Jörg Meuthen is the federal spokesman for the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany) as well as a member of the European Parliament. In the following video from RT, Mr. Meuthen is interviewed about the results of the European parliamentary elections, in which the AfD gained 11% of the vote — not as much as hoped for, but a significant improvement over the previous election.
Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:03 | Yes, Mr. Meuthen, 11% in the election for the EU Parliament, let’s be honest, you aren’t | |
| 00:07 | entirely satisfied, are you? —Of course one always hopes for more. It would be a fib to say now | |
| 00:10 | that I wouldn’t have wished for more. I personally had expected | |
| 00:13 | 12 to 13%, so it is a little less. Correctly classified, we have gained 50% compared with | |
| 00:18 | the last European elections. You can’t compare it with | |
| 00:22 | the Bundestag election because we don’t have a 5% clause here. | |
| 00:25 | And because of that, many small parties have also eaten away | |
| 00:28 | at what would otherwise have ended up being ours. If there are many smaller alternative parties, | |
| 00:31 | perhaps voters said rather than choosing the big alternative, | |
| 00:34 | they’d rather have a small alternative. I think we can be satisfied | |
| 00:37 | with this result. We now have eleven deputies in the European Parliament. | |
| 00:41 | I had been there alone so far. That’s a significant difference. I think so. Especially since we are | |
| 00:45 | now a part of a larger group. Together with Lega, the Rassemblement National and others | |
| 00:50 | we will be able to do substantial work there, and that’s good. —If you look at | |
| 00:54 | the issues of the environment, domestic security and peace-building, | |
| 00:57 | these were issues that people were more interested in than, for example, migration. | |
| 01:01 | Could it be that the AfD’s topic is also losing a bit of relevance regarding the current situation? | |
| 01:06 | I don’t see it that way. People always associate us being only concerned | |
| 01:09 | with the migration issue, but that’s not the case. | |
| 01:12 | We address all the issues you just mentioned and others. | |
| 01:15 | We have our position on all of them. It seems the German media | |
| 01:18 | tries to crudely portray us as “the party that’s against migration”. | |
| 01:23 | It’s not that simple. We’ve worked out the party program. | |
| 01:28 | We lead our own federal committee. There are no topics | |
| 01:31 | we don’t address or where we don’t have a position. | |
| 01:34 | It is just very often an alternative position. Policies on climate have crucial importance. | |
| 01:37 | We have a decidedly different attitude than the Green Party, and I think | |
| 01:42 | ours is the smarter one. —But that obviously doesn’t work. | |
| 01:45 | The Greens emotionalised the topic. Through this emotionalisation | |
| 01:48 | they’ve whipped everyone into a climate hysteria. | |
| 01:51 | We have to acknowledge that first of all. Let’s just say, | |
| 01:54 | they managed that. That’s why they are cheering at the moment. | |
| 01:57 | So if they try to implement what they advocate then they’ll end up | |
| 02:01 | with a bloody nose fairly quickly, because people will wake up. | |
| 02:04 | They will notice that it doesn’t work and they’ll go down again as fast as they shot upwards. | |
| 02:09 | We will persistently travel our path of reason. We make common-sense policies | |
| 02:13 | based on data and facts. We don’t emotionalise | |
| 02:17 | as strongly as the others do. We believe that in the long run we will assert ourselves with it. | |
| 02:23 | How would you classify the strong election results | |
| 02:27 | in Eastern Germany? —Yes, they are more alert there. | |
| 02:30 | They just have 1989 in their blood. They are alert when | |
| 02:34 | it comes to political domination and lack of free speech. And we are experiencing a relatively | |
| 02:38 | strong political dominance at the moment. They also recognise when they are being manipulated. | |
| 02:42 | Look what the Green Party is doing with the “Fridays for Future” movement and all that. | |
| 02:46 | These are extremely strong manipulative things. In the west | |
| 02:49 | it’s not recognised as much as it is in the east. | |
| 02:52 | In the east they are wide awake and say: “We have already lived through that.” So when we’re not | |
| 02:56 | even permitted to present our arguments due to the fact that we are denied venues, | |
| 03:01 | because our cars are set on fire, or because our houses | |
| 03:04 | are attacked; they react to that differently in the east than in the west. | |
| 03:08 | The west reacts to these tactics with relative indifference. In the east they say: “That’s not | |
| 03:13 | happening here because we are familiar with those kind of games.” That makes a difference. | |
| 03:17 | Let’s take a look at the 11% you have on the EU level. Assuming the Grand Coalition in Germany | |
| 03:21 | won’t hold much longer and new elections were called, would you be happy about that or not? | |
| 03:26 | Under any circumstance I would be happy if this Coalition | |
| 03:31 | were to break up, because it has no majority anymore. It is evident that these large — | |
| 03:35 | I refer to them as former people’s parties — are now | |
| 03:38 | in decline. If there are no majorities, that would require in principle, | |
| 03:42 | new elections. I would see that with a smile in one eye | |
| 03:45 | and a tear in the other. If there was enough time for the Green Party to have | |
| 03:48 | an opportunity to disenchant themselves, that wouldn’t be so bad | |
| 03:51 | in my opinion. If we were to have federal elections at the moment, the Greens would probably reach | |
| 03:54 | 20% at the federal level. This would cause maximum damage in our country. | |
| 03:58 | It is our firm conviction that they propagate policy that is | |
| 04:01 | completely wrong. No one can seriously want them to run | |
| 04:04 | the government. So for that reason, being honest, I would be thankful | |
| 04:09 | to have a little more time to get our message out. | |
| 04:15 | You spoke of media campaigns against the AfD in the run-up | |
| 04:18 | to the elections to the European parliament. | |
| 04:21 | Can you put this into concrete terms? —Yes, my goodness, you have | |
| 04:27 | every public TV channel saying we are right-wing extremists or that we are associated with | |
| 04:34 | right-wing extremism. We are a conservative middle-class party. Basically, we are what the CDU | |
| 04:38 | used to be. Have a look at former CDU slogans of the nineties, | |
| 04:42 | then you’ll see they were clearly more “right” in quotation marks, | |
| 04:45 | than what we represent now. Of course there’s a campaign against us. | |
| 04:49 | Even the “Word for Sunday” which is televised | |
| 04:52 | on Saturday evenings had some pastor saying “Please don’t vote for AfD” | |
| 04:55 | because they are foreigner-hating evildoers and | |
| 04:58 | whatever else. That’s what I mean by a media campaign. | |
| 05:02 | We’re propped up on every corner as the bad guys, the racists that hate foreigners | |
| 05:07 | and whatever else they brand us with. That’s not who we are. We are a conservative middle-class | |
| 05:12 | freedom-loving patriotic party, which is totally distant from | |
| 05:16 | any form of racism. Nevertheless, we have young people | |
| 05:20 | demonstrating against us screaming “Nazis out! Racists out!” | |
| 05:24 | I could say the same thing. That’s the campaign I’m talking about, | |
| 05:27 | and it is working. These young people are told that we are the contemporary evildoers. |
It occurs to me that even AfD has to be quasi-socialist in its non-immigration positions.
Also, people speak of the nationalist resurgence in Europe. My big question is when and how do the new immigrants begin voting? We know there is a clear path to Democrat dominance with the birthright citizenship, if nothing else. Is there a pressure for the European migrants to vote, and when will that begin?