Jens Maier, May 7, 2021, Constitution Defense

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/228, pp. 29124-29125. 

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

This draft law describes a further step in the direction of a total surveillance of society. What is sold here as an ostensible reaction to the present incidence in the area of rightist terrorism is the pretext for taking into view targeted, individual persons in ways simpler than hitherto. In German, that means: Anyone can now, in simpler ways short of criminal prosecution, come under the surveillance of the Constitution Defense.

Since the Constitution Defense was to be at least what its name pretends to be: An authority which defends the Constitution; that is, the free, democratic basic order. Until the undignified departure of Hans-Georg Maaßen, it was even on the whole still possible to affirm this. Meanwhile however the Constitution Defense has been reduced to purely a government defense. Its activity consists inter alia of spying on opposition politicians, denouncing opposition parties and in playing along with the media in supporting defamation campaigns.

Thereby will be found criteria unforeseen by the law; as for example, the declaration of a party as a test case. With his first appearance as the new president of the Federal Office, Herr Haldenwang, the chief defender of the Constitution, nevertheless showed what he thinks of the German order of law: Legal, illegal, it’s all the same – the main thing is to pacify the service head, Herr Seehofer. The Administrative Court at Cologne then needed to intervene and, at the motion of the AfD, put a muzzle on Herr Haldenwang and his people on account of these violations of the law. It showed that the Constitution Defense plainly does not operate neutrally and independently, but is incorporated into the sphere of the Federal Interior Ministry and is openly ready to deliver what is there desired, Herr Seehofer.

If an over-1,000 page opinion is needed to be able to inscribe a party as a case of suspicion, then – like a former justice, I must say –

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): The emphasis is on “former”!

there speaks a presumption that there is not much in the suspicion; otherwise, this bulk was not needed.

Since the time Herr Haldenwang leads the Federal Office, the mask has fallen away. The Constitution Defense has forfeited its legitimacy, its reputation, and gambled away the trust invested in it. It has decayed into an instrument of oppression.

Benjamin Strasser (FDP): Who began the proceeding against you? Was it not Herr Maaßen, Herr colleague Maier?

This can be particularly clearly recognized in connection with the Querdenker.

The Constitution Defense is thereby developing, step by step, in a direction which we in Germany, but primarily in the former DDR, already once had. We of the AfD therefore say: A fundamental reform of the Constitution Defense, and its reduction to closely limited core duties, is needed. There must be an end to the political mise-en-scène of the Constitution Defense. There must be an end to the abuse of the trust invested in the Constitution Defense and to the destruction and hazarding of the reputation of decent people for reasons of political favor.

As long as things are as they are, one cannot recommend a draft law such as this, which foresees additional authority for the Constitution Defense.

            Thorsten Frei (CDU/CSU): Maaß-los!

The reading of messaging services through the so-called Quellen-TKÜ [sources of telecommunications surveillance] means that for citizens who use Whatsapp or something similar, the Constitution Defense can now, and at best with permission, read along. The telecommunications providers even need to take care that the service is able to connect its surveillance equipment directly beside their servers.

The boundary for the on-line searching through of smart phones and computers is thereby passing away. For in the planned alteration of §11 of Article 10 of the law, it is foreseen that not only the current communication will be surveilled, but also the content of the communication, which from the time of the order would have been able to be recorded but had not been recorded. That is nothing other than a reading of information which lies in the past but which has been stored. In the result, that is not only a Quellen-TKÜ but already an on-line searching that we hold to be disproportionate. We therefore reject it. In committee will here be some things still to be discussed.

Many thanks.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): But not with you.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jens Maier, October 8, 2020, Rental Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, pp. 23090-23091.

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The draft law of the Greens, which will be deliberated here today in the first reading, to be sure originates with Frau Canan Bayram.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): She has made it super!

Frau Bayram arrived in the Bundestag with a direct mandate, having obtained her direct mandate in constituency 83. It consists of Berlin-Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg Ost. There, the Linke candidate landed in second place. And it is precisely to this clientele that Frau Bayram has directed her draft. The left-green urban sub-culture wishes to aid those by whom it was elected.

Franziska Brantner (Greens): That one enters office for the people by whom one has been elected is a basic understanding of democracy – or?

It would be noted of Berlin-Friedrichshain that there occurred early one morning the evacuation of an occupied house at Liebigstraße 34. Many thousands – thousands – of police were present in an effort to enforce the eviction notice. Street barriers were erected. It appeared that a civil war would break out. The question thus presents itself, Frau Bayram: Do these people need, whom you with your draft wish to support, with after all your help, do they need a law? Your friends, these robber knights in red-green clothing, take what they want and care not at all for the state of law.

And among the Greens, Frau Bayram is not uncontroversial. According to one edition of the “Der Freitag” from the year 2017, Frau Bayram on the basis of her rent policy was designated by some of the friends of the Green Party as alternatively a “left-populist talking head”, “an imputation” or as “unelectable”. As a non-Green, as an outsider, after a reading of the draft law put forward, one can only agree with this evaluation.

At the mid-point of the draft law is the rent regulation and the extension of dismissals protection for the leasing of commercial space. It is desired in all seriousness to no longer leave the level of commercial space rent to the condition of the market, as before, but to introduce, as for dwelling space rent, a kind of social rent law for small businesses. The draft takes up the matter which already in the year 2018 was brought by the State of Berlin before the Bundesrat. To that, I can only say: A regulation of the market for the lease of commercial space, we of the AfD strictly reject; we take no part in that.

We hold it to be factually unjustified, to be simply impractical and it would lead to unjustified consequences. According to the draft law, the State government shall be empowered to designate zones having a constrained commercial rental market.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Very good!

A constrained market is present when it

is no longer possible for small businesses deemed worthy of protection or for institutions    pursuing social-cultural purposes to rent commercial rental space on fair terms.

All is clear, all is understood? That is only puffed up by indefinite legal terms. With that, the doors are opened to the arbitrary selection of the zones ostensibly to be protected. It is to be recognized that, for the Greens, it is not about – as heretofore depicted – Aunt Emma’s Store on the corner, but only about conserving the migrantifa sub-culture in the big cities – a culture which brings forth something like Liebigstraße 34 in Friedrichshain. We do not want that.

The proposed alterations in the area of dwelling space rental law, the intensification of rent control [Mietpreisbremse] and an extension of the foreseen dismissals protection are almost without exception to be rejected. It is interesting that a draft law, for the first time brought into plenary session on July 2 of this year by the AfD, was evidently taken up by the Greens: Thus, according to the presentations of the Greens, a Schonfristzahlung [two months period for payment of all back rent] with proper notification will be possible for renters of dwelling space. That is to be welcomed.

The motion of the Linke is to be rejected.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): What?

It describes a further attempt to exploit the Corona crisis at the cost of the lessor so as to reform the dwelling space rental law according to socialist rules. Who wants anything like that? Not us.

Many thanks.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): You have no idea as it is of socialism!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

Jens Maier, June 19, 2020, Antifa Ban

Jens Maier

Antifa Ban

German Bundestag, June 19, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/167, pp. 20897-20898

[Jens Maier is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Saxony. He is a lawyer and here introduces an AfD motion (Drucksache 20074) to ban the Antifa organization. Siegbert Droese is also an AfD Bundestag member from Saxony.]

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

            What that is for the times, where

            Talk of trees is near to crime

            Because one silence much sin enfolds!

            [Was sind das für Zeiten, wo

            Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist

            Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschliesst!]

            Harald Weinberg (Linke): Brecht is turning over in the grave!

Bertolt Brecht, yes.

Yes, much is said here. Yet over actual sins, like the Antifa terror, there is still much that is silenced here in the Bundestag and in society. And when it cannot be silenced, when it must be spoken because there is nothing else to do, because of what again is happening, then these buildings attacked by the Antifa as an example will be trivialized, downplayed, denied and re-interpreted, all with the object in view of doing one thing; namely, to do nothing. In regards to you, Frau Renner, that does not surprise me. You are there. You actually belong to the Anitfa.

            Martina Renner (Linke): Ja!

Yet in regards to you in the Union, that still amazes me. That is cowardice, cowardice in the face of the enemy.

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): Just wait for my colleagues’ speeches!

One can be thankful that President Trump in the USA has taken the initiative and set a good example. He has declared war on the Antifa. He is determined to act effectively and restore order, for example in Seattle, where it is threatened.

            Ute Vogt (SPD): Follow after America!

I would hope for such determination from a German government.

Antifa – what is that? There yields a diffuse picture of differing, formerly loosely associated groups, with propensities to violence of various intensity. Besides harmlessly operating, ideologically contaminated spin doctors or youth plagued by the woes of the world, there exists in the Antifa family milieu tightly organized gangs of brawlers who conduct minutely planned attacks and manage to be abundantly financed indirectly by public money; that is especially scandalous.

They do not do that in secret, but quite openly. A glance at the internet suffices. I refer here for example to the site antifa-berlin.info. Here were gathered the specific acts employed in ways glorifying violence. Who reported what, who took care of that? – Yes, Frau Lazar, you laugh yourself half to death – Where is the police, why did nothing happen? The answer is quite simple: Because in this society leftist violence has been made acceptable, because the political-media class has created a climate of acceptance concerning leftist violence and because leftist violence does not occur in the picture constructed by the media, where only right-wing extremism can be dangerous.

            Mechthild Rawert (SPD): It is dangerous!

I will not now speak of all the attacks on AfD offices or the insidious attack on Frank Magnitz.

            Marion Wendt (CDU/CSU): My office was attacked by rightists!

On Monday of this week, the Antifa was known to have been underway in Leipzig and attacked the café of Siegbert Droese’s sister who certainly has nothing to do in any way with political things. What that is, is family liability [Sippenhaft], and das ist nicht in Ordnung. It is however to be noted that the spirit which is called up can also touch one’s own people. So, in a curious way, Helge Lindh, SPD – you here – was the target of harm in April of this year, as was his office in Wuppertal.   

Besides self-empowerment by acts of violence small or – as at the G-20 summit in Hamburg – large, the Antifa is steadily concerned with creating lawless areas for itself – areas like Connewitz in Leipzig, Rote Flora in Hamburg, Rigauer Strasse in Berlin, areas in which they have control and from which the state of law is practically blocked off. There, one does what one wants. Especially in such no-go areas, one evades all obligations and places oneself – like Reichsburger – outside of society.

For these people, it is not about political aims. For these people, if is about riot, amusement in destruction and submergence in a lawless space. It will be somehow justified with crazy, extreme leftist twaddle. That must stop. Before all things, the legal order of this country must finally be enforced against these types. The Antifa must be banned.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]