Rüdiger Lucassen, November 20, 2020, Bundeswehr Conscription

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/193, pp. 24397-24398.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

It is conservative to defend things which work. Conscription [Wehrpflicht] in Germany worked for 200 years. It united the armed forces with the people. It breathed a fresh spirit into the barracks of our country. Young men from all regions and classes of Germany came to the Bundeswehr. Many of today’s generals began as conscripts. Without the Wehrpflicht, they would have never found the way to the armed forces. The military leadership supports in large parts today’s motion [Drucksache 19/24401] of the AfD for the re-activation of the Wehrpflicht.

            Tobias Lindner (Greens): What?

            Tobias Pflüger (Linke): I do not at all believe that!

The motion is the opportunity to correct a capital failure of the Federal government. The Wehrpflicht was much more than just the ensuring of personnel for the Bundeswehr. It was an essential of our armed forces. Entire generations of young Germans thus came together to serve a higher duty, to feel what it meant to place themselves in service to our country, to learn to integrate into a society. For a few months in a life, all were equal: No distinction of money, expensive clothes, and background – a worthwhile matter. The Wehrpflicht was not only an essential of the Bundeswehr. It created a social bond for many generations.

The Wehrpflicht was part of the DNA of our country. Who surrenders something like that, he is not conservative. Who surrenders something like that is responsible for the destruction of a basic pillar of our state and of our society.

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): Na, na, na!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, a conservative does not do.

The surrender of the Wehrpflicht in the year 2011 is part of a destructive policy in Germany. It is part of a policy at the end of which stands the abolition of our national state.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): O Gott! O Gott!

This policy destroys the mission readiness of the Bundeswehr just so as it places at disposal the energy security, the cultural identity and now the economic basis of Germany.  

 For it was always the duty of the Union to oppose the leftist radical powers of Germany,

            Tobias Pflüger (Linke): Eijeijei!

the business model of which is the fight against one’s own national state. Instead, the CDU sacrifices a treasure of our national civil-state, the Wehrpflicht. To the greed for posts and power, much of the table silver of our Republic has already been sacrificed. That is not conservative. That is dangerous.

Our Bundeswehr is now 65 years old. I thank all soldiers for their service to Germany. It is not easy for them in these times. For this jubilee, the Foreign Minister congratulates a Belgian on Twitter. The Defense Minister greets in gendered terms the Bundeswehr’s soldiers of the year 1955. And the Federal President in his address arbitrarily alters the form of the oath. Our soldiers have not deserved such a government.

            Stefan Müller (CDU/CSU-Erlangen): Oje!

            Tobias Pflüger (Linke): Resign!

 

 

[trans: tem]

Götz Frömming, November 19, 2020, Stasi Documentation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/192, pp. 24217-24218.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

            “…I confess that I am disappointed…”

            Christoph Bernstiel (CDU/CSU): By your party!

With these words, Marianne Birthler, the earlier civil rights advocate and former Federal commissioner for the Stasi documentation, ended her statement during a hearing here in the German Bundestag on the planned dissolution of the Federal authority. And she continued – I cite with her permission, Frau President – I had hoped for a departure [Aufbruch]. Yet what here lies before us is more a probate of estate. – That, ladies and gentlemen, was four years ago.

And when we today glance at the draft law before us, then we must state: Not much has changed. With the law, for which today the majority in this house will vote in favor, the German Bundestag buries one of the most prominent achievements, if not the prominent achievement, a world-wide, one-time inheritance, of the Peaceful Revolution.  

            Monika Lazar (Greens): It does not become better when it is repeated!

The Federal authority for the Stasi documentation properly owes its existence – as we have already plainly heard – to a revolutionary act: The occupation of the premises of the Ministry for State Security on January 15, 1990, by the break in of citizens. It is perhaps a German peculiarity and perhaps in fact nothing bad, that a revolutionary act ends in an authority. This authority was and is just as much also a monument, a living memorial, in which approximately 1,500 people work in a total of twelve locations. To this remarkable monument that is an authority belong the documents, preserved from destruction, of the State Security, as just so does the Federal commissioner, the guardian of these documents.

Now we hear in committee that in fact not much of this will change. The documents will simply be incorporated into the Bundesarchiv and instead of a Federal commissioner for the Stasi documentation, there shall be, 30 years after the unification [Wende], now for the first time a victims commissioner.

            Christoph Bernstiel (CDU/CSU): “Wende” is SED-speak!

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know whether you today actually expect applause for this. To install a victims commissioner 30 years after the Wende is no claim to fame. That is a proof of poverty. That ought to have been done much, much earlier.

Let us nevertheless say it clearly: The so-called victims commissioner is in truth actually a compensation for the suppression of the Federal commissioner, a fig leaf to appease critics and victims associations and to de-couple from the actual matter. The AfD delegation therefore in a motion put before you today, has demanded that a Federal commissioner with expanded competences be appointed. According to our presentation, he shall not only be there for the victims but also to protect the functioning of a commissioner for the working through of the SED dictatorship; for, ladies and gentlemen, not only the victims but also the perpetrators are still among us. Who really wishes to do something for the victim shall not at the same time make his peace with the perpetrators and take the actual SED, legally still in existence, into a governing alliance.

            Monika Lazar (Greens): Take a peek at your own!

And so as not to be misunderstood: Yes, the DDR naturally was a German state, the second German dictatorship of the 20^th Century. Naturally, the documentary evidence, official documents and special documents belong sooner or later in the Bundesarchiv.Yet, ladies and gentlemen, there is not at all an urgent necessity to do that now.

            Christoph Bernstiel (CDU/CSU): Naturally!

The basis for this law is exceedingly thin – and that has also been stated in many hearings. All described problems which you wish to solve with this law could also have been solved in other ways. I name only the essentials: The securing of the documents, so you say, can no longer be fulfilled. That would naturally have been achieved by means of cooperation with the Bundesarchiv or by means of a better equipment of the documentation authority itself. An ombudsperson for the victims – I have already referred to it – would have long since been able to be appointed and naturally quite independently of the question of the documents.

On the other side, the law offers in fact no solution to actually existing problems. How and when, for example, will the approximately 15,000 sacks of torn Stasi documents finally be reconstructed and secured? Since 2016, apparently not a single document has been electronically joined together. Of that, the citizens committee 15.Januar wrote on its internet presence – I cite with permission – :

            “The Jahn authority for years deceived the public and the parliament over the factual standstill of the virtual reconstruction.” Meanwhile, almost all project experts at the Frauenhofer Institute…with their special knowledge have left the team and, at year’s end, the project’s long-time leader and initiator is retiring.

Ladies and gentlemen, how shall these problems be solved? Not a word of that in your motion. How does it now appear with the research activity and the pedagogical education work? Here will arise in the future something worthy of note; since a Bundesarchiv naturally is primarily, as the name says, an archive. Here therefore, a push, a real departure, as rightly desired by Marianne Birthler, is not to be expected. Since an archive primarily places sources at the disposal of research. Its first duty is not to conduct its own, independent research.

Ladies and gentlemen, 30 years are no reason to draw a summary line. You too do not want that. 30 years, for a historian, that is only the blink of an eye. For the historian, the proper work first begins after 30 years. And I may add: Also for pedagogues, for teachers, the real work is just beginning. Ask the youth what they today know of the DDR. Terribly little! That has to do with your education policy, with your suspended information policy, which you for years pushed here. We need a departure. We need a push for an investigation of the SED dictatorship. We need a strengthening of the existing research associations; for example, here at the FU [Free University, Berlin] and at many others. And in this regard, the law allows no good hope.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is at least worthy of note – so concluded Marianne Birthler – that we in Germany have a teaching chair for the history of Azerbaijan, yet we have, 30 years after the end of the DDR, not one teaching chair for the history of the SED dictatorship or the communist rule of violence in eastern Europe. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a proof of poverty. We just so urgently require a memorial day for the victims of the communist dictatorship. Our motions [Drucksachen 19/14348, 22240, 22295] for that lie before you. You have only to vote for them.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

Beatrix von Storch, November 18, 2020, Turkish Gray Wolves

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/191, pp. 24127-24128.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The process of the debate over and the banning of the Gray Wolves follows the debate over and the banning of Hezbollah. Both organizations were directed by Islamist regimes, by Erdogan and by the mullahs. Both organizations push forward the Islamization and infiltration of Germany with violence or political influence. And: In both cases have the Union and the SPD for decades looked the other way and thereby have humiliated themselves and our country before the Islamist dictators.

And now you become active only and exclusively because the AfD

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): Dream on! Look at France!

had placed the ban in tomorrow’s orders of business. Since your motion has not yet been written and it was not yet notified for the orders of business. For that very reason, we are debating this today.

For all that, the AfD works. How good it is that we are now here!

            Christoph de Vries (CDU/CS): Mimimi!

The case in that regard was for decades quite clear. The Gray Wolves are Turkish Nazis; there are Turkish fascists.

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): It is also the first time that you name                                                                    the “Nazis”. 

Niema Movassat (Linke): Thus actually your soul mates! Thus you must actually     even find that good!

 With 20,00 supporters, they are the largest extreme right organization in Germany.

Now let us compare the established parties’ hatred of the democratic AfD with their pandering to the Turkish Islamo-fascists. The result: If thou in Germany art conservative, then they insult thee as one of the fascists. If thou art a Turkish fascist, they give thee a German passport, then they elect thee to the integration council, then they conduct with thee a cultural dialogue. Until today, that for decades was the situation under all of your governments. 

The Gray Wolves’ slogan goes: Become German, remain Turk. – That is the strategy of the Turkish Islamo-fascists. Who want to receive the German passport and keep the Turkish; who want the German right to vote but not the Geman values – not so as to integrate themselves into Germany, but so as to conquer Germany. By means of the German passport, a Gray Wolf does not become a German who shares our values; and an Islamo-fascist, by means of the right to vote, does not become a democrat.

The assumption of power in entire city sections began early. Since 1976, “Der Spiegel” spoke of: Turkish terror, Turkish attacks, Turkish wars on German soil. In 1984, they perpetrated the assault on Seyran Ates and shot her client. There were then 2,000 Gray Wolves, Now, the number is ten times greater.

The politicians of the CDU, CSU and the SPD conduct themselves – again, a 1998 citation from “Spiegel” – , “like sheep”. For 40 long years, you, the sheep, did nothing; just the opposite. Two examples: In 2002, the Bavarian interior minister, together with the Gray Wolves, celebrated Ramadan. And as is known, to this day the Chancellor, in relation to the genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, refuses to say the word “genocide” – a kowtow to the employers of the Wolves.

Your motion of the Union and the SPD, which is now to be shared in by the FDP and Greens, comes 40 years too late. And you hush up the elephant in the room: The extortion potential of Erdogan and the Islamist infiltration.

For us, it is clear: We tolerate no Erdogan fifth column on German soil. The Gray Wolves are due to be banned and their adherents do not belong to Germany. When the AfD governs, we will solve such problems in the first year and not postpone it for 40 long years.

   Steffi Lemke (Greens): You just need a vacation. Such a crude                                                                  world-view!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

             

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, November 18, 2020, Corona Preventative Measures

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/191, pp. 24050-24052.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Trust is one of society’s most important resources. As is known, it can be lost. When people no longer trust one another, the will to cooperate stops and strife begins. When a portion of the people do not trust the government, a fissure is formed in the social structure. When the government, and the media close to the government,

            Saskia Esken (SPD): “Close to the government” – what do you mean by that?

stigmatize and denigrate or, indeed with the Constitution Defense, threaten this portion of the people instead of speaking with them, this fissure becomes deeper and the mistrust becomes greater. And, ladies and gentlemen, when members are thrown to the ground by the police, then it may be asked: Where have we actually arrived at in this country?

In a state of law, basic trust is institutionally secured by means of the basic rights, ladies and gentlemen. Heribert Prantl, bei Gott no friend of the AfD – the chief commentator of the “Suddeustche Zeitung” – has in that regard written or spoken words worthy of note – I cite with permission of the President: Basic rights [Grundrechte] are called basic rights because they form the basis of our lives. Basic rights are specifically for times of emergency.If they are thrown away in times of crisis or emergency,

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): They will not be!

then they are worth nothing, then they can be forgotten.

– Heribert Prantl, not Alexander Gauland!

The Federal government’s infection prevention law is the greatest restriction of the basic rights in the history of the Federal Republic. If we continue Herr Prantl’s thought process, it means: We can forget the basic rights. The mistrust, ladies and gentlemen, will explode.

            Hermann Gröhe (CDU/CSU): You are sowing it!

You see that in the streets, you see that in the aggression which you everywhere feel.

Britta Haßelman (Greens): Yes, I have certainly seen all of you out there! What hypocrisy!

And you see it in many towns, and today also in front of the Bundestag.These people step forward for their basic rights and must not be put under observation by the Constitution Defense!

 Many citizens have existential concerns and questions.

             Manuela Rottmann (Greens): To that, you still have no answer!

 They want not only to know how to continue with their businesses, local concerns and cultural places,

            Hermann Gröhe (CDU/CSU): What do you know of culture?

but, in regards the setting aside of the basic rights, they fear for their freedom. Corona app, pursuit of contacts, digital health controls, indirect immunization obligation: All of these are symptoms of an approaching smart health dictatorship. People ask themselves, for example, whether they will have disadvantages if they do not immunize or do not wish to be registered.

           Britta Haßelman (Greens): What is “indirect immunization obligation”supposed                    to mean?

Then comes there a day no longer in restaurants, or at sports, or in foreign countries? Who asks something similar, as you know, is designated a conspiracy theorist.Yet in China that sort of total surveillance is already a fact and we want to go not one step along that way!

The “FAZ”, by which one will not walk too closely, in case one be spoken of as “close to the government”,

            Carsten Schneider (SPD): Na ja!

twittered: The high #Corona-numbers in many Western countries raise the disturbing question of whether open societies are less suited to react to global threats than authoritarian systems.

Does anyone there wish to take the hint? Representatives of the faculty of public law at the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, expounded before the Bundestag’s health committee in an experts statement – cite:

The planned §28a IfSG [infection prevention law] does not satisfy the prerequisites of parliamentary reserve and the specificity principle.The formulation permits no consideration at all of interests affected in their basic rights to be recognized, but openly wishes to one-sidedly legitimize the previous procedures during the Corona epidemic.

 Thus the experts in the health committee.

“No consideration at all”, thus the matter stands. Since what is it other than immoderate and unbalanced when the inviolability of a dwelling is placed at disposal, when the Chancellor in all seriousness declares, Children should be allowed to meet only one friend?

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Unbelievable!

Have we then the plague in the land, Frau Chancellor?

Ladies and gentlemen, what is a pandemic of national scope? Who defines that today prescribes the state of exception. Apparently Herr Drosten is the present German sovereign and the arguments of other virologists and epidemiologists which express themselves against the lockdown will be wiped away, somewhat like the paper of Herr Streeck and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians which numerous doctors associations have also signed. The signers demand a unified, nationwide warning system, which a glance at the present situation permits one to recognize to be at hand at the federal as well as the local levels. It puts a command in place of a ban, self-responsibility in place of tutelage. It pleads for the promotion of hygiene concepts in place of closings, as well as for the protection of groups at risk by means of special preventative measures. We support such reasonable ideas, just as we set ourselves against those emergency measures ruinous to the economy and people’s relations.

We must yet live with the virus for many months and the citizens know that. Most are dealing quite reasonably with the situation, just as restaurateurs, theater people and concert organizers are dealing quite reasonably with the situation: They have registered visitors, they have limited their capacity, they have developed hygiene concepts, and for that they have expended money from declining incomes. That, despite this, they are closed is unbearable and it amounts to dictatorship.    

I have in this place already said – and I will not weary of repeating it – : The sovereign of this country is the German people represented by this parliament. Only this parliament can decide on the restrictions of basic rights and, after in fact weighing all arguments, on a precisely limited time. Not once have you laid that down: A precisely limited time.  

Ladies and gentlemen, that the government presents faits accomplis to the members elected by the people contradicts the spirit of democracy and of the Basic Law. On that account alone, we reject this law – and not, Herr Buschmann, because we do not want this parliament, because we do not want democracy, but because we are obviously the only democratic delegation in this country!

I am grateful. Hopefully, others have learned something.

            (The members of the AfD rise.)

Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): Just what might you do if a really good speech were delivered?

           Tino Chrupalla (AfD): You still have not had a good one!

 

 

[trans: tem]