Alexander Gauland is the co-leader of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany). In the speech below, which was delivered in the Bundestag on November 21, Mr. Gauland discusses the UN migration pact and Chancellor Merkel’s obdurate support of it.
Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Chancellor. | |
| 00:05 | When in France, in 1832, Heinrich Heine met Germans emigrating overseas. He said, all these | |
| 00:15 | poor people wailed in their misery, but always ended with the question, ‘What shall we do? | |
| 00:24 | Should we start a revolution?’ I swear, Heine continued, a tenth of what people in Germany | |
| 00:31 | have endured would have caused 36 revolutions in France. Seeing the nationwide protests | |
| 00:38 | of French motorists against the government’s gasoline price increase made me think of | |
| 00:45 | Heinrich Heine. The angry rant of a 51-year-old Breton motorist who drives a diesel car | |
| 00:54 | was watched by millions of French. “Ten years ago you talked us into buying diesel cars because | |
| 01:02 | that was supposed to be environmentally friendly,” addressing President Macron, your holy saint. | |
| 01:09 | And now diesel drivers are being punished with a hefty tax. Do you think we will see | |
| 01:17 | similar protests in Germany? There are enough reasons to protest. At any rate, | |
| 01:23 | a German environmental organisation just won their case to close Highway 40 (A40) | |
| 01:29 | in the city of Essen and a main traffic artery of the Ruhr area. That will hit commuters | |
| 01:34 | harder than price increases. Will the diesel motorists of NRW take to the streets? | |
| 01:41 | Probably not. Heinrich Heine knew the reason why. When it come to patience, | |
| 01:46 | the German and the French differ quite a bit. | |
| 01:50 | Ladies and Gentlemen, we all witnessed the moving performance from Emmanuel Macron | |
| 01:56 | here in our German parliament. His call for an even firmer German-French alliance and | |
| 02:04 | German-French solidarity. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our undivided sympathy belongs | |
| 02:10 | to those protesting motorists. In a newspaper interview, Alexis Beer, Research Director | |
| 02:21 | at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, explained that one of the reasons | |
| 02:27 | for these protests was that the taxpayers at the lowest level on the social pyramid | |
| 02:30 | don’t see any benefit from what they pay in taxes. It is not surprising that the protests | |
| 02:38 | occurred in rural areas and in medium-sized cities. These areas suffer from decades of | |
| 02:45 | general decline and the deterioration of public services. How different is that from our own | |
| 02:53 | problems in remote regions, ladies and gentlemen? Before giving his enchanting | |
| 03:00 | declaration of love to Germany on behalf of France, President Macron said, and I quote, | |
| 03:08 | “Each one of us will have to share his or her decision-making rights, foreign policy, migration | |
| 03:16 | or development policy, as well as a growing part of his budget or even his taxes, in the spirit | |
| 03:22 | of communitarisation.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, that wouldn’t be the first time | |
| 03:29 | a marriage was arranged for financial reasons but publicly sold as a love story. | |
| 03:39 | As far as we are concerned, we are committed to the contract that was signed in Maastricht. | |
| 03:45 | Which precisely does NOT stipulate bearing the liabilities of others through revenue sharing. | |
| 03:53 | That’s the way we want to keep it. | |
| 03:57 | I have already pointed out here that only a fraction of the German population | |
| 04:02 | Must be thanked for even being able to fund the government budget plan. | |
| 04:06 | There are only about 15 million actual taxpayers that keep this place functioning. | |
| 04:11 | They bear the brunt of all the enormous costs of the energy revolution, of mass immigration, | |
| 04:16 | the so-called euro-rescue and now the automobile hostility sold as a climate rescue. | |
| 04:23 | Very generously the federal government raised the limit for nitrogen oxides for road traffic | |
| 04:29 | from 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 50 micrograms. Madame Chancellor | |
| 04:36 | executed that to force diesel motorists to avoid driving in cities. To this day, of course, | |
| 04:42 | there is no evidence that a nitrogen oxide concentration over 40 micrograms cause | |
| 04:48 | health damage. The limit for the nitrogen oxide concentration by industrial workplaces for | |
| 04:56 | Germany and in the EU is 950 micrograms, by the way. | |
| 05:03 | The pulmonologist and former president of the German Pneumological Association, Professor | |
| 05:09 | Dieter Köhler, explained that the EU limits for nitrogen oxides and particulate matter by no means | |
| 05:17 | present a health risk threshold in Germany. No one has ever died from nitrogen oxides. | |
| 05:29 | But ladies and gentlemen, in reality this is not really about the car exhaust, but lofty ideals. | |
| 05:34 | This isn’t about nitrogen oxide, but rather moral grandstanding. | |
| 05:38 | This is the way moral grandstanding works: There are those who do the preaching and those | |
| 05:43 | who do the paying. So the green apostles explain to the people through their politics and the media | |
| 05:48 | that they will have to walk more, use a bike or train in the future. The people will, not the | |
| 05:56 | green apostles. They might as well just say, “Keep your mouth shut and just pay up.” Unless | |
| 06:02 | of course the people of this nation follow the example of the French and protest in the streets. | |
| 06:11 | Ladies and gentlemen, fine dust and nitrogen oxides limits are meticulously monitored, but | |
| 06:16 | limits for migration seldom are. However, occasionally the side effects of migration are | |
| 06:23 | deadlier than those side effects from particulate matter. | |
| 06:33 | Recently in Wittenburg a rejected, but tolerated, Afghan asylum seeker slit a pensioner’s throat. | |
| 06:41 | This certainly shouldn’t lead to hate or smear campaigns, just as the responsible Minister of | |
| 06:46 | the Interior remarked. On top of that, migration costs considerable sums of money which the | |
| 06:51 | federal government is discretely silent about. And I quote, “The costs of refugees are | |
| 06:57 | distributed to various budgets. Anyone who attempts to ask the government in Berlin about | |
| 07:01 | exact amounts is sent into a labyrinth of statistics and various responsible departments. However, | |
| 07:07 | the one crucial figure is elusive: All expenditures | |
| 07:11 | for a clearly defined group of people. This is not | |
| 07:16 | from me, but was written in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. | |
| 07:26 | Foreign Aid and Development Minister Gerd Müller spoke of €30 billion spent by the | |
| 07:30 | federal states and municipalities per year for a million migrants. | |
| 07:34 | Of the approximately one and a half million actual and alleged refugees that have come to | |
| 07:38 | us since 2015, that would be €45 billion per year. The Institute of the German Economy | |
| 07:46 | calculates 50 billion. The Kieler Institute for Economic Research, up to 55 billion. Just for | |
| 07:53 | comparison, from the budget expenditures this past year: Education and Parental Benefits from | |
| 07:59 | federal government amounted to 6.4 billion. For federal highways and federal roads 6.6 billion. | |
| 08:06 | The annual budget of the Federal Ministry of Research, our future, is €17 billion. | |
| 08:14 | Ladies and gentlemen, are we at least investing our money wisely? | |
| 08:19 | A large portion of the current group of migrants lies within the category of primary or secondary | |
| 08:25 | illiteracy. 70% of the migrants abandon their vocational studies, according to the Chamber of | |
| 08:34 | Handworkers. Every second unemployed person in western Germany in 2017 had a migration | |
| 08:41 | background. 30% of the prisoners in Germany are foreigners. For comparison, let’s look at a | |
| 08:49 | WDR [West German Television] study. 40% of Germans can look forward to poverty as senior | |
| 08:55 | citizens. Every second citizen that enters retirement from 2030 will received a monthly | |
| 09:00 | pension that is under the lowest poverty level. The number of people without | |
| 09:09 | a place to live increased from 248,000 (in 2010) to 335,000 by the end of 2016. This was | |
| 09:18 | the answer from the federal government in response to an inquiry from the Left Party. | |
| 09:23 | There isn’t any good news about the conditions of public schools, swimming pools and | |
| 09:27 | parks either. Funds are scarce everywhere, although we supposedly have so much money. | |
| 09:35 | I know, ladies and gentlemen, the left side of the house will accuse the AfD of playing foreigners | |
| 09:41 | against Germans in social issues once again, even though I have only listed a few facts. | |
| 09:46 | A social welfare nation and open borders. That can never work together. That’s about the same | |
| 09:52 | as keeping your windows open in winter and turning the heating up higher and higher to keep | |
| 09:58 | the room temperature warm. Good. The current migration costs a lot and doesn’t | |
| 10:05 | bring a good return, but at least we were helpful, right? Ladies and gentlemen, | |
| 10:11 | I ask you to remember this number. Every twelve days the population of Africa grows | |
| 10:17 | by a million people. This means the 1.5 million migrants who came to us | |
| 10:24 | on the basis of Ms. Merkel’s open border policy in September 2015, causing our country | |
| 10:30 | enormous difficulties, will be born within the next 18 days. Compared to that, | |
| 10:41 | our efforts will be just a drop in a bucket. Even though our experience with migration | |
| 10:52 | hasn’t been the best up until now, the federal government of Germany intends | |
| 10:55 | to sign the U.N. Global Migration Pact in a few days. This global compact that is | |
| 11:00 | completely non-binding, but intended to combat the causes of displacement, | |
| 11:06 | doesn’t even say a word about the main cause: Population explosion. Whoever decides | |
| 11:17 | that Europe should be the drainpipe for that will not only weaken Europe, but | |
| 11:22 | won’t be any help to Africa either. Many countries, even many European countries, won’t | |
| 11:31 | be signing this document. And even Israel said no, and I am eager to hear the explanation. | |
| 11:39 | At the moment, there are at least 17 petitions that have been submitted to the | |
| 11:46 | Bundestag against this pact, and even in the Union [CDU] opposition is growing. Mr. Spahn, | |
| 11:50 | the Minister of Health, wants to have a vote on it. The chairman of the Bundestag Committee | |
| 11:57 | on Economic Cooperation and development, Peter Ramsauer, believes the pact will | |
| 12:02 | open a steady migration flow to Germany, no-holds-barred. One of your very own | |
| 12:09 | representatives, dear colleagues from the CDU. The Union of Values says “yes” to integration, | |
| 12:16 | but “no thank you” to the migration pact. They’re right. The public is continuously told | |
| 12:24 | that this pact is not legally binding. It is not legally binding and that is why Germany | |
| 12:31 | will participate, is what the Chancellor said in the beginning of November | |
| 12:35 | in Warsaw while meeting with the Polish prime minister. Dear Madame Chancellor, | |
| 12:40 | a charming cameo of political double standards. At the same time we hear the pact | |
| 12:49 | is to regulate global migration, to curb illegal immigration and fight the traffickers. | |
| 12:57 | Ladies and gentlemen on the government bench, could you please explain to the public | |
| 13:03 | how this will work with a completely non-binding document? Good luck with that. | |
| 13:11 | I already know why Mr. Maas doesn’t try to explain it, because he can’t. | |
| 13:16 | We demand an end to these experiments. The problems that this government | |
| 13:23 | has spawned can barely be shouldered. Stop basing your policies on illusion. | |
| 13:30 | For that reason, I will not conclude with a quote from Bismarck, which | |
| 13:34 | I normally enjoy doing. This time it is Abraham Lincoln. “You won’t strengthen the weak | |
| 13:39 | by weakening the strong. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them | |
| 13:44 | what they could and should do for themselves.” |
Wow! Very enjoyable. Thank you Miss Piggy and Vlad. I truly value these insider-takes on world affairs.
I’m surprised at how well this speech was received by his audience, though. It sounded like there was a lot of approval.
Is that Jens Spahn at 13:30? Compare:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jens+spahn&ia=images&iax=images
I can’t tell; all these white male faces look pretty much alike — no diversity.
No, that’s Heiko Maas, the foreign secretary. I don’t think Jens Spahn was present.
It’s so frightening for Germans and Europeans to sign this dead warrant (UN pact) and I don’t want to even think about it what will happen to These countries who sign this deadly pact and for whole continent in the same time …speechless..
Great speech. Falling on deaf ears by the majority. As usual.
According to my understanding, Herr Gauland is an elected and fully legitimate people’s representative in the Bundestag. It disappoints me, to say the least, that the rest of those dumb ******** sitting around there, namely the representatives of other parties (CDU, Grüne, die Linke etc.) PAY HIM SO LITTLE RESPECT. Could it not be that they have SOMETHING TO LEARN FROM HIM, that if Merkel stopped fiddling with her damned phone, unplugged her ears and brain, she could be one of those who LEARN SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING.