The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1157
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 38 minutes
Words per Minute
171.5649
Summary
In this episode, we discuss the far-right Alternative f rstaatliche Arbeitspartei (AFD) being designated an extremist party in Germany and the implications for democracy. We also discuss the Iranian terror plot in Swindon, and how Labour belittles rape victims.
Transcript
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Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
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This is Monday the 5th of May 2025 and this is episode number 1157.
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I'm your host Stelios and I'm joined by Bo and Stephen Wolff.
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And today we're going to discuss German-style democracy,
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and the strategic locations that people are trying to occupy.
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Right, so should we start with the first segment?
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Right, so lots of people are getting banned from elections
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and it seems that when people are talking about protecting democracy,
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We had Marie Le Pen, who was banned from the presidential elections of 2027.
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We had Bolsonaro, who was banned from election in Brazil.
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the designation of the AFD as an extremist group.
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And all of that, obviously, in the name of protecting democracy
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And we are going to say a lot of things about it.
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Now, there is a German federal intelligence agency called the BFV,
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which is entrusted with protecting the Constitution.
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And there has been a coalition with CDU and CSU.
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She's in charge of one of the central intelligence agencies of Germany.
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Is that the equivalent of MI5 coming under the auspices of the Home Office,
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So you're going to have some sort of party or a political partisan overlord
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It looks like this is just for domestic affairs.
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That would be equivalent of MI5, I would have thought.
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We've got MI5 and Special Branch look after the security services of our internal
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although we know recently there has been crossovers when there shouldn't be.
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So the Prime Minister will also have an understanding of this.
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But it is a very interesting point that you raise,
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hasn't she made it very clear in previous statements
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that she wants to ban the AFD as a political party?
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but she seems to be unsympathetic to several concerns
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people have about the consecutive terror attacks in Germany.
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I think after the attacks at the Solingen Festival,
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she went out and said that knives should be banned.
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when I hear governments announcing any party as extremist
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And it looks like many Germans aren't reacting that way.
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They are straightforwardly trusting the government.
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A lot of them in several polls seem to be saying that,
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So instead of requesting evidence from the German government
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And they are people who just don't demand evidence.
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they would just go forward with it on the headline.
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But they never actually have approved it after that.
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I suspect that's what they're trying to do here.
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Like, do you remember when Rachel Maddow and Co
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Or if you scroll back up to the top real quick,
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is that the AFD has an ancestry-based conception
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Well, the Chinese wouldn't have that, would they?
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that the ethnicity and ancestry-based conception
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of the people that predominates within the party
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is not compatible with a free democratic order.
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And the party aims to exclude certain population groups
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to subject them to treatment that violates the Constitution
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and thereby assign them a legally subordinate status,
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Now, I think that this completely misses the whole point,
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is that a lot of people have been given rights and benefits
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So, there seems to be no contradiction with the Constitution
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if you say people who were given some rights and benefits
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should be deprived of those very rights and benefits.
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I mean, that's a very logical argument to make,
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they're not given equal rights across the whole of society
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because they've not been given the right to remain here.
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So, that's automatically something that occurs.
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of what they're absolutely saying at this stage.
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I mean, the AFD aren't even that based, like reform.
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Actually, I don't want all my churches burnt down
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Oh, you're xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic.
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It's like, oh, no, I just don't want my country destroyed.
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if you actually look at the AFD equivalent of MPs
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there are those who, as we see within the Conservative Party,
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But she's regarded as more of an outlying right winger.
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Much more to the right than we are actually here in the UK
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and much more to the right than, say, you would say would reform.
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But nonetheless, they have a balanced group of individuals.
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it's one thing to localise the claim to individuals,
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they're trying to ban the AFD for many years now.
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I did an interview with Peter Boehringer a year or two ago.
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But he's one of, I think, quite a few deputy chair people,
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Asked him a couple of questions that he sort of balked out a bit.
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And that's the very interesting point about it.
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would have been regarded as a completely kind of centrist,
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And what that shows to me is how left German politics is,
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how kind of controlled that they are as a nation.
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how actually controlled the people of Germany are.
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Because despite everything that's occurring all around them,
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the terrorist acts, the mass movement of people,
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the fact that the East is left on its own compared to the West,
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is that they're not seeing it in the way that Britain didn't see it.
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hence the reason you've got this mass divide down the country.
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Eastern AFD, Western liberalism, as they call it.
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here we have the federal minister of the interior and community,
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And she was just, her party just lost the election.
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one of the biggest federal intelligence agencies of Germany.
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Germany updates conservative-led coalition signs agreement.
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The CDU, CSU, and SPD have signed their coalition agreement.
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there's a referendum in Germany for mass migration.
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And this is essentially what the AFD has turned into its flag.
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that person would have more liberties when they were out.
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they either gain the support of the German people
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we're doing no different than what they do in China,
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no different than what they do in Putin's government,
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You're actually saying these people don't matter.
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And that mentality is a universal Western ideology
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They tried to do it to Trump in a bigger scale.
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who are actually employed by our security services.
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and just because someone has a differential opinion,
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I don't really understand what democracy means.
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and they are essentially trying to ban everyone
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Democracy to them is whoever keeps them in power
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And we had the response by the German Foreign Office.
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to protect our constitution and the rule of law.
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It is independent courts that will have the final say.
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Now, I want to say that this reply seems to me to be misleading
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because the whole question that is left unanswered is
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Unless hard evidence is given for saying that the AFD
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all calls to ban it seem to be unconstitutional,
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I think what they're looking at is their constitution
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is not regarding it as criminal activity to say that.
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which is the decision of a thorough independent investigation.
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We've already looked at the woman who's in charge.
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So therefore, and someone from Germany pointed that out to me,
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and independent courts that will have the final say.
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with people who are imposed on those positions,
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particularly like we have in the European Court of Human Rights.
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is whether the same coalition governs all the time
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Because it looks like the Germans voted against the SPD
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and the SPD found its way back into the government
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And I'm afraid from my friends in the United States,
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that decided to help draft the rules for Germany
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that they wanted and selected at that time put in power.
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Right, and we have here a tweet by Ralph Schollhammer,
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the same people who demand cultural and ethnic sovereignty
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Speaking of the hypocrisy that you just pointed out
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but I would say that this is particularly worrying
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seem to be particularly ignorant of the literature
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The more they push this really radical narrative,
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that wants to prevent authoritarianism from rising.
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No, I actually think they actually want authoritarianism.
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and I'm glad that I see Neil O'Brien who's come
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well I think there is an element of snobbery in
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our elites anyway I think certainly snobbery in
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tried to double down on it and Connor Tomlinson