Rembrandt Clancy has translated and subtitled three new videos featuring Tatjana Festerling, one of the most popular and prominent leaders of PEGIDA Germany. The translator has provided an introduction and transcripts to accompany the videos.

The Price of Liberty is Courage

Introduction
by Rembrandt Clancy

On 9 April 2016, Tatjana Festerling, as a representative of the Dresden-based PEGIDA movement, delivered a speech in Paris at a congress of the conservative Institut ILIADE pour la longue mémoire européenne (The Institute for the Long European ILIADE Memory). According to Politically Incorrect, there were 1,200 French intellectuals present. The theme of the talk was “The price of liberty is courage”. The first video below is the record of this speech, during which Tatjana Festerling received generous applause.

The Institut ILIADE was founded in June of 2014 at the top of Mount Olympus. They describe their aim as being in “in continuity with the thought and action of Dominique Venner, thus they strive to affirm the cultural richness of Europe. One of the principle “missions” of the Institut is a demanding training programme, which consists in the metapolitical formation (formation métapolitique) of selected attendees. The objective is to bring about

the emergence of a new generation of actors dedicated to the awakening the peoples and nations of Europe to the task of combating the risk of the “large scale eradication” (grand effacement) of our civilisation and to take up once more the thread of our identity. (Formation)

This description is consistent with the information which Gates of Vienna received about the Institut from a contact in France to the effect that ‘they are intellectuals, they come from different backgrounds, but are along the lines of the European Identitaire’.

In her speech at the Institut Frau Festerling draws attention to the concept of metapolitics. She makes the point that “the metapolitical … effect … on opinion has been noticeable for a long time”. The concept of “metapolitics” is a rare term, and the way it is used here may at least in part derive from the influence of Thor von Waldstein, who delivered a lecture entitled “Metapolitics and Party Politics” in June of 2015 to a German conservative congress (cf. Gates of Vienna). For Thor von Waldstein, metapolitics is the means to the achievement of cultural hegemony, both of which concepts he traces to the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci. Metapolitics is

Analogous to the criminal figure of the perpetrator behind the perpetrator, we can also define metapolitics as the “politics behind the politics.” It recognizes the essential element of authority to be the cultural power of the state; that is, its capacity to support itself on intellectual, ethical and traditional values that are affirmed by the majority of citizens. (Metapolitics and Party Politics)

Applied in favour of establishing a cultural basis for winning back Europe, metapolitics is the political force which would “break out of political correctness and take back territory” (Tatjana Festerling), but it

can only prevail if it first succeeds in taking hold of a society’s cultural superstructure. So, for example, before a political party can obtain lasting electoral success in parliament, the pre-political ground must be prepared. (ibid.)

However, Tatjana Festerling expresses no interest in the establishment of a political party. Also she makes no mention of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). She speaks more in the language of the metapolitical infrastructure. It may be no accident, therefore, that some of Thor von Waldstein’s criteria for metapolitical work are explicit in her speech: “the courage to posit one’s own topics”, “the battle for the language” and “the courage of provocation”.

In this second 50-second video, Tatjana Festerling expresses the reason for her speech to the Institut ILIADE in Paris, and stresses a few main points which she wished to convey to her audience. She also states her theme: “The price of liberty is courage”.

The next “film short” is Tatjana Festerling’s description and diagnosis of German political and social malaise. The original appears on Tatjana Festerling TV under the title of “The Price of Liberty is Courage” and is described there as supporting Tatjana Festerling’s talk in Paris at the Institut ILIADE.

Transcript of Tatjana Festerling’s Speech at the Congress of the Institut ILIADE

9 April 2016

Original German Video Source: Institut ILIADE

Introduction of the speaker

It is a great pleasure for us and great honour to welcome all of you here, so as to present a Franco-German axis of resistance and struggle for European identity. Everyone here congratulates you for your courage. All the people here congratulate you for your courage. A warm welcome… Tatjana Festerling.

Tatjana Festerling

Good Evening Paris,

Thank you so much for offering to PEGIDA the possibility of addressing a few words to you; to PEGIDA, the largest and most discomfiting, and above all the most stubborn resistance and liberation movement in Germany.

Ladies and gentlemen, in 2015, 1.5 million young, testosterone-loaded, insufficiently trained Muslim men from partially brutalised societies arrived in Germany — at one stroke. What this surplus of males means for a Western, feminised society, we are all aware.

And what are we doing, we, the citizens of Europe? Are we protecting ourselves, our women and our children? No, we are still handing over responsibility, and with it our power, to political parties; that is, to those who have led us into the catastrophe in the first place.

Every four to five years we are allowed to play the sovereign for about three seconds; which is to say, it takes just so long to place the two little crosses on the ballot. And what do the right-wing conservative parties do? They are thinking in institutions. They think, like the chess player, over every next move, driven by anxiety not to rub someone the wrong way and remain electable in a way suitable to the masses — everywhere in Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here in Paris, and you all know very well exactly how the new fashion trends are set, which then go all around the world: certainly not by models in monotonous grey suits slinking along a catwalk. No, it is the going against the grain, it is the scandalously provocative, it is the breaking of taboos; and it is above all courage, which brings about the pioneering role and initiates changes. And should that not also hold true for politics? But what we see across Europe is system conformity.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is an illusion to believe that one can reform or even structurally change from the inside an entrenched system made up of outright profiteers. And anyone with corporate experience knows this much: re-organisational measures require the engagement of external corporate consultancies, who set in motion the radical restructuring measures. And if you will, PEGIDA is such a task force, a special operations commando for freedom.

We don’t give a damn about Left … We don’t give a damn about Left-Green moralism, this moral terrorism, which paralyses every open discussion! Moreover, we don’t give a damn about criminal complaints and all the other attempts to stigmatise, criminalise and silence us. Yes… Yes, and only because we are “improper”; yes, by the very reason of being WITHOUT SCRUPLES in the POSITIVE sense, will we be able to break out of political correctness and take back territory. And only with self-conscious impropriety — which the philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, calls “well-tempered cruelty” — will we exert pressure on the politicians. Pious words and intellectual ‘going around in circles’ has long since been insufficient, for the crime which is being committed in Europe is no longer to be stopped with logic, rationality and reason.

The question is quite simply: to be or not to be.

But the first steps have been taken: the metapolitical- psycho-political effect the change in the climate of opinion has been noticeable for a long time — and it has occasioned YOU to invite me here today, an improper person.

And for that reason I appeal to the slumbering rebels in you: you too — become improper!

For the price of liberty is courage ladies and gentlemen!

Many thanks!

Transcript of Tatjana Festerling’s Short Statement to the Institut ILIADE

April 8 2016

Original video source: Institut ILIADE

Pegida is the resistance and freedom movement, which has been showing its presence on the streets and squares of Dresden every Monday for 18 months.

And I am very happy to be here today in Paris at this important conservative congress, since naturally we would be very, very very pleased to network with our European neighbours.

On this occasion I have I tried to say in a few words, that the citizens of Europe ought not to rely any longer exclusively and solely on their parties and ought not to relinquish responsibility and thereby also their power to parties. But I have appealed to an inner rebel of the Europeans. It requires courage. The price of freedom is courage and it is precisely that which is in question in these times.

Transcript of Tatjana Festerling’s Documentary “The Price of Liberty is Courage”

Original German Source: Tatjana Festerling TV

April 22 2016

Good day, my name is Tatjana Festerling and I am from PEGIDA. I am standing here in Dresden on the Königsufer in front of the magnificent silhouette of the Old City. Dresden is not only a cultural centre in Germany; Dresden is above all also the capital of resistance. Thousands of citizens, Monday after Monday, stand up for freedom, for the many-facetted German culture and for the enlightened values of Europe.

HOW IS THE CHAOS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION INTO GERMANY TO BE EXPLAINED?

The list of the repercussions is by now very long. We are dealing with infringements on rights and violations of the law; and above all, the violation of the right of asylum. Nobody knows how many asylum locations we now have in Germany. There is almost no administration governing asylum seekers generally. Hundreds of thousands of them are simply not registered or they have submerged; in other words, there are also no precise figures on the number of asylum seekers in the country. There has been a complete over-representation of males from the very beginning of the asylum deluge; so that officially we are speaking of 800,000 young men between the ages of 18 and 30, compared with five million German men of the same age. We are seeing an overtaxing of the authorities and police, which means that the domestic security of Germany can no longer be guaranteed. Everywhere in Germany vigilante groups are forming.

Deportation is as much as non-existent. The numbers are all too ridiculous. There is de facto no longer any such thing as crossing the border illegally; everyone who crosses the border and gives the magic word “asylum” obtains a procedure.

Daily we read of acts of violence by asylum seekers, from sexual assaults to rapes. There is a demonstrable increase in criminality, even though there is an attempt to cover it up through police statistics. The most prominent example was certainly the large-scale attempt to cover up the widespread sexual terror-attack on New Year’s Eve. Swimming pools are now operated according to gender-separated swimming times. All across the country there is now banning of pork in kindergartens and schools. Villages, communities and entire areas of cities are on the threshold of destabilisation. Community life is collapsing. Such places as concert halls and public spaces are occupied by asylum seekers. We are on the verge of the collapse of communal finance, social welfare and health insurance. Also dramatic is the complete loss of trust in the politicians and in the media. Not for nothing does the word “Lügenpresse” [lying press] surface ever more frequently. The media operate their own political agenda. We are experiencing an opinion diktat and a bitter struggle for sovereignty over interpretation in Germany.

By contrast the asylum industry is booming. Dependency relationships are created, individual profiteers break rank, and that too disturbs the solidarity among people. In Germany we are facing a deep division in society. However, here is where the difference between East and West Germany becomes ever more clearly apparent. In the large cities parallel societies are appearing, and we are experiencing a ghettoisation in major German cities.

All in all we ascertain Germany to be in a mode of hysteria. The danger from the Right is played up, and in the process a self-hatred becomes apparent; and that is taking on enormous proportions, particularly among the youth in Germany. Even our children are currently being indoctrinated in the schools on the subject of refugees, and the denial of an increasingly self-fundamentalising Islam continues apace. At the same time we are faced with a mounting intolerance for dissenting opinions. Every attempt to conduct an honest debate is nipped in the bud. We are seeing a moral-terrorism in Germany, an exclusively moralising type of debate. Factual arguments are immediately suppressed. Unfortunately we are experiencing a complete failure of the intellectuals. That is particularly sad.

One can say that Germany is suffering from a collective Stockholm syndrome, which is leading to a full paralysis in politics; above all since there is an absence of parliamentary opposition; and on the other hand, there is the ever self-confident, demanding Islam and the emergence of the fascistic autonomists, the Antifa.

In Germany the situation bears comparison with the Third Reich; one person is transforming an entire country.

IF THE MIGRANT CRISIS IS CONTRIBUTING TO AN AWAKENING OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE, HOW DOES IT DO SO?

We are looking at marked differences between East and West Germany. PEGIDA, in the forefront in Dresden, is visible every Monday as the single, concrete possibility for the expression of resistance. Unfortunately only the people in the East are courageous enough to take to the streets in the thousands; in the West of Germany, they number only in the hundreds. The famous awakening will probably not happen there. Whoever has still not understood what is happening in Germany, has consciously decided in favour of the displacement. And people are afraid; therefore we see relativisation, trivialisation, and the first signs of submission.

Unfortunately it is becoming clear that Germany has learned nothing from her history.

WHAT INITIATIVES ARE YOU AND PEGIDA THINKING OF TAKING AGAINST THE ASYLUM POLICY?

We call for protection and help for genuine refugees and other people who are seeking protection; for example, homosexuals. We call abuses and crimes by name and expose contradictions. We understand breaking up political correctness to be our task and in doing so we are calling for freedom of speech and law abidance; that is, completely normal characteristics of a healthy civil society.

We have also officially declared the German guilt complex to be at an end, for only self confident and complex-free citizens are capable of responsible decisions. By means of provocations we unmask the lies of the press. We raise the question of identity, of values and of dominant culture; we endeavour to shed light on the psychological interrelationships, and by the summer we had already formulated concrete demands on policy makers.

Beyond that we are building alliances with our European neighbours; and, not least, PEGIDA is good for the soul and strengthens the confidence of the citizen. And for that reason we urge citizens to local resistance. And finally we express controversial and polarising ideas; for example, that of secession, a separation of Saxony from the Federal Republic.

For links to previous articles about PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) and related movements, see the PEGIDA Archives.