In a speech in the German parliament, a leading Alternative for Germany politician, Dr. Bernd Baumann, said that the majority of Germans oppose unlimited immigration and the parallel societies growing in their country. He also stated that there is an ethnic German people despite denials that this exists from government officials and that these people have rights enshrined in the German constitution. This German people, argues Baumann, should be able to decide who enters the country and who should be forced to leave the country.
“(Germans) don’t want new parallel societies to keep emerging, from completely foreign cultures, with completely different values, from women’s rights to family honor and male violence to the tough Turkish-Arab clans. They don’t want that. The majority of Germans, the majority, want to preserve what is their own, their own values, their own culture, exactly what makes up the ethnic-cultural German people as part of European-Occidental civilization. That’s what they want, ladies and gentlemen,” said Dr. Bernd Baumann, director of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag,
Baumann had begun his speech by criticizing the Christian Democrats (CDU), a party he accused of starting the immigration crisis in 2016 and misleading the German public now about what he said was the party’s true intentions around immigration. Baumann stated:
“The CDU demands more deportation with today’s application. As early as 2017, this party promised a deportation offensive. Repatriation, repatriation, repatriation. Today, the (CDU) is asking the same thing again, but there is a difference. At that time, the CDU ruled (in government). Did the CDU meet its own demands? Did the party keep its word? No, ladies and gentlemen, the number of deportations actually fell, rapidly, ever lower — so much for the credibility of the CDU. They don’t want deportations, just as little as today’s left-green government of SPD, Greens and FDP. (The CDU) had also announced a deportation offensive. Nothing had happened for two years
Baumann said that the current German government rejects the idea that a “German people” even exist unless it is in the context of someone who merely has a German passport. However, Baumann states that there is indeed an ethnic German people and the German constitution explicitly notes their existence.
“But there are politicians in the government today who don’t know what to do with this ‘people.’ I quote Vice-Chancellor (Robert) Habeck: ‘There is no people (and therefore there is no betrayal of the people).’ The term ‘people’ excludes ‘people.'”
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Habeck reportedly made the comment, “There is no people and therefore there is no betrayal of the people,” in response to an interview where he was asked to comment on the phrase “traitor to the people.” He called the term a “Nazi” term.
The AfD’s Baumann said that Habeck’s comment was “totalitarian and exclusionary.”
The vice-chancellor replied to Olaf Scholz that he did not know any ethnically cultural people, only a people of the state. Of course, there is the people of the state. These are all citizens with a German passport, with the same rights and obligations, and that’s a good thing. But of course, there is also a German people ethnically and culturally. The fathers of our Basic Law knew that, too. Article 116 states that a German within the meaning of this Basic Law is someone who has German citizenship or who is of German ethnic origin — period, ladies and gentlemen. German reunification would not have happened without the cries of the GDR citizens (East Germans during communist rule): ‘We are one people.'”
Which people do you think they meant? For us at the AfD, there is a German people that is also worthy of protection, that they can assert themselves, that they have a say in who comes to us, who can stay and who has to go again, ladies and gentlemen.
Remix News has reported on the past on Article 116 of Germany’s constitution and the AfD’s argument that there is indeed a German people with a distinct ethnic and cultural heritage. The AfD’s support of the idea that ethnic Germans are a people with rights, including the right to represent themselves in the political and cultural sphere, has led the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to label the party a “suspected threat” to democracy, which gives the BfV, a powerful domestic intelligence agency, broad latitude to surveil the group.
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As Remix News wrote last year, the vice-chairman of the AfD party in Hamburg, Alexander Wolf, did not immediately dispute the court’s ruling that the AfD operated under such an ethnic principle. Instead, Wolf said that the ethnic concept of the German people is actually protected in the Basic Law.
“The German people are central to our Basic Law; the ‘German people’ gave themselves this basic law. This concept is something different than the ‘population within the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany,’” he said.
“Article 116 of the Basic Law expressly speaks of German ethnicity in addition to nationality. And for our citizenship law, [ethnic] descent was central until the year 2000.”
Wolf referred to Article 116 (1 and 2), which states, “Unless otherwise provided by law, a German within the meaning of this Basic Law is a person who possesses German citizenship or who has been admitted to the territory of the German Reich within the boundaries of 31 December 1937 as a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant of such person.”
Despite pressure from the BfV and threats to ban the party from the CDU, the Greens, the Social Democrats, and the Left, the AfD is continuing to lobby on behalf of ethnic Germans in parliament. The AfD’s stance does not appear to be hampering the party’s political prospects. In fact, the party is now consistently flirting with 20 percent of the vote, a record high. Recent polling has shown that Germans are increasingly opposed to mass immigration and fear more migrants coming into the country, a finding that the AfD is using to bolster its arguments against the government’s controversial plan to increase immigration and speed up citizenship for migrants.
During Baumann’s speech, he references the growing disapproval of Germans at a time when the government is seeing record-low approval in polls.
“You saw that again yesterday. The only thing that is increasing, almost exploding, are the numbers of illegal immigrants who have not been deported, and here, too, there is crystal clear voter fraud. The majority of Germans don’t want any of that. Many even say they are afraid that so many people will come,” said the AfD parliamentary director.
