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- "The Guardian " از ARMINIC PODCAST توسط ARMINIC.com. منتشرشده: 2024. ترک 108. سبک: PODCAST.
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This is the Guardian today, the sting in Germany that exposed a terrifying far right master plan. The scene. It’s November 25 last year, an imposing 1920s era hotel on a quiet lake in Potsdam, a city east of Berlin. And inside the hotel, a secret meeting is gathering to discuss a plan. Invitations had been sent to all the participants by post, not by email. Deliberately, they said that the discussion would be of a master plan. One by one, guests are arriving. One turns up in his car, a white four by four blaring a song that mocks Angela Merkel’s welcoming migrants. It wasn’t that I live. The hotel starts filling up ahead of the main event. There are senior figures in the room from the far right party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is currently surging in the polls. In fact, it’s the second most popular party in the country. And they’re mixing with the other guests in the room, quite a few members from the neo nazi scene, along with business people who are known to support the scene and maybe most importantly, to understand the nature of the meeting. Martin Selner, who is the figurehead of the identitarian movement, a far right outfit, he’s austrian and he was coming to lecture the meeting on the subject of remigration. Remigration. It sounds almost innocuous, a bureaucratic term for something truly chilling. It means the organized and legal deportation of immigrants. So people with a german passport, but are considered to be not properly assimilated. So not having learned the language, asylum seekers whose claims have been refused. That’s the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly. And this meeting of the German far right, it’s not a one off thing. It was part of a process that’s been years in the making, and it’s looking ahead years into the future. What we now understand is that this is very probably the 7th meeting of its kind, going back to October 2021. Part of the discussion was where would these people be able to be moved to? And the suggestion was that they would be taken to a place in Africa where about 2 million people would be able to be held in one particular place. What they’re proposing is shocking, an echo of one of the darkest periods in Germany’s modern history. And they might not have realized their meeting was being held just down the road from where the Nazis met 82 years ago to plot another master plan, this one to eradicate the jewish populations of Europe. It was where the so called final solution was planned. But there’s another thing the people in this room don’t realize. What these people didn’t know was that they were being watched. Earlier this month, their meeting became front page news across Germany. In Dismo hotel by Potsdam, it’s triggered days and nights of protests culminating in more than 100,000 people on the streets over the weekend saying they know how this ends and they’re never going back there. But with Germany’s economy in recession and its center left government deeply unpopular, will the uproar around this meeting be enough to stop the AfD from winning elections in Germany later this year? From the Guardian, I’m Michael Sarfi. Today in focus, a secret meeting in Pottsdam and an old german problem roaring back to life. So, Kate, this meeting in Potsdam that you’ve just told us about, it was meant to be a private meeting, a secret meeting. So how come we know about it? We know about it due to a bureau of investigative journalists called Correctiv, who got wind of it from somebody who had been invited to the gathering and decided that this was a very good opportunity to gauge exactly who was going there, who was behind it, who was financing it, what they were discussing. And so what did they do? Corrective hired a sauna boat. I don’t know if this is something you’re familiar with. I’m absolutely not familiar with it, no. Okay. Saunas are pretty popular in Germany. Not as much as in Finland, but they’re pretty popular. And one of the ways in which you can have your sauna is by taking a boat on a lake and you can float around, do your steaming, and then when you want to cool down, you can just jump off the side of the boat into the lake. Very nice. In this case, it proved to be the perfect capsule, as it were, for this reporting team, or at least some of them, to view the villa from unsuspected. There were also people who entered the villa, or at least one person in particular, who had a smartwatch on and was able to use that smartwatch to record audio and video while the people from the boat were, as I understand, taking pictures of people inside. So what did corrective say that they found during this sting? So the purpose of the meeting was for politicians from the Alternative for Deutschland and neo nazi activists to discuss a master plan. How do you expel foreigners, in particular german citizens of foreign origin, including where would you take these people to? So there was a discussion about taking them to a location in North Africa. Wow. I mean, they’re talking about this plan of mass deportation at the level of detail where they’re even proposing where they would take these people. Yes, that’s right. There’s been talk here. People have said, well, it kind of reminds us of things that are happening elsewhere where the italian government is talking about deporting people to Albania or the british government is talking about deporting people to Rwanda. So people are saying, well, it’s not so far fetched. And, Kate, when they say they want to strip citizenship from people who are, quote unquote, not assimilated, I’m guessing they’re not talking about british retirees living in Germany. No, they’re not. What they say is they’re talking about asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected. They say. They’re talking about people living there as migrants who have some affiliation to a terrorist organization or have a criminal record. So they say it’s the undesirables, as it were, that they want to be able to get rid of much more easily. But it sounds like they’re not just talking about asylum seekers with criminal records or people who are supposedly affiliated to terrorist groups. They’re talking about people with german passports, german citizens who they say are not assimilated or living in parallel societies. Yeah, they’re talking about the goal of being able to forcibly deport people from Germany based on a set of racist criteria. It could be pointed at the Roma and Sinti communities who have struggled to have even the suffering they endured during the Holocaust recognized for a long time. It affects very much Germany’s huge turkish community, who are often accused of failing to assimilate. And a lot of barriers are put up for them to do know a foreign name in Germany can be a big obstacle to getting a rental agreement, getting a job. This is all well documented. So I think anybody of foreign origin who have thought they’re really well established in Germany, they’re all asking the same Same questions, and they’re all feeling that they’re the ones who are being Kate, you know, you’re a british person living in Germany. What was it like for you to learn that in this hotel room, people were plotting about how to deport people from Germany en masse to North Africa? It was chilling. And at the same time, there are certain things that you are not surprised about if you followed the AfD, because you can see the language and the way that language is manipulated, the word remigration, which sounds quite sort of mild, and then when you actually look into the detail of it, you realize how shocking it is. As my kids have said, if the AfD came to power, would we have to leave? And they asked that unprompted. And I think that is a question that a lot of people would ask. Would you want to be in the country that was doing that? And of course, this meeting took place just a stone’s throw, just a few miles away from where the Vanze conference took place, at which high ranking nazi officials plotted, in very euphemistic terms, again, the mechanics of the Holocaust. It’s quite a chilling coincidence because you only have to go down the road to the museum, to the Vanze conference, to see in great detail what came out of it. Yeah, I mean, that was the meeting that the so called final solution came out of. Kate, I think what makes this meeting so shocking is not just the things they were talking about, or the fact that there were members of the AfD in the room, but the fact that the AfD is currently surging in the polls. They’re the second most popular party in Germany. Give me a sense of just how popular they are right now. So in the national polls, they are at around 20% to 23%. Much better right now than the three parties that are actually in government, in the so called traffic light coalition of Olaf Schultz. That government is having its own problems, which has only helped the AfD’s standing. But what sharpens this even more, the three eastern states in which the party is the highest in the polls. So in Turingia in particular, it’s on 36%, but in each of the three states, it’s on at least 30%. And the AfD is on track to win in each of those three states. Tell me about the AfD. Where did they come from? And just how extreme are they? So the AfD is eleven years old, founded in 2013 by a sort of fairly motley crew of economists, academics. They were anti euro, even toying with the idea that maybe Germany should leave the EU, or at least that it should force the EU to reform. And it later kind of morphed into an anti immigrant party, fueled then by the so called open door policy of Anglo American. When around a million people came to Germany. Everyone is asking, how long can Europe’s longest serving leader cling onto office amid the latest Russians over Germany’s and Europe’s immigration policy? And the energy crisis in particular has helped it to harness a certain disgruntlement that is growing in Germany. A lot of people are really feeling the pinch. People’s bills have gone up, wages have not necessarily gone up, and there is that feeling of local communities in particular being quite overwhelmed and that Germany is really stretched. We’ve got a budget crisis. And this in turn is partly why we’re seeing also people on the streets of Berlin, like farmers with their tractors, blocking thoroughfares into the city centre, because they are feeling the consequences of this. Interesting. So it’s a kind of frustration with the way that migration is handled in Germany, and it’s exacerbated by the fact that making ends meet right now for a german household is harder than it’s been in a while. It’s like a perfect economic storm for the german government and a perfect opportunity for the AfD. What has the AfD said about the fact that their party members were in the room in this hotel listening as someone laid out a plan as chilling as the mass deportation of migrants? They have been fairly quiet since this came out, but Alice Weidel, the co party leader, has said it’s been exaggerated. They’re not planning mass deportations. She has, though, dismissed her aide, who was at the meeting, although some people have said she’s just done this because of the optics, and that actually he will continue to be a pretty active person within the party. And so they’re, I think, very cautious about the fact that this might put people off joining the party or supporting the party at the next elections. But as of Tuesday evening, their poll numbers have slipped by one or 2%. I mean, only one or 2%. How can it be that the exposure of something so extreme only causes a slight dent in their popularity? This almost like, gives them a real sense of purpose. So they are the alternative? They are the alternatives. Any move in the path to label them as right wing extremists by the courts has only led to a boost in their standing. They go so far as to talk about this classification of them being right wing extremists as similar to the tactics that the Starzi used. So the east german secret police to label somebody as unwanted or degenerate. So it reinforces this feeling that this is exactly why they’re in the party, exactly why they support the party. And, Kate, if the AfD performs as well as the polls suggest they will in these state elections later this year, will they be anywhere near in a position to actually implement the kind of policy that was discussed at that meeting in the hotel? A lot of people have said, well, the chances of them getting into power are narrow. So even Alice Vidal said at the weekend she didn’t expect that they had any chance until the earliest 2029. I think there’s a general recognition within the party that they’re not yet mature enough, but that they feel that they’re on this trajectory in the eastern states, even though they will very likely be the top party. The chances of them getting into government there are also slim because of the fact that the other parties, they’ve all said they will not coalesce with them. I believe that cooperation with an extreme right wing party, which is racist at its core, and which in its entire political orientation, wants something that is not good for the majority of its own citizens, cooperation with such a party must never take place. It is unacceptable. The question is, how long will that hold? And Vidal says, and observers say, that if somebody’s going to break that cordon sanitaire, it will be the CDU. CSU. That’s Angla Merkel’s old party. The CDU CSU. That’s right. That’s Angela Merkel’s old party. But there have been collaborations between the parties on the state level. But the point has been made by constitutional experts that if the party gets a third of the votes in these states, they very much have the power to elect judges, to block laws, that it’s a delusion to say that just because they’re not in government, they will not have any power. And we have seen them secure mayoral posts and regional posts in government increasingly over the last year or so. Coming up, Germans take to the streets in protest. But will it be enough? And so, Kate, when the details of this meeting, when the attendees of the meeting were all made public, what was the reaction among the german public? Well, this stuff has all been known about. It’s been reported about, there are journalists who are on the AfD’s case all the time, reporting about the rhetoric they use. When Alexander Gowland, who was a former party leader who still high ranks in the party, talked about Germany’s nazi part as being like the equivalent of a birdshit in a thousand years of history Who is seen as one of the more radical people, said that the Holocaust memorial in the centre of Berlin was a monument of shame. These are just two of the maybe most quoted things that the AfD have said that have outraged people. But people after the expose said, we can’t now say that we didn’t know what they stand for and they’re making a direct parallel there with the nazi era. So at the end of the war, there were a lot of Germans who said, oh, we didn’t know what he was planning. Well, of course, you could have read mein camp. You would have known exactly what he stood for. I think that is why it’s triggered people to go out onto the streets and know, I do need to stand up and say, I know exactly what you stand for and I’m not going to allow it. So what have we seen on the streets over the past week? There was a small protest that started everything off, which was held outside the villa where the meeting took place. Then the Sunday after the expose came out, we had demonstration in Berlin and in Potsdam, to which Olaf Schultz went, this is Olaf Schultz, who has said, just let’s not talk about the party, and we’ll then reduce their influence. And he has now realized that that is not an option. Now we’ve seen over the past more than a week with no sign of it letting up. Every afternoon, demonstrations taking place in cities and towns across Germany. They’ve sometimes had to stop the demonstration and send people home because they’ve got dangerously full. So I took myself off to the centre of Berlin on Sunday afternoon, where a rally was due to take place at 04:00 in front of the Reichstag building where the parliament sits. Everybody was wrapped up very warm. Their sentiment is reflected in the placards that they’re carrying, homemade placards. So they’ll say things like, we prefer to be in solidarity with others than solidly aryan fascism is no alternative. In Munich, there was one young girl who held up a placard saying expecto Patronum, which, as I understand, is the spell that Harry Potter uses to conjure protection against evil. Yes, I can confirm that. Is that spell exactly? The police said that they reckoned that there were about 100,000 people who had taken part in that rally. The organizers said about 300,000. So you can probably take a figure somewhere in the middle. And I spoke to some of the people who’d come to the rally and my main point of interest was to find out why they had actually felt the need to be part of that demonstration. Because I’m really concerned it shouldn’t be possible in democratic elections to vote for candidates that are undemocratic fascists. We have to stand up and show that we are diverse culture and we want to stay that way. We can’t pretend that Germany is only for Germans. Zeiss Lounge Zeiss presents I listened to this story. It makes me wonder, what’s the reaction among german Muslims, among migrants, especially those who might be at risk of being labeled, quote unquote, not assimilated? Yeah, I mean, that has been, I would say, as yet still underreported. But when you talk to people there of foreign origin at the demonstrations, they express very, very clearly their fear. There was somebody who even know, we think if we went to Italy, we might be safer because we wouldn’t stand out so much. What’s the reaction been among german politicians from the more mainstream parties? Well, they have not held back in expressing their outrage. Some people, like Friedrich Metz, who’s head of the CDU, he has blamed the government for failing to tackle a lot of the challenges that Germany has right now, saying that that has helped to fuel the AfD. At the same time, this is a man who has stood up and said that foreigners are coming to Germany in order to get free dental care. The fallen Leinstein becoming the follower we had a very fiery debate just days after the revelations were made in the Bundestag in the parliament, the head of the SPD stood up and said that in kitchen tables across Germany, where people of foreign origin were sitting with their families, people were really scared about what this might mean for them. Deutschland, Deutsche Statzberger, Ibadi Fraga discretiran, opsios Iram Eigen and land fleenmus. At the same time. This is all in the context of two laws that were passed last week in the Bundestag. On the one day we had a law that made the deportation of failed asylum seekers easier to carry out, and then we had a law the following day that makes it easier for people to become german citizens. So trying on the one hand to kind of get more foreign workers in, which is effectively what the citizenship law is about, and on the other, appearing to take a tougher line on illegal immigration, which of course is seen to be one of the main reasons for the rise in support for parties like the mean. Is it fair to say that even if the AfD don’t come to power, they aren’t able to implement this crazy plan, they are able to still influence german politics to push everything to the right, especially when it comes to these issues of migration. Yeah. And I think that’s where they see their success in influencing the rhetoric and influencing what it’s possible to say now that it maybe wasn’t possible to say openly five years ago. They will point out very clearly what was seen as radical and extremist a few years ago and is now effectively the language that’s adopted by the mainstream parties. Is there any force inside mainstream german politics right now that is not trying to appease anti migrant sentiment among voters, but trying to make the other argument to them, which is that Germany, like lots of european countries, needs migrants in order to keep growing its economy, that migration is not something to try to reduce the damage around. But actually it could be a good thing. I think there’s a real wariness of pointing that out. You still hear people from the Greens, you still hear people from Delinquer, the far left party, who will say that at the same time we have the breakaway movement from the delinquenca, who are very left, but at the same time are saying that migrants are damaging the rights of Germans. And it’s more the economists who are pointing out the fact that migrants will always bring more than they cost. But it’s very, very difficult for a politician to stand up and say that one of the options available in Germany is simply to ban a political party. Is there any serious discussion that that might be the way to deal with the AfD, to ban them in court? There’s a very serious discussion about whether it would be possible. A lot of people at the demonstrations are calling for the government to do this or at the very least, examine the possibility of a ban to work out if this party is a danger to german democracy. But the hurdles of banning the party are so high that if it failed, the backfiring effect of this could just be devastating because it could make the AfD just feel more emboldened? People like Olaf Schultz, the chancellor, the economy minister, Robert Harbeck of the Greens, have said in principle, they’re in favour of the idea of banning the party, but they recognise that the pitfalls, if that failed, could be catastrophic. Kate, for a long time, Germany has dedicated itself to never repeating the atrocities of the past, building these guardrails around its liberal democratic principles and saying these will never be breached again. Does it now feel like that idea is under strain, that the very idea of what Germany Is, is now being debated out there on the streets. I definitely think that is the case. And I think that’s why for people to go out there, not only they’re being driven to some extent by the fear, but also to be seen to stand up and to know that when you go onto the demonstration in front of the rice target and you hold your mobile phone up with the light on, that that picture is going to go round the world. They want to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. That’s on the placards. Neve Eder, never again. One of the organizers in Berlin quoted the german children’s writer Eric Kessner, whose books, including Emmel and the detectors, were burned by the Nazis. And this organiser quoted him saying, you cannot wait until the fight for freedom is called treason. You cannot wait until the snowball has turned into an avalanche. You have to crush the rolling snowball. Nobody can stop the avalanche, and it only rests when it has buried everything beneath it. Okay, thank you very much. You’re very welcome. And that was Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, whose work on these protests and this master plan can be found@theguardian.com. Before we go, the results from the New Hampshire primary are out now, and politics Weekly America is there on the ground with a fast reaction episode that’s also out right now. Find out what the results mean for the republican party in the future of american democracy. It’s politics Weekly America, hosted by Jonathan Friedland, and you can find it wherever you listen to today in focus. And that is it for today. This episode was produced by Ned Carter, Miles, Courtney Youssef and Tom Glasser. Sound design was by Rudy Zagadlo. The executive producers Wahoma Khalili and Phil Maynard. And we’ll be back with you tomorrow.
