Jörg Meuthen on the European Parliamentary Elections

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.
 

One thought on “Jörg Meuthen on the European Parliamentary Elections

  1. 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?

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