on TikTok, then in the morning the police are at the door. Where are we coming to? And following this logic, all elections could be nullified at will. Since how can the foreign influence ever be proved? 

Democracy enjoins accepting the will of the people, and even if it does not suit you. Respect that, if you want to be called democrats. 

 

[trans: tem]

Stephan Brandner, December 6, 2024, Lèse-majesté

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26472-26473. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

I find that we are quite well set. When I look at the ranks of the other delegations, it appears quite good in regards to us. 

Let me begin with a pre-Christmas fairy tale. There was once a kingdom, let us call it Collapsistan, with all that pertains thereto. There was a king, let us call him Olaf the Forgetful, a prince, let us call him Robert Feeble-minded [Schwachkopf] the First, his beautiful but rather dumb consort princess Anna the Clueless, a wicked, gruesome, cunning stepmother, Marie-Agnes, and a court jester by the name of Karl the Confused. There were also dark, corrupt powers: The BlackRockers, led by Fritz the Babbler and Jens “Allow us a villa” Spahn. 

This Collapsistan sank into chaos for want of qualified leaders. It was not at all on this account chased from the castle, because the secret service, the police and the media protected it. The social and economic chaos was so great that the people were continually impoverished and enraged; whereas the rulers lived in unimaginable, lavish luxury, riotously, made horrendous debts due to deficient income, and, despite that, tossed off hundreds of thousands for castle photos in which they should appear in shining lights, for hairdressing, which in one day cost as much as what many poor people in Collapsistan did not have available in a month. They flew with luxury jets which the people needed to finance – who else? – to and fro through world history, made flights of a distance walked by other people. The state religion paid homage to the climate pharaohs for which insane gifts and sacrifices were prepared. 

The result is clear: The world laughed over this incompetent barn of corruption. And the citizens in Collapsistan were offended, insulted and mocked. Yet the rulers made no better policy, but demanded draconian penalties for critical statements. 

Ladies and gentlemen, thus far a fairy tale; nevertheless with a present reference. 

In Germany also chaos governs. The citizens are disquieted; by rustic, pointed expressions make themselves noticeable and vent their feelings. Yet those who govern here govern no better, but have critical citizens persecuted by the police by means of warnings and legal intimidations. Through the years, a denunciation and spying network has been laid over Germany like a mildew, and those who govern have created for themselves protective, special laws, like section 188 of the criminal code which is here on the table and which only particularly punishes the insulting of politicians, and indeed with two to three years custody. Three years! If a simple citizen is insulted, a penalty of merely one year threatens the perpetrator. 

In addition, the normal citizen needs to trouble himself and file a criminal complaint. For a politician, in practice, that follows automatically, as per section 194 of the criminal code. And so it can well be that, in the morning in the residence of a supposed critic of the government, as for example in mid-November of a former soldier with a handicapped child, officially stand the police who almost kicked down the door just because he shared a funny photo of Robert Habeck. 

This special law was created in 2021 as a measure against hate and agitation and rightist extremism by politicians who now profit therefrom. It reminds me personally, I need quite honestly say, of the anti-state agitation in the DDR penal code, or the statute against malicious attacks on the state and party from the year 1934. 

And precisely the politicians who created this statute now profit therefrom, and thus earn for themselves a cornucopia. Comically, start-up businesses were founded which do nothing other than warn blameless citizens, demand warning fees and then make fifty-fifty with the politicians. Something is thus just so transparent, ladies and gentlemen. Robert Habeck alone has filed 800 criminal complaints [Strafanzeigen erstattet] during his time in office, a total of a thousand criminal complaints by Baerbock, Strack-Zimmermann and as they all are called. They do not defend themselves by means of good politics, they defend themselves by means of harassing measures. Especially is the FDP at the fore, have I read. The FDP manages such warning unions, such warning start-ups, and is proud of it. 

Katharina Willkomm (FDP): No, no no! We have nothing to do with that. Those are private people.

Ladies and gentlemen, we politicians are not especially worthy of protection. Publicity is part of our jobs. We seek publicity. We wallow in publicity. We go with joy into publicity. And why should we be better protected by the criminal code than normal people? 

We politicians are not weaklings who require the special protection of the criminal law. We are no majesties, no kings, no princes. We are employees of the citizens who elect us and pay us. There thus needs be an end to that you of the cartel parties lift yourselves above the citizens, an end to the special law for politicians, an end to section 188 of the criminal code, the lèse-majesté of modern times which is nothing other than an expression of a repressive, authoritarian understanding of the state. 

Likewise, go our way! Section 188 out of the penal code! This here is only a current hour, yet the corresponding draft law is done and will be brought in next. 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): Where is it, then?

Many thanks and Merry Christmas if we should no more see one another. 

 

[trans: tem]

Götz Frömming, November 13, 2024, CDU and Democracy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/199, pp. 25915-25916. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

“…parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good...” [*] 

            Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): Amen! 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): Claims for which you have never been fit!

So far Edmund Burke in his famous speech to the voters of Bristol in 1774. Ladies and gentlemen, let us compare the present situation of this parliament with the ideal of then. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You might need to get out!

This, what you have made of our parliament, is the exact opposite in comparison to what Burke described, ladies and gentlemen. 

Real deliberations, the struggle over the best solution for the good of the people, no longer take place. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): No self-evidently! 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You’ve never done it!

SPD, CDU, Greens and FDP have come to an understanding for a trimmed daily order of the German Bundestag. Only urgently necessary points of the daily order shall spoken on. Initiatives of the opposition – the actual opposition – shall be set aside with or without debate. Ladies and gentlemen, that is unparliamentary, that is undemocratic, that is an assault on the heart of our democracy. 

It is evident, ladies and gentlemen, for you, the general good does not come first, but your party interests. We presently in fact have a minority government. That has been seldom acceded to in German parliamentary history, but is commonplace in other countries. There, one has no fear of the free struggle for the best solution. Minority governments, ladies and gentlemen, need not necessarily go along with a parliamentary standstill. They could be stellar moments of democracy. Yet for that is required authentic and courageous democrats. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): Then you need to get out!

Of those, ladies and gentlemen, we have too few in this parliament. It also does not help that you yourselves always mutually dilute being democratic. Now, where it would come to that, you deny democracy, ladies and gentlemen. 

What then would be so bad if members for once really follow their consciences when a good motion achieves a majority only with votes of the opposition? Yet as I hear, you want no votes from the wrong side. Honored colleagues of the CDU, when it is about the good of our country, then there is no such wrong side. 

Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): The level was already low, but now it becomes subterranean.

You then stand with your firewall on the wrong side. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You are always on the wrong side!

Following the frightful terror attack at Solingen on the 23^rd of August of this year, the CDU/CSU  delegation chairman wrote an urgent letter to the Chancellor. I may cite therefrom: 

“Release…the vote in the Bundestag on the the required laws…We want no participation in your government and no offices; we want that you fulfill your oath of office and avert harm from the German people. For that, with us you have a majority in the German Bundestag…” 

            Jürgen Braun (AfD): Aha! Hear, hear!

Thus far the Chancellor. In what concerns forgetfulness, Friedrich Merz in fact has a Chancellor quality, ladies and gentlemen. 

In fact in September the CSU/CSU brought in such a motion. Its content: To limit the migrant flow and begin with a return. Not by far enough, but a step in the right direction. And what have we experienced? Last week, precisely this draft law was on the daily order for a second and third reading. It would have been able to receive perhaps a majority with the votes from the ranks of the FDP and AfD. Yet precisely on this account it was withdrawn by the CDU/CSU. 

            Jürgen Braun (AfD): Ach, here, someone is afraid!

You were afraid that your own motion could pass, ladies and gentlemen. That allows a deep look and says much of your understanding of democracy. 

Who should at all still believe that your motion was seriously meant by you, which you previously presented and in which was written a bit in the AfD sound? Did you perhaps only present all of these motions because you know that they will be rejected, and now where you could receive a vote in favor, 

Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): No, we want to pass them, only not with you! That is the only reason! 

you present no more such motions. 

The long since running secret negotiations on a new government with the Greens or the SPD should not be encumbered. Ladies and gentlemen, you have the entire time only simulated opposition. That is shabby. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the problem nevertheless is: Who votes for Merz, receives Habeck. How often have the two actually met for secret negotiations? 

            Till Steffen (Greens): What does secret mean? 

            Erhard Grundl (Greens): If you knew it, it’s not secret. 

            Sebastian Hartmann (SPD): What did you plan in Potsdam?

The citizens can vote for that they want, they receive always the same politics. Here, one need not be surprised by a political dissatisfaction. 

            Vice-president Aydan Özogŭz: Come please to a conclusion. 

Following the next elections, ladies and gentlemen, we will, in Edmund Burke’s sense, again make the parliament of our nation a deliberating and deciding assembly. 

Many thanks. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): There, you contribute definitely nothing! 

 

[*] The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. 6 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854-1856.

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, November 13, 2024, Government and Politics

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/199, pp. 25840-25843. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

This government goes to an end as brainless and undignified as it has acted for three long years.

Even in leaving, you show neither insight nor responsibility. You indulge in self-pity, self-righteousness and mutual denigration. 

Humility would thereby be only appropriate; since what your government has done to this country and its citizens is unprecedented. This Ampel like no other previous government has destroyed prosperity and damaged our country. Your frantic policy of the green transformation drives Germany into de-industrialization, productive business out of the country and the Mittelstand to ruin. 

Hundreds of thousands of workplaces are already lost as a consequence of your policy. The number of insolvencies in October has reached a 70 years record. The bankruptcy rate is around two-thirds higher than just five years ago. Your e-auto planned economy ruins the German automobile industry and cuts a corridor of devastation through Mittelstand and service industries. 

You flood the country with illegal migrants while you likewise drive native and immigrant labor forces into emigration. You derange the social system and destroy the domestic security. Imported Judenhasser romp in the streets. 25 sexual assaults per day by immigrants are noted in one current statistic of the BKA. The financial consequences you press upon the citizens with record taxes and social duties, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Then what does the AfD do on the other hand? 

even though the total state income scrapes the one trillion mark, yet will erode because you have made business kaputt and put employees into the street.

You divide the country with the malignant spirit of the spying, the hotlines, with censorship measures, and grotesque Gessler cap laws like the self-determination law which makes the denial of biological facts a penalty-enforced duty. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Markus!

You, the tumbling champions [Umfallerhelden] of the FDP, have not only cooperated with all of this for three long years, but what’s more made it possible. The FDP has shared in every nonsense, like the heating law, building energy law, the ban on combustion engines and the disconnection of capable nuclear power plants, gender without end, toking for all and the change of sex once a year. This stain, Herr Lindner, will stay with you forever. Your attempt at the last minute to leave the sinking ship comes too late. The voters and your party will ban you from the Bundestag. 

For the Union. You want no political change for Germany, otherwise you would not hide behind your firewall, and quite openly speculate that this mismanaged SPD and the Greens may make you Chancellor, Herr Merz. What you have to offer in reasonable demands, you’ve meanwhile copied from us. Yet you want to implement simply nothing of that, but merely deceive your voters. You admit it quite openly: You are afraid of putting any motion for a migration policy; since you could pass it with our votes, and that, you do not want, Herr Merz. 

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): Nay!

With that, all should be said of the CDU, yet this for long has still not been: For even in this existential crisis, CDU politicians have nothing better to do than drive forward an anti-democratic banning procedure against us, the second largest power in Germany. And your party friend Haldenwang is the handyman for that, and abuses the domestic secret service, the so-called Constitution Defense, to criminalize citizens critical of the government, and the opposition in Germany, and for that shall be paid with a Bundestag mandate. These are the most wicked DDR methods of which you make use. 

Important immediate measures against Germany’s further decline – the withdrawal of the combustion engine ban, the re-entry into the nuclear power, the tightening of the right of asylum and the turning back at the border – we would have long since concluded, with or without the Chancellor’s confidence vote. 

But the Union does not want that. You have cowardly taken back all your motions and agreed to simply eliminate from the daily order central initiatives for a correction of this ruinous Ampel policy. You place the firewall above Germany. What an embodiment of democratic Unkultur! What a pitiful low point in parliamentary government! 

So spare yourself your talk of responsibility and respect, Herr Merz! With you, it’s quite alone about you, about your power, about partisan tactics, and primarily your vanity. 

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): This the righteous says!

With you as a Scholz replacement, Germany will not make headway. You can implement nothing of what you promise. You are no alternative for this government and for this Chancellor. You hardly can be, since the CDU is exactly so responsible as the Ampel for the existential crisis in which our country finds itself. 

As good as all the wrong decisions which are responsible for the downfall of Germany and our economy go back to the governing years of a Union Kanzlerin by the name of Angela Merkel; the best Kanzlerin which the Greens have ever had. The energy transition and the subvention nonsense about the so-called renewable energies, the hasty withdrawal from the nuclear power, the CO₂ duty, the planned economy war against the German automobile industry, the fight of the worldwide leading engine technology and an electro-auto planned economy, the euro rescue policy and the inflation arising therefrom: All of it Union. 

And the citizens have not forgotten how you of the Union divided the country just three years ago with defamations against the unvaccinated. 

            Enrico Komning (AfD): Right!

“No more unvaccinated in the office” from Friedrich Merz, “Lockdown for the unvaccinated” and “Vaccination as a moral obligation” from Markus Söder, and “The pandemic of the unvaccinated” and “Exclude the unvaccinated from public life” from Jens Spahn. All of it was supported and ushered in by you. 

Not to be forgotten: Opening of the German borders for unruly, illegal migration by means of the 2015 welcome putsch: The mother of all trespasses in our country. The rule of injustice in the migration policy which was driven to the heights by the Ampel government, was erected under a Union Kanzerlin, and not only that. The Union delegation supported most of the motions of the Ampel government. After 16 years of Merkel and three years of Merz, the CDU is no more the  counter-weight to the left-green ship of fools, but its willing collaborator. I can say to you: The people have enough of that. 

A Federal government with participation of the AFD in the first 100 days would thus implement the future plan for Germany. And it reads as follows – with the sub-heading that the CDU will prevent all of this: We want technology openness, to repeal the ban of combustion engines as well as of oil and gas heating, to lower income, consumption and business taxes, to abolish the CO₂ duty, to massively reduce energy taxes, to eliminate without exception the solidarity surtax, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): How then all of it?

to get underway fundamental tax reform and tax simplification, to abolish the bureaucracy monster “supply chain law”, to eliminate subvention and promotion programs for climate protection and the EEG assessment, to bring in the end of the energy transition and the withdrawal from the EU energy policy, to again take functioning nuclear power plants into the network and to invest in future-capable, new generation reactors. 

We demand longer run times for coal power plants. Why? Because Germany has the most modern coal power plants worldwide. 

To completely close the borders, to turn back everyone entering illegally or without papers, and a clear announcement to the entire world that the German borders are finally shut. To convert provision of asylum applicants from money to benefits in kind, to eliminate social benefits for those without a right of residency and to organize returns in grand style, which simply maintains and implements the asylum law. Asylum is residence for a time and ends when the refuge basis is eliminated, local provision of refugees – they thereby do not initially come to Germany – immediately end turbo-naturalizations and the automatic claim to the German passport. And follow the model of the Netherlands and Hungary: Withdrawal from the EU asylum system. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Wow! That then remains for them, Frau Weidel?

The better, last: This is the AFD’s future program for this country so as to bring this country forward. Since you need to listen for once. It goes exactly so. 

And what we will do: Convert the Bürgergeld to an activating basic security, to confine it to state citizens and EU citizens legally present, and, for that, to take care that hundreds of thousands of employees capable of work again come into the labor market. 

We have already worked up many of the laws necessary for this. – Yes, because you rejected them. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): They were all rejected!

It is a question of political will – which you do not have – of again giving hope to the Germans and to setting free the power for a comeback from the crisis. 

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): All those are competences which you do not have!

The Germans want normality, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): No! The Germans are ashamed of you!

and they have a right to it. They want work. They want security. They want prosperity. They want to live by the fruits of their labor, to be able to start families and construct a livelihood. 

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): They want no AfD!

They want security in the streets, and they want a good education for their children. 

They demand a reliable and reasonable politics which creates the prerequisites for this and which does not meddle in the private life and in their freedom of opinion. The people in this country want primarily one thing: 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): No right-wing extremists in power!

They want freedom! They want bürgerliche freedom! This will be possible only with us in government responsibility. 

I am grateful. 

            Katharyn Dröge (Greens): You yourself need laugh over the madness! 

 

[trans: tem]

Stephan Brandner, October 18, 2024, Internet Censorship

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]