Clear words from Boris Pistorius on Islamist demonstrations
Demands for a caliphate – “The constitutional state must put a stop to this”
After the recent Islamist demonstration in Hamburg, where signs calling for a caliphate were seen, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called for consequences: People who felt they belonged to these ideologies “have no place in Germany’s public service.”
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius spoke clearly against the demonstrations by Islamists at the Overseas Day in Hamburg. The SPD politician also sharply criticized the attacks on election campaigners. They reminded him of the SA before 1933.
EDefense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) actually wanted to talk exclusively about the priorities in defense policy at the Overseas Day in Hamburg City Hall. The 64-year-old later gave his prepared 45-minute lecture about the war in Ukraine, the need for a new conscription and the reputation of the Bundeswehr. Pistorius began his speech to around 500 invited guests from Hamburg’s economy, politics and society with a classification of current events.
He described the recent Islamist demonstration in Hamburg, where signs calling for a caliphate were displayed, as “unbearable”. Demonstrations by people who had the audacity to “question the free basic order and sprinkle it with scorn and ridicule” must be stopped, “and unequivocally,” demanded Pistorius. During his years as Interior Minister in Lower Saxony, the SPD politician was heavily involved in the fight against Islamists. Probably with a view to the most famous face of the figure behind the demonstration, Raheem Boateng, Pisotirus added: People who feel they belong to radical Islamist ideologies have “no place in the public service of Germany and the federal states”. Boateng is a student teacher in Hamburg.
With no less clear words, Pistorius condemned the attacks on two Green politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia and the SPD MEP Matthias Ecke in Saxony. Such attacks pose a great danger to democracy itself. “If local politicians – and this applies equally to members of the state parliaments, the German Bundestag and the European Parliament – no longer dare to run for office, no longer dare to hang up posters or go to election campaign events, then democracy from below dies,” warned Pistorius. Nothing worse could happen to democracy.
Accordingly, Pistorius clearly called for resistance to such activities and blamed parts of the AfD. “We don’t leave this democracy, our way of living in freedom and security, to any fascists, any right-wing extremists or those who do this business for others on the streets as the extended arm of the AfD.” With a view to the recent attacks on posters Politician Pistorius said that this reminded him of “images of the brawling SA as the brutal arm of the NSDAP on the streets of Germany before 1933.” The AfD is partly right-wing extremist – “and we finally have to treat them that way,” demanded Pistorius.
Overseas Day has been taking place in Hamburg every week around May 7th for 74 years. The organizer is the Übersee-Club, an association of Hamburg merchants and decision-makers from science and politics that has existed since 1922. The association organizes lecture events with top-class speakers several times a year. Former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and the then chairman of the Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat were among the club’s guests. But Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict, also spoke in Hamburg.
Every two years, the Presidium invites a special guest from politics to speak to the invited guests and members on the morning of Overseas Day. Two years ago it was Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellors Helmut Kohl, Ludwig Erhard and Konrad Adenauer were also among the speakers at previous Overseas Days. There are also federal and prime ministers as well as leading European politicians. Given the long and high-profile list of previous speakers, Pistorius joked that he was aware of the subtle, “or not so subtle, pressure” that was on him. But he is constantly exposed to it and is therefore used to it.
As a thank you for his speech, Pistorius received a bottled ship, a ship model in a bottle, from the Übersee Club. It was the first for him, admitted Pistorius, who was visibly surprised by the gift.