AfD goes East (interview with German politician Petr Bystrom)

Tim Kirby: So first question: what brings you to Moscow?

Mr. Bystron:  Oh well, it’s a working visit. I’m on the head of the parliamentarian group of the Alternative for Germany in the German parliament so foreign policy is my job. Every year at least one time, I am in Moscow. This year we did this visit together with Dr. Alice Weidel, who is the head of our group in the Bundestag. And we visited a couple of our friends here in Russia.

Tim: It's pretty much almost a media staple that they always see the relations between Russia and Europe are bad. I think maybe the evidence for that would be that there are sanctions between Russia and Europe, things have been a little bit off. But what's the core reason what's the real problem? Why are relations bad?

Mr. Bystron:  Well this is a big deal for us and it was also a big topic for in all our talks. We met Mr. Slutsky and the Duma, we met Mr. Tjapkin and the foreign ministry and a lot of other people. Of course this is like one of the main topic, why is it so? Obviously, there are there are powers which are interested in that the relationships between Germany and Russia especially but also between Europe and Russia are getting worse. We see it since 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis and then of course it followed it with Crimea and so on and so on. Now with we say Scripali, Navalny and so on.

Tim: Well it's interesting! Because you kind of say that with a smile. You almost acknowledge that this this whole situation with Navalny and Scripali is kind of silly. Does it seem silly?

Mr. Bystron:  Of course it's silly. Because I can see it from the other side, you know. We are in the parliament and we see always how fast and uncritical certain things are communicated through the whole media landscape in Germany. And it was the same with Skripali, it was the same with Navalny. There is no thinking about and at the beginning there was nothing like “Oh let's investigate, let's wait how where is the true?” But the true is from the beginning defined and it is just communicated through. And therefore I’m smiling about it and this is a strong difference to other cases in other countries. It's always specifically against Russia. But see what happened with Mr. Khashoggi and the embassy?

Tim: So your colleagues in Germany, I'll call them colleagues depending whether you see them as colleagues or enemies that's up to you, but the people you're with, who are with you - sort of in the German government, who don't like Russia - is it a matter that they have this sort of deep-seeded fear or dislike of Russia, that every bit of news from Russia they believe it? Or are they just sort of typical bureaucrats or they get a piece of paper and it says that “Putin poisoned the Navalny and this is bad” - I have to believe this because I got the piece of paper that says it's bad? So are they just mindless bureaucrats or is it something personal?

Mr. Bystron:  It's a mixture. You know for a really a long period of time the Soviet Union was really “The Enemy”, and it was the “Empire Of The Evil”. But then in the 90s it turned around completely. And you can follow it even in the Hollywood movies you know. It was a period of time when a Russian policemen were side by side with the with the US policemen. They were working together in New York and so on. Not promoting movies but you know it is and it was the whole period. Before it was Rambo against the Russian and then it was Red Heat. So it changed. And the Russians were no enemies anymore, they were friends. And now it's slowly coming back to Rambo and it’s docking on the synapses in the people's brains you know. Now the people are triggering the same pictures of “the evil Russia”. So this is this is the psychological background. Of course there are there are people that are even politicians who are doing this on purpose. They are not interesting in good relations with Russia. And what surprises me a lot, you know, is that German politicians were saying “we are against Nordstream-2” for example. This is totally a US position. I don't blame the USA you know. If the USA say “our geopolitical, our strategical targets are that we don't want the cooperation between Russia and Germany” - that's fine you know. This is they say it frankly they do it. This is their position. But what I don't understand when German politicians say this, because it's not good for Germany.

Tim: Not so much. Interesting how that works out. One thing about defying Washington then is we can sit here and talk about that and we can maybe get into these ideas that there's sort of conspiracy theories that it's really Washington pulling all the strings, but then how does your party get seats? Because you guys try to fight these mystery forces?

Mr. Bystron:  Well this is a good question that I’m asking every day myself. And it was a very special situation in 2013 when I would say the system allowed unknown professor Bernd Lucke to enter during a period of five or six weeks еvery big TV show in German television, political TV show and get an audience of five, six, seven million and spread his news. And in this period of time, those five, six weeks seventeen thousand people entered a party which didn't exist. It was just an idea. This professor Lucke said “I have a party.” There was nothing, and then seventeen and a half thousand people entered and said, “I identify myself with the content and ideas this guy is saying on public television”. So and there we were, in this party, and they let us to run for elections. We did quite well and became the most successful party in the postwar history. We entered every parliament we have in Germany, and in each state in the Bundestag of the European parliament. Around 2016 there were public polls, which said 35 percent of the German population could imagine to vote for this party. With 35 - 36 percent in Germany, you can get chancellor. From this point we become “Nazis” or “extremely right wing” - you know and so on and so on and this is incredible. If you imagine that we are a party where a lot of foreigners like me. I’m from Czechoslovakia, I’ve got political asylum in Germany and we have many colleagues who are coming from Russia, from Romania, who just got German passport, and they are not Germans by birth. We have also a lot of voters from foreigners who are voting for us and just imagine how what kind of nonsense it is to say this is a “Nazi party where foreigners are giving votes to foreigners because they are not this is incredible.

Tim: Well some crazy things do happen in politics. I mean look at Kiev, but that's another story…

Mr. Bystron:  This is a funny story because in Kiev, the real Nazis are in Kiev. Nobody cares in Germany and nobody cares in in the EU. In the EU, there are real Nazis supporting the regime change. Nobody was talking about that. Maybe there are good and bad Nazis?

Tim: The ones that go against Russia I think are the good ones? I think that that's overall what unites them, but let's get into this: I’m kind of curious so when we talk about this whole Nordstream and energy deals between Europe and Moscow because it's always through Germany. People always talk about Berlin and Moscow having this deal, but you know, when it snows in Hungary — it snows in the Czech Republic. Why it is such a big thing to send gas from Moscow to Berlin?

Mr. Bystron:  I really don't know, because we have already since the 70’s. There is a pipeline, you know, and it was a deal between western Germany and the former Soviet Union, and it worked perfectly. Despite that we had the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union was always a reliable partner delivering. This is also a funny thing: we have quite every winter the media brings the news “Oh, now there is a winter. It's dangerous because the Russians maybe will not deliver the gas”. And I think, “Okay, why should they do it, because they want to sell something, you know. We have the money and they want our money. Why should they stop the delivering the gas to us”? It’s complete nonsense.

Tim: I guess maybe the idea would be to sort of scare you into controlling you, to make you agree to something? Because if you threaten someone so do this or else, that's the threat. So what would be the “do this”?

Mr. Bystron:  Exactly, it's just reasoning the people and creating an image of Russians that they are not a reliable partner, that they would like to stop the delivery of gas, and this is what you asked before. If they are normal people, why do they react as they react? Because you have permanent propaganda like this or permanent news like this, so it works. And if they repeating and repeating it. There is a saying, “if you if you repeat a lie thousand times it becomes true.”

Tim: Now in Russia there's this belief that in the 1800s, so long long ago, the Tsars were very confident that things were going to go well with Germany because Germany was becoming a rising power. This is the whole Bismarck era and that it looked like the continental Europe would be mostly controlled by Germany. But there was a lot of sort of inter-marriages and interrelations between the Russian aristocracy and the German aristocracy, so everyone Russia thought “this is gonna be great. There's not gonna be any more wars, we're gonna be able make agreements with these guys, they're gonna control everything it'll be real easy. We'll sort of split the world with the Germans”. Well, that didn't happen. With World War I Germany and Russia fought and it was really, really bad, I think for both sides. World War II was really bad for both sides, especially the German side. The cold war probably didn't help. So one thing is in Germany why is no one sort of woken up to the possibility that maybe conflict with Russia has really shot Germany in the foot at least twice, maybe more?

Mr. Bystron:  Well I would go even more years back, maybe two thousand years back to the Roman Empire. You remember what happened when the Roman Empire split to the western and the eastern part? From the west, the western part developed to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and the eastern – to Byzantine. It is the heritage on which Russia is standing. There are not many people that know that the word “Tsar” comes from “Caesar”. So what I want to say is that Russia and Germany — those are just like Yin and Yang those are two parts which belong together. They’ve just been separated but they have common roots. And in my view Russia is the eastern part of Europe historically seen. So and what we want as a party and what many people want is that those two parts come together again and that they work together again and that they even profit both from this from this alliance.

Tim: You've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of Russian politicians. You've probably had the opportunity to talk to a lot of American politicians. Do foreign people really understand Germany? Or do someone understand it more or less or is Germany still a bit of a mystery the outside?

Mr. Bystron:  Germany is a total mystery. At first, many people outside of Germany have a picture of Germany as it was in the 90s maybe and they don't realize that the country changed totally getting worse. We have a really heavy problem with democracy inside the country. Just an example: we are the biggest opposition party in the German parliament but our politicians get beaten on the street quite to death.

Tim: By whom?

Mr. Bystron:  By left extremists, by Antifa. And the point is these Antifa groups are not just coming out from nowhere. They are there for years and years and many of them have established legal formations that are donated by the state. So they're getting public money and the same people who are then beating the opposition.

Tim: Now are you talking about a protest where there are two sides and the sides fight? Or are you talking about like someone hunting down a politician, finding out where they live, watching their daily routine and then picking a day and getting them right? You talked about that?

Mr. Bystron:  Of course! It happened to me! It happened to me. It wasn’t an attack on my person, but it was an attack on my car, on my house. They sprayed my house, they crashed my car and but it was exactly as you described. There were two Antifa people in the street in the morning, in the day they just checked out where I live. I was going with my six-year-old son to school, and they saw where we live. At night, they did the attack. The next morning, the whole way from my home to the school of my son, it was labeled with Antifa stickers like “we know where you are, we know where your son is going to school”. But I had also I had been physically attacked on the street by Antifas. This is nothing unusual - it goes to thousands and thousands, and this is not everything. You know, people are losing their jobs in Germany just because they are engaging in themselves in the opposition party. People are even losing their jobs just because they meet with our boss. There is a case that went public. Professor Mending was just having a lunch in a restaurant with professor Meuthen, who is the boss of our party. Somebody saw them and the professor Mending lost his job in the television and public television. They said “no you're meeting you're meeting this guy. He was doing his job, and this is nothing unusual people losing their jobs nowadays just because they are in the opposition.

Tim: Well proving the motivations of why someone's fired can be hard, but with physical attacks… what do the police do? Or for some reason the cases just disappear? Why don't the police react to these things, these attacks?

Mr. Bystron:  Well this is a good question because the police is always investigating. It is a special part of the police — it's the «Stadtschutz», so they really know their opponents. I have an interesting experience because when it happened to me. This police task force come and they ask me “Have you seen something you can tell us?” And I said “yes I saw. I saw two suspects in the street in the morning”. They are not living here in the area I am going every morning there — so I know the people there. And they are obviously from Antifa, they look like this and I described them I said “There was a girl she had the blue hairs I don't know her”. Then I described the guy because I knew him already from the demonstrations. You know, I described him and the policeman said, “oh I know who it is,” so they know their you know suspects uh-huh of course when I know them just from speaking in public and seeing them as an anti-demonstration. This is always the same bench. So the police of course they know them. They investigate but I didn't got any results.

Tim: Gotcha. Oh that's really depressing, that's really really rough.

Mr. Bystron:  It continues, now this is a very hot topic. We have a secret service, domestic secret service, which is which is used to suppress the opposition. It was publicly announced that the secret service will take this political party under of observation, because we are supposed to be extremists. Isn’t that funny? The only thing is that we say we would like that the government is following the rules and the laws. And we are saying the government is breaking the laws! And they say “Wow they are extremists”.

Tim: Gotcha. What’s the one thing that maybe Germany could actually stand to learn from Russian culture or history or the way Russians do things?

Mr. Bystron:  There are many things that the Germans could learn from the Russians. And there are many things the Russians could learn from the Germans. I mean I would say just talk to each other just meet each other just relax, don't paint any pictures of enemies on the walls. And we will be fine all together.

Tim: Well thank you very much for being with us that was great.