Shortly after the Alternative for Germany found an ally in a member of the future American government – Elon Musk -, the party’s co-chair, Alice Weidel, gave an interview to the historian Sumantra Maitra, for The American Conservative.
Ms. Weidel, in a recent interview with Bloomberg you said you are a libertarian on taxation and the war in Ukraine. However, you are considered far-right in Germany because of your stance on immigration and the EU. Are you for staying in the EU or leaving the EU, which is almost impossible to reform?
Neither I nor my party are extreme-right. In Germany, this is the battle cry of the left, which dominates public discourse. The left doesn’t even feel the need to provide evidence to support this charge. In their eyes, everything they don’t like is “extreme right”.
As far as the EU is concerned, it’s a simple calculation. Germany does not need the EU to survive; the reciprocal is not valid. But the EU acts as if it is valid. It acts as if the Germans must put aside their vital interests in order not to endanger the “European project”. It is a grotesque distortion Either the EU learns to take our national interests into account or it will disappear.
It is the EU that will decide how Germany will behave. But one thing is certain: The EU must abandon the idea that a strong Germany means a weak Union, and therefore Germans must not promote their national interests, for the good of all. It’s stupid. We are and will forever remain in the heart of Europe. The moment this heart stops beating, Europe will die.
AfD co-chair Tino Churpalla said that Germany is being forced to follow the American interest and that NATO is not an alliance in Europe’s interest. In reality, we see that the Americans no longer want to finance the war in Ukraine, and most Europeans, from the Baltic countries, Poland, to Great Britain and France, as well as the EU superstructure, want more support for Ukraine. How do you address this contradiction?
The US is a global superpower that has extended its influence all over the world. It is what we call an empire. But it’s a strange empire: one that rules the world from Monday to Wednesday, but stops doing so from Thursday to Sunday. It is an ongoing struggle between expansionists and isolationists that has probably been going on since the declaration of US independence.
For other countries, especially Germany, this makes things difficult. On the one hand, America complains about the energy policy of Germany, which would like to reach an agreement with Russia. How much anger the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline has generated in America. How dare the Germans do this! We still remember President Biden humiliating Chancellor Scholz regarding Nord Stream. Well, this pipeline was removed by an act of war. The fact that the current German government is not pointing the finger at the attacker speaks volumes. Is that what the US wants? A colony called Germany? A colony that has no right to decide its energy policy? A nation that has no right to follow its own path, wherever it may lead? The US can do that, as the victors in a historic game. But they have to make it clear that they want to do that.
The Germans are a defeated people. Such peoples no longer have time for themselves, but count the passing of the years according to the events and periods of other nations and empires, said the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The Germans were in this situation for a long time, to the advantage of the USA. As individuals the Germans also benefited from this, I can’t deny that.
There are advantages to being a slave. One of the rights of the slave is not to participate in the master’s wars, he can enjoy peace. But the US leadership does not like this situation. The wars of the last 30 years, in Europe, in the Middle East, were wars in which the Germans were called to participate. Why should we participate? We don’t have to fight anymore, because we are already out of history. For this reason, we disfigured our army.
We have reached a moment of military nullity, but just now the German political leaders have regained their lust for war. Belligerence has become a kind of compulsory madness not seen since the end of the last world war. The CDU now has the loudest battle cry, despite total military incompetence. It is like a sexual fantasy of an impotent people. We want to put an end to this grotesque situation.
We will coordinate with the US, but America must know what world it wants to live in. If it is to remain an empire, then America must fight for it herself, American blood must be shed and American goods destroyed. Let the slaves not be expected to take part in this war. A struggling slave will demand freedom from slavery, And the freedom that would follow will mean that these people, these peoples will want to go their own way. Slaves don’t fight. Don’t blame them for it.
When Trump tells the Germans that they will have to take responsibility for their security, he should think of all the consequences. We will listen to his concerns about Nord Stream, but the decisions will be 100 percent ours, whether he likes them or not. The Germans have lost their spirit of liberty; other countries have fought for freedom and to keep it, as are the Baltics. Tell the Baltics to give up control of energy policy, that corporate America will handle that. Tell them that the EU will decide who enters and which immigrants stay in these countries. You can be sure that, under these conditions, these peoples who still have pride will say that they no longer need any help. The contradiction you identify in the Europeans’ position on the war has to do with the contradictions in the United States.
Elon Musk supports the Alternative for Germany, as does Nigel Farage in Britain. Do you think a right-wing Europe supported by technology will emerge? What are the challenges?
I would not talk about a Europe of the tech right. The political left has had a monopoly on opinion for decades. It is more valid in Germany than in the USA, because here the institutions are even more controlled by the state, dominated by leftists. We have a public television that is financed with eight billion euros annually. It is something unique in the world. But the monopoly is about to collapse. Now everyone can produce programs and have audiences of millions. If you add Musk’s entrepreneurial genius, the eight billion euros will no longer be enough to shape public opinion. It has nothing to do with the tech right, but with freedom of expression. The left has no arguments, it insults its opponents. So far it has been enough. But Trump’s victory shows that the monopoly is collapsing. This is where the European elites’ hatred towards Musk comes from. They are afraid of us, of freedom. They fear free speech the most.
I noticed a moderation of the speech at Giorgia Meloni, at Marine Le Pen. What compromises will you make in Germany?
We don’t have to compromise. The only party ahead of us in the polls is the CDU. Why? Because they copy our program. It’s unbelievable, but it’s true, they copy it down to the simple wording. Of course, they will not implement this program. It’s a lie. The CDU rejected the idea of a coalition with us, so they only have the left.
There are talks in Germany about rearmament and NATO reform. What are AfD’s positions?
The need for reforms is immense. We have perhaps the most ineffective armed forces in the world. We would be defeated by almost any country that attacked us. When Ukraine asked for weapons from Germany, we gave them helmets. The Ukrainians thought we wanted to insult them. Actually, I couldn’t give them anything else. What we sent to Ukraine so far were the only functional weapons in our warehouses. We have nothing left to give. But we spend 50 billion euros a year on defense, which is two-thirds of Russia’s military budget. It’s something surreal. We cannot spend so much for so little. An AfD government would increase defense spending, but in a wiser way. The problem is inefficiency. And it’s not just the defense that’s the problem. Many fields are paralyzed by bureaucracy.
NATO is redefining itself. We can’t say which way the new US president will take it, we’ll see that over the next few years. But one thing is certain: NATO until now had a clear division of labor. Certain countries assumed certain tasks. That worked as long as the US wanted to maintain its dominance in Europe. As the US focuses more on the Pacific, things must change.
Individual responsibility will become most important. Our armed forces are not ready for this. Logistics now dominates the fighting force. We cannot conduct military operations independently. German politicians like to say that this means pacifism. In my view, a pacifist is one who can go to war, but does not, but desperately tries to seek peace. On the other hand, a man who wants peace because he cannot defend himself is not a pacifist. He is a snowman who wants winter to last as long as possible.
Source: www.cotidianul.ro
