'Now WE ask the questions'

Our regular reader(s) can hardly fail to be aware of the Figures of SpeechFirst Law of German Politics: 'Nothing ever changes', and its various corollaries.

We are happy to see it currently being put to a Popper-style falsification test in Germany.

In a well-received speech to an assembly of citizens brought together for a demonstration in Cottbus by the Zukunft Heimat, 'Home Future' organization on 24 February 2018, the author and publisher Götz Kubitschek gave a vision of a political future for Germany which would certainly count as a falsification of our hypothesis.

It would be a devastating falsification, too, because almost everything would change were his vision to become reality. Given that there would be a new relationship between a new, self-confident Germany and the European Union the changes could be just as far-reaching as Brexit ought to be for the UK – we have yet to see how that last one will pan out.

The walk in Cottbus went off without incident. These right-wing thugs are useless when it comes to smashing shop windows, throwing rocks and provoking the police. They don't even cover their faces with masks or scarves. Pathetic.

Here is his speech translated into English. Only a few abstruse points have been left out. We should draw attention to Kubitschek's remarks on the attainment of normality for the new conservative movement.

Unfortunately, the video of his speech is no longer available on YouTube.

Götz Kubitschek, speech in Cottbus, 24 February 2018

I have noticed two things in the course of the past weeks and months.

Firstly, for the first time for as long as I can remember, I have listened to one or another speeches from MPs in the Federal Parliament.

Secondly, I have lost interest in trying to justify myself politically – it doesn't matter to whom – I simply don't justify myself anymore.

Both of these things are connected. Let me explain.

Ever since the AfD has been represented in the Federal Parliament with more than ninety MPs there is once again an opposition in Germany. Before this there was no opposition. I cannot tell you when this opposition disappeared from Parliament, but it hasn't been there for a very long time.

You can tell this by the fact that up until six months ago, government and opposition were in agreement on all essential points: YES to even more EU, YES to open borders, YES to disempowering the state, YES to even more national debt, YES to eviscerating the military and the police, YES to the destruction of the educational system, YES to the demonisation of German history, YES to insulting the German people, YES to the nasty and cowardly fight against the AfD, against Pegida, against citizen associations, against anything which attempted to encourage the CDU to resistance. YES, in effect, to the fight against the one opposition that we still had in this country.

So now, suddenly: NO. A clear, loud NO, ringing out in the middle of the Federal Parliament. The NO of a genuine opposition that could not be suppressed. At last a NO, a NO that again and again sang a different song from the rostrum, a song that was applauded by ninety other MPs. Not twenty, not thirty but ninety – that sounds like something, that sounds powerful.

That is comparable with what you are experiencing here in Cottbus. It is a different matter when you march through the streets not with just three hundred but with a couple of thousand people, such as have collected here in the square.

You look around you and you get a good feeling. Why is that? It comes from the fact that along with the many hundreds or even thousands of other demonstrators you can suddenly be sure that 'I am not wrong'. I am not wrong and I am by no means the only one that sees it this way and who will stand up and resist the wrong politics, the wrong politicians, the evisceration of our legal order, the excess of foreigners and above all the endangerment of our good life and our good future.

Believe me, the AfD MP in parliament feels just the same as you do. He can rest, as it were, on the support of the arms of his ninety colleagues, who see things in the same way that he does. He gets up from his seat among a large family, goes to the rostrum, speaks, sees friendly faces. He does not fall into self-questioning: he fights, he harries the opposition, he returns to his seat, he's patted on the shoulder, he has the assurance that he has done everything correctly.

And here, today, it is just the same. When you walk through the streets after this assembly you should say to those next to you, before you and behind you, 'It's good that you are here', or 'Now I see you, I know that I am doing the right thing here. You are doing the right thing, it is the right thing that we are both here, demonstrating'.

It sounds simple, but five years ago it was inconceivable, three years ago it was unlikely, in two years' time it will be child's play. Why? Because there will have been elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Frankfurt, and if I am not mistaken, there will be a new People's Party, the AfD, and a former People's Party – you know who I mean.

And then you can go as an AfD voter and courageous citizen through the streets of your beautiful town and that will be the most normal thing in the world. You will meet people with similar ideas who will no longer have to hide away. And then you will have arrived at normality. That is the great keyword: normality. What you are doing today, what the AfD is doing in parliament, what Pegida has done for some years now: we are regaining normality. We are straightening things out.

Up to now we have lived in a country in which, with every year that passed, with every new election, with every government, the decisions were ever crazier. Literally crazy. Far removed from everything that is normal, the things that decide your lives and my life and the lives of millions of Germans, too. Work, industriousness, standard of living, education, public order, and above all the awareness that this is our home, that this home belongs to us and no one else.

With the patience of a donkey we have participated in the many political experiments and lunacies, we have adapted and obeyed orders. We did this for a long time, searched for the errors in ourselves, above all when someone in the political classes said again and again: 'Don't be so backward. Don't be so obstinately German. Be world open, be content, and keep your trap shut.'

[...]

I come back to the second point I mentioned at the beginning of my speech: I don't bother to justify myself anymore. It is no longer necessary. And why? The answer is simple: our country has experienced a political earthquake. We are part of this earthquake and very slowly it is filtering through the heads of the old parties and so-called civil society. The shifting of the political spectrum to the right, to the patriots, to Germany, can no longer be stopped.

[Calls of Widerstand, 'resistance']

Thirteen percent in the Federal Parliament, soon at least twenty-five percent or thirty percent in Saxony, Thuringia or here with you in Brandenburg. Those are no longer short-lived expressions of discontent that will simply melt away. This change supported by at least a third of the population and one must live with this and take account of it.

And what will be the consequence? Questions will now be asked and we will be the ones asking them. And if the left-liberal political establishment hopes that we will be gentle with them and that their political errors and their disgusting fight against us will be quickly forgiven, I can only say: 'wrong'. Now we ask the questions, now we ask who was responsible for what has been done to us and done to our country.

Who bears responsibility for the mass immigration of millions who do not belong here? Who first sold the idea of this to us as our moral duty, then as an economic necessity, then as an inescapable destiny? Who was it who asserted that we Germans had hardly any more right to our country than the foreigners? Who is responsible for Islamic terrorism and the concrete blocks around street parties? Who is responsible for the everyday criminality and the parasites on the welfare system? For organized criminality, for the brazen anti-German ideology of some migrant groups, for no-go zones and the slack judicial procedure? Who is responsible for the fact that suddenly inconceivable amounts of money are available to plaster over the angry discontent – money that was not available either for our schools, for our pensioners or our police? Who is responsible?

[Calls of Angela!]

Who is responsible for the evisceration of law and order, for the biased repulsiveness of the state, for the coarsening of political discourse and for the brazen legal violations against our demonstrations and election posts and the obstruction of our democratic participation in everything that is important for us and that affects us.

The answer is not difficult. The responsibility is borne by the political class and the civil society, who with an unbelievably distant arrogance have divided up our land and our wealth among themselves.

These people are our opponents, they are immensely powerful, but they are hearing our battering-ram on the door that has protected them so far.

[...]

Two last things. The language of our opponents is inappropriate, in fact actually offensive. We are either racists, Nazis, filth, vermin, who need to be blocked, neutralised, weeded out.

I ask emphatically that our tone should be different. The re-creation of normality begins with a different tone. I am a strict opponent of vocabulary such as 'half-negro' or 'camel-driver' or 'caraway-dealer' [= Turks living in Germany]. Citizens who are thinking of joining us are repelled because they also dislike this tone. Please believe me: one can argue forcefully without this tone, much better in fact.

Secondly, with your questions about responsibility you will always meet those who dispute that [bias] and argue that every patriot is treated in just the same way as every left-liberal person.

Suggest to these people that they try the 'AfD Game'. In their circle of friends, at their workplace, in front of their teachers and in their church meetings just mention in passing that they voted for the AfD. The reactions will be educative: they will reflect the cold showers that have fallen on the people of this country and which have driven them to our meeting today.

Thank you. Enjoy your walk!

Translation ©FoS, [link to this page to use].

Scenes from the demo