Jörg Meuthen is the federal spokesman for the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany) as well as a member of the European Parliament. In the following video from RT, Mr. Meuthen is interviewed about the results of the European parliamentary elections, in which the AfD gained 11% of the vote — not as much as hoped for, but a significant improvement over the previous election.

Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:03 Yes, Mr. Meuthen, 11% in the election for the EU Parliament, let’s be honest, you aren’t

00:07 entirely satisfied, are you? —Of course one always hopes for more. It would be a fib to say now

00:10 that I wouldn’t have wished for more. I personally had expected

00:13 12 to 13%, so it is a little less. Correctly classified, we have gained 50% compared with

00:18 the last European elections. You can’t compare it with

00:22 the Bundestag election because we don’t have a 5% clause here.

00:25 And because of that, many small parties have also eaten away

00:28 at what would otherwise have ended up being ours. If there are many smaller alternative parties,

00:31 perhaps voters said rather than choosing the big alternative,

00:34 they’d rather have a small alternative. I think we can be satisfied

00:37 with this result. We now have eleven deputies in the European Parliament.

00:41 I had been there alone so far. That’s a significant difference. I think so. Especially since we are

00:45 now a part of a larger group. Together with Lega, the Rassemblement National and others

00:50 we will be able to do substantial work there, and that’s good. —If you look at

00:54 the issues of the environment, domestic security and peace-building,

00:57 these were issues that people were more interested in than, for example, migration.

01:01 Could it be that the AfD’s topic is also losing a bit of relevance regarding the current situation?

01:06 I don’t see it that way. People always associate us being only concerned

01:09 with the migration issue, but that’s not the case.

01:12 We address all the issues you just mentioned and others.

01:15 We have our position on all of them. It seems the German media

01:18 tries to crudely portray us as “the party that’s against migration”.

01:23 It’s not that simple. We’ve worked out the party program.

01:28 We lead our own federal committee. There are no topics

01:31 we don’t address or where we don’t have a position.

01:34 It is just very often an alternative position. Policies on climate have crucial importance.

01:37 We have a decidedly different attitude than the Green Party, and I think

01:42 ours is the smarter one. —But that obviously doesn’t work.

01:45 The Greens emotionalised the topic. Through this emotionalisation

01:48 they’ve whipped everyone into a climate hysteria.

01:51 We have to acknowledge that first of all. Let’s just say,

01:54 they managed that. That’s why they are cheering at the moment.

01:57 So if they try to implement what they advocate then they’ll end up

02:01 with a bloody nose fairly quickly, because people will wake up.

02:04 They will notice that it doesn’t work and they’ll go down again as fast as they shot upwards.

02:09 We will persistently travel our path of reason. We make common-sense policies

02:13 based on data and facts. We don’t emotionalise

02:17 as strongly as the others do. We believe that in the long run we will assert ourselves with it.

02:23 How would you classify the strong election results

02:27 in Eastern Germany? —Yes, they are more alert there.

02:30 They just have 1989 in their blood. They are alert when

02:34 it comes to political domination and lack of free speech. And we are experiencing a relatively

02:38 strong political dominance at the moment. They also recognise when they are being manipulated.

02:42 Look what the Green Party is doing with the “Fridays for Future” movement and all that.

02:46 These are extremely strong manipulative things. In the west

02:49 it’s not recognised as much as it is in the east.

02:52 In the east they are wide awake and say: “We have already lived through that.” So when we’re not

02:56 even permitted to present our arguments due to the fact that we are denied venues,

03:01 because our cars are set on fire, or because our houses

03:04 are attacked; they react to that differently in the east than in the west.

03:08 The west reacts to these tactics with relative indifference. In the east they say: “That’s not

03:13 happening here because we are familiar with those kind of games.” That makes a difference.

03:17 Let’s take a look at the 11% you have on the EU level. Assuming the Grand Coalition in Germany

03:21 won’t hold much longer and new elections were called, would you be happy about that or not?

03:26 Under any circumstance I would be happy if this Coalition

03:31 were to break up, because it has no majority anymore. It is evident that these large —

03:35 I refer to them as former people’s parties — are now

03:38 in decline. If there are no majorities, that would require in principle,

03:42 new elections. I would see that with a smile in one eye

03:45 and a tear in the other. If there was enough time for the Green Party to have

03:48 an opportunity to disenchant themselves, that wouldn’t be so bad

03:51 in my opinion. If we were to have federal elections at the moment, the Greens would probably reach

03:54 20% at the federal level. This would cause maximum damage in our country.

03:58 It is our firm conviction that they propagate policy that is

04:01 completely wrong. No one can seriously want them to run

04:04 the government. So for that reason, being honest, I would be thankful

04:09 to have a little more time to get our message out.

04:15 You spoke of media campaigns against the AfD in the run-up

04:18 to the elections to the European parliament.

04:21 Can you put this into concrete terms? —Yes, my goodness, you have

04:27 every public TV channel saying we are right-wing extremists or that we are associated with

04:34 right-wing extremism. We are a conservative middle-class party. Basically, we are what the CDU

04:38 used to be. Have a look at former CDU slogans of the nineties,

04:42 then you’ll see they were clearly more “right” in quotation marks,

04:45 than what we represent now. Of course there’s a campaign against us.

04:49 Even the “Word for Sunday” which is televised

04:52 on Saturday evenings had some pastor saying “Please don’t vote for AfD”

04:55 because they are foreigner-hating evildoers and

04:58 whatever else. That’s what I mean by a media campaign.

05:02 We’re propped up on every corner as the bad guys, the racists that hate foreigners

05:07 and whatever else they brand us with. That’s not who we are. We are a conservative middle-class

05:12 freedom-loving patriotic party, which is totally distant from

05:16 any form of racism. Nevertheless, we have young people

05:20 demonstrating against us screaming “Nazis out! Racists out!”

05:24 I could say the same thing. That’s the campaign I’m talking about,