AfD Head Frauke Petry: ‘The Immigration of Muslims Will Change Our Culture’

SPIEGEL: Ms. Petry, in an talk with a worried populist weekly Junge Freiheit, we once said: “Many electorate wish to equivocate one thing above all: being compared with a ‘right-wing’.” Now, though, your party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is a flattering distant to a right, to put it politely.

Petry: You are commencement this talk with an insinuation, not a question. That’s too bad! The AfD is a liberal-conservative party. Furthermore, we cruise it’s wrong to see a domestic conflict between left and right as a quarrel between good and evil. In Germany, a right is compared with xenophobia and a politics of a Nazi regime. In America, a magnanimous mercantile process of Milton Friedman is seen as right-wing. So it depends on a definition.

SPIEGEL: Ok, afterwards greatfully assistance us out: How do we conclude right-wing?

Petry: I don’t cruise in those kinds of categories. With a critique of a banks or a criticisms of a European banking system, we are unequivocally tighten to Sahra Wagenknecht (eds. note: a emissary chairperson of a far-left Left Party). Does that mean, by extension, that we are indeed ultra-left?

SPIEGEL: Are we perplexing to contend that a AfD is not a worried party?

Petry: we can clearly see that we need labels. If there wasn’t this organisation with good and evil, afterwards we would have no problem saying: Yes, a AfD is partly that that a Christian Democrats once were: a worried approved party.

SPIEGEL: Your party’s breeze height is full of dangers sneaking everywhere: There is Islam, that is melancholy us; there a EU, that is disenfranchising us; there is a government, that is fibbing to us. Why is a celebration so desperate and fearful?

Petry: we have not found AfD members to be inconsolable and fearful, on a contrary. It requires a lot of bravery in Germany to mount adult and demonstrate ideas that one knows are now not being voiced by a infancy of a populace.

SPIEGEL: Germany is a quick democracy with a extended spectrum of parties. All kinds of opinions are voiced in a media. Where is a problem?

Petry: When (the Left Party) is submitting a offer to a CDU to form a coalition, there competence be several parties on paper, yet per content, there is not a extended celebration spectrum. Furthermore, people are saying that they are no longer being taken severely as a emperor by a domestic establishment.

SPIEGEL: The universe is globalized and Europe is united, yet a AfD is focused on a tenure “nation.” Why?

Petry: Germany’s banking and emigration policies are now destroying European solidarity, and a lapse to a suspicion of one’s possess republic in all European countries is a healthy visual to Brussels centralization. We trust that a healthy nationalism should be healthy in Germany. This position includes holding shortcoming for a history, yet it also presupposes a healthy attribute to a identity, yet that it’s unfit to act in a forward-looking demeanour both domestically and externally. We cruise it’s wrong that German politicians are exclusively jacket themselves in a disguise of guilt.

SPIEGEL: What do we meant by a disguise of guilt?

Petry: Germany’s past is used to transparent all kinds of things. People say: We have to do this or that given we Germans have weighed ourselves down with a special kind of guilt. One hears that we need to combine Germany into a incomparable Europe so as to perpetually forestall a rebirth of German nationalism. But nationalism and nationalism are frequently thrown in a same pot. Even Germany’s current, catastrophic emigration process can’t get by yet references to Germany’s past. Just a few weeks ago in Dresden, a former boss of a Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, warned opposite equating shame and responsibility, and speedy us to have some-more values-based patriotism. The genuine responsibilities that we should pull from Germany’s past are a refuge of democracy, leisure and a order of law.

SPIEGEL: If a honour for other opinions is so critical to we — an opinion that presupposes a different multitude — what do we have opposite immigration?

Petry: I’m not opposite immigration, yet given do we cruise a honour for other opinions creates immigration a necessity? For decades, there has been a miss of an ideology-free discuss on this issue. Yet such a discuss is needed given a mercantile and amicable consequences on both home and horde countries are equally momentous, as Oxford economist Paul Collier described in his book “Exodus.” One thing is clear: The immigration of so many Muslims will change a culture. If this change is desired, it contingency be a product of a approved preference upheld by a extended majority. But Ms. Merkel simply non-stop a borders and invited everybody in, yet consulting a council or a people.

SPIEGEL: You have suggested regulating weapons during a border.

Petry: we would wish that we would know improved than that! But I’ll happily explain one some-more time: In response to countless questions, and after inventory off several options for securing a border, we mentioned that a use of armed force in a box of an puncture is unchanging with German law, a step that we personally, categorically do not want. To spin that into an purported offer for a “firing order” takes a poignant volume of enterprise for a mistake scandal. Or, to put it another way, apparently people wanted to willfully mistake me.

SPIEGEL: If it was unequivocally a misunderstanding, we didn’t transparent it adult for dual days. And afterwards we stood by as Deputy AfD Chair Beatrix von Storch went even further, responding “yes” to a doubt on Facebook as to possibly armed force should also be used to forestall women and children from channel a border.

Petry: It was not a misunderstanding. My strange talk was clear.

SPIEGEL: One could appreciate your judgment as seeking to trivialize violence.

Petry: Not if we review a strange interview.

SPIEGEL: When one confronts we with vast statements by members of your possess party, like Björn Höcke, AfD conduct in a state of Thuringia, who has oral about a reproductive function of other cultures, we forgive them as being unfortunate exceptions.

Petry: we perspective some of a statements that come from a ranks as being harmful, regardless of domestic viewpoint. But Björn Höcke did something that other politicians don’t, such as Ms. Roth (eds. note: Green Party politician Claudia Roth) who took partial in a proof where people shouted, “Germany, we miserable square of shit.” He apologized.

SPIEGEL: How deleterious were Höcke’s statements to your party?

Petry: Certain statements sojourn in a open consciousness, and we need to accept that as conduct of a party. The usually approach to bargain with it is to indurate a celebration and eventually make it transparent by a party’s choosing height where we mount in terms of policy.

SPIEGEL: Would we have favourite to have split ways from some-more of your members?

Petry: Several members left a celebration when they satisfied that they don’t fit good with us.

SPIEGEL: Where are a boundary of what we will endure and what not?

Petry: The beliefs of leisure and democracy are a substructure on that a AfD, like all other approved parties, stand.

SPIEGEL: Not many parties need to ask their public during open events to refrain from displaying unconstitutional symbols. But a AfD does.

Petry: You are positively referring to a reading of a manners of assembly. This is a ubiquitous requirement imposed by a authorities who approve demonstrations in Germany. You positively don’t intend to use a correspondence with this military bidding as an complaint of a AfD.

SPIEGEL: Let’s suppose for a impulse a Greens asked their supporters during events to observe a anathema on obscuring their faces and bringing dangerous items. Would we cruise that to be normal?

Petry: Yes, we design accurately that, given a central conditions request to all protests in Germany. You are constantly perfectionist that we pull transparent boundaries. When we afterwards do so by seeking people, who come to a demonstrations for whatever reason, to act in a demeanour unchanging with a constitution, afterwards that’s not good adequate either. Perhaps a Greens don’t yield their possess demonstrators with sufficient instruction. But maybe they should do so when we demeanour during what is function in a Green-anarcho scene.

SPIEGEL: When we praise a bravery of those who take to a streets to quarrel for issues critical to them, do we also embody Pegida demonstrators who wish to see a chancellor unresolved from a noose, of whom many have voted for a AfD?

Petry: The Pegida of early 2015 is not a same as a Pegida of today. We are now saying a radicalization during a tip of a leadership. A year ago, we done certain to pronounce with a people who join a Monday protests in Dresden, and we still cruise that was a right thing to do. But we trust that a resolution for a nation can’t be found on a street.

SPIEGEL: You were innate in Dresden…

Petry: … in St. Joseph-Stift Hospital. My mom gathering to Dresden for a delivery. Back then, my relatives lived in Schwarzheide.

SPIEGEL: How were politics discussed in your family home?

Petry: For us, a list in a dilemma of a kitchen was where my relatives straightened out a domestic distortions with my sister and we after school. The second place where it was probable to pronounce plainly was a church. we went to sacrament classes from a age of six, as one of usually dual children in a whole class. we grew adult with this discrepancy.

SPIEGEL: What did we cruise we would turn in East Germany?

Petry: Interestingly, we grew adult with a recognition that we would not spend my life in a GDR. My relatives always wanted to leave a nation given they been identified as regime critics, generally my father. As we after found out, 26 informants for a Ministry for State Security (Stasi) had been reserved to a family, that enclosed people in a unequivocally tighten circle.

SPIEGEL: Then your father used a revisit to a Rhineland in Mar 1989 as an eventuality to stay in a West.

Petry: In open 1989, my sister was about to finish her high propagandize education. When a primogenitor fled from East Germany, we routinely were kicked out of school. We could usually forestall that by claiming ignorance. So we acted as yet we knew zero about it until she graduated. That wasn’t easy, and a lot of people didn’t trust us.

SPIEGEL: How did we knowledge a tumble of a Wall?

Petry: It was an intensely happy experience. It was transparent that it wouldn’t be prolonged before we could be reunited as a family.

SPIEGEL: “We are a people” was a aphorism of a protests that took place in 1989 in Leipzig. Now a same word is frequently chanted during anti-refugee demonstrations. That’s a flattering large corruption of that slogan, don’t we think?

Petry: We determine that written and corporeal assault opposite people of any start or domestic march should be condemned. But when adults peacefully critique opposite a government’s emigration policy, we have no problem if they adopt a slogans used in a pacific revolution. we don’t approve during all of dividing people into first- and second-class citizens, into decent ones and faulty ones, as (Social Democratic Party head) Sigmar Gabriel did when he spoke of (Pegida demonstrators as) a “pack.” In my view, that divulges a deeply undemocratic indicate of view.

SPIEGEL: Sometimes transparent denunciation is necessary. Through appeasement and a excess of understanding, it is also probable to emanate a meridian where some people cruise it’s fine to chuck Molotov cocktails.

Petry: Then we design that politicians like Gabriel to also pronounce out clearly opposite attacks on competing politicians. If he finds all that to be so repugnant, afterwards he contingency pull a same consequences on a other side of a domestic spectrum. But he doesn’t.

SPIEGEL: Many of your supporters trust that editors-in-chief during German news outlets get their instructions from a Chancellery each morning and afterwards act accordingly. Do we also trust that?

Petry: No and a infancy of AfD members don’t trust it either. That is a unequivocally caricatured and farfetched description of a critique of a media.

SPIEGEL: We can determine that a stating about a AfD has been essentially negative. We would say: for good reason. Has that harm you, or maybe even helped you?

Petry: You during SPIEGEL gave me a indeterminate respect of depicting me as Adolfina with a Leni Riefenstahl look. Many people suspicion that went too distant and started thinking. But some reduction well-informed citizens, who are fearful of being called Nazis, competence be tripped adult by that. In that sense, such imputations repairs us, of course. You would say: For good reason.

SPIEGEL: Your celebration is fighting for a strengthening of normal marriage, yet we yourself have motionless for a reduction normal model. How do end and existence fit together there?

Petry: In can quarrel for a upkeep and fostering of normal families even yet I, for personal reasons, don’t live that model. we continue to attest for families and we lead a life with children, infrequently with 4 and infrequently with eight.

SPIEGEL: In your party’s breeze platform, it is written: “There is a usually augmenting series of children who are carrying to grow adult yet a participation and caring of a father or mother. Many children knowledge a depart of a primogenitor as a dire event.” You allegedly told associate celebration members that it didn’t harm we to have left into a daycare during a age of 8 weeks. You presumably said: “Whatever doesn’t kill us creates us stronger.”

Petry: You will positively be means to tell me possibly going to daycare during 8 weeks harm me or not.

SPIEGEL: You became conduct of AfD.

Petry: we initial listened a tenure “Rabenmutter” (“uncaring mother”) in a West. In 2002, we was described as a standard PISA disaster by a German League for a Child, someone who could substantially not review and write properly, and who for that reason has zero improved to do than put her child in daycare. That is usually as misled as revelation mothers that they shouldn’t confirm to stay during home with their immature children.

SPIEGEL: A integrate of months ago, we were asked where we see a AfD in 10 years. You said: “In a government.” We assume that’s still a case?

Petry: We don’t have as most time as a Greens to mature. But so distant we have shown that we learn comparatively fast. we cruise that we will strech 25, 30 percent if we work tough and a other parties continue to make a same aged mistakes. Then we will means to confirm who to form a bloc with and who not. We know where we wish to go. How a other parties competence rise seems misleading to me during a moment.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Petry, we appreciate we for this interview.

Article source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/interview-with-frauke-petry-of-the-alternative-for-germany-a-1084493.html#ref=rss