Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. Child labour and women forced to work in slave-like conditions are unfortunately normal in Bangladesh. And what do we do? We make Sunday speeches and we force our companies to control their subcontractors, their subcontractors and their subcontractors in Bangladesh. That won't work. We need to identify the root of the problem. The root of the problem is: Bangladesh is officially a democracy, and there is officially religious freedom. But both are not true. There is an authoritarian regime in Bangladesh that, with the help of Islamists, tyrannizes the population. Nowhere are there more child marriages than in Bangladesh. Domestic violence against women is normal. Christians and Hindus are murdered, their houses and churches are burned – by Islamists. Trade unionists, opposition politicians and journalists are murdered in the open street – by Islamists. We must finally name the root of the problem, and the root is the inhumane ideology of Islam, precisely this ideology, which is constantly being trivialised and, more importantly, supported and courted here. And that must finally end. We must finally identify the real problems.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ‘Our grandma rides a motorcycle in the chicken coop. Our grandma is ‘ne alte Umweltsau’, as the WDR Children’s Choir sang two years ago at Christmas time. The directors of the public broadcaster obviously found it funny. And why grandma is an environmental sow became clear in one stanza: Because our grandma buys cheap meat from the discounter. So that was exactly why my mother joined the AfD. Because my mother is one of 17 million German pensioners who get less than 1,000 euros. And they don't buy from the discounter because they want it, but because they have to because they're poor. And what does the German pension system look like in a European comparison? On average, our neighbours, the Austrians, receive 800 euros more than the Germans – 800 euros! The Italians work an average of 32 years and get 91.8% of their salary as a pension, the French 35.4 years, and they get 73.6% of their salary, the Spaniards 35.3 years of work and 83.4% of the salary. And what about rich Germany? In rich Germany? We work the longest: 39 years, and we get the least: 51,9 %. What's wrong with that? There's a lot wrong with that. It is not true that politicians are at work here who no longer understand the needs of the population at all, because they do not have to worry about themselves at all – they are well cared for. But the reality with the people who no longer perceive them at all. We need an alternative policy. We need an alternative for Germany.