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“The Digital Green Certificate, the COVID pass, that was a test balloon to get people to [have] to produce some kind of a QR code, just getting people used to that. Now, what they’re slamming us with is these 15-minute cities. Make no mistake. It’s not about your convenience,” argues Christine Anderson. She’s a member of the European Parliament, representing the Alternative for Germany Party.
Anderson was one of the European Parliament’s most vocal critics of COVID-19 policies in Europe, Canada, and beyond.
Western democracies are gradually moving toward digital tyranny, she argues. The next step? Climate lockdowns.
“Once we end up in a totalitarian regime and it’s fully blown, given the technological means they have at their disposal today, we’re not talking about 30 years of GDR [German Democratic Republic], 40 years of GDR. We’re not talking about 70 years of the Soviet Union. We’re talking about a very, very long time. That’s what you should fear,” Anderson says.
In the 1920s and 1930s, “Germany was a highly developed society, I mean, lots of smart people, well-educated people, but it was possible for this society to turn evil to an extent that is unimaginable …We always get asked: ‘How was that even possible?’ Well, take a look at the last three years, and you have your answer,” Anderson argues.
“We just need to be clear on one thing: each and every one of us is capable of inflicting the most horrible atrocities on our fellow mankind, given the right circumstances. But if you are not aware of the fact that yes, you are able to do the same thing, then you have no mechanism to fight it,” Anderson says.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Christine Anderson, it’s such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Christine Anderson:
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Mr. Jekielek:
Here in the U.S. and Canada, you’re most well known for being a harsh critic of vaccine mandate policies, and for Canadians, especially of the policies around the Freedom Convoy in Canada.
Ms. Anderson:
Actually, I just did a tour of Canada on the one-year anniversary of the freedom truckers. They invited me over and I had a really good time. They organized a Freedom Convoy just for me so I got to ride in a truck and participate in a Freedom Convoy, which actually now makes me a freedom trucker, which I’m really proud of.
Mr. Jekielek:
Your voice is unusual in the European Parliament, and among politicians around the world. I want to know more about who you are, and where you come from. How did you come to have this strange, unusual view?
Ms. Anderson:
I’ve always been kind of a pain in the neck, even for my parents and teachers. They will absolutely attest to that. Even as a kid, I was always interested in politics. It might have had to do with my family history. You may know my parents were born and raised in Thuringia, which was formerly in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]. They were born in the 1920s. My dad actually did fight in World War II. He was drafted when he was 16.
When the war was over, he was a prisoner of war with Americans and he was released at the end of 1946. Then, he found himself in communism and that just did not sit well with him. He would speak up against this so-called democratic regime and it landed him in one of the most horrific prisons you can imagine.
He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. Luckily, he only had to serve five years of that sentence and he got released in 1955, and he still wouldn’t shut up, if you can believe that. In 1959, he was about to be arrested again, but that time he had been warned and he fled the country, which was actually a good thing.
I was born and raised in Western Germany, but I grew up with this idea that you always question your government. You never take anything that they’re telling you for granted. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing. Even at school, I always challenged my teachers. But back then, we had to debate about this and it was all good.
What we are seeing now, however, there is no more debate. It’s immediately good or bad, and whatever the so-called bad person is saying, you do not even deal with that. That is actually detrimental for any democracy, and we might actually lose it.
Mr. Jekielek:
It is very strange that it’s not just good or bad, but there’s a correct way you’re supposed to think.
Ms. Anderson:
Exactly, yes. That’s what we are seeing in schools today too. The students are no longer taught how to think. They’re now taught what to think. Anyone not sticking to the desired political narrative, and deviating from that, immediately gets slandered as being a bad person, and having vile views. It’s a shame and we should not allow this to happen.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about when you decided to start. What prompted you to realize something was off and start saying extremely controversial things?
Ms. Anderson:
Okay. Just looking at the so-called pandemic, in the beginning, it was like, “We don’t know what’s coming.” It was kind of like that. On Easter of 2020, I completely left that narrative, because the things they were doing did not add up. There were steps they could have taken but didn’t, because they were afraid of being called racist. They could have cut down on travelers coming from China. That would have been a smart thing to do, but they didn’t do that.
The other thing was now there is this pandemic going and raging its way throughout the world, but the refugees still poured in. They didn’t have to provide anything. We were in the absurd situation that anyone could step foot into my country with no questions asked. But as a German citizen, I was not even allowed to enter a restaurant, a shoe store, or a hairdresser without showing a vaccine pass.
This is so fundamentally off what you should do. It pretty soon occurred to me that this has nothing to do with public health. It has nothing to do with breaking any infection waves. It was always about breaking the people. That’s what they were trying to do. They simply wanted to see how far they could go, and how far the people would allow them to take away their fundamental rights. We’ve been seeing that.
Once there were people that said, “No, we are not going to mask up, and we’re not going to get this mRNA shot,” they really bashed down on these people, threatening them and their livelihoods. They said, “You are no longer allowed to go to work. You’re no longer allowed to ride on a bus.” There were talks about if you do not get this mRNA shot, you will have to pay for your medical treatment yourself, because you brought it on yourself. They even were contemplating not to treat unvaccinated people at all.
This is the kind of stuff that totalitarianism is actually made of; ostracizing people, scapegoating people, and ridiculing them. One high-functioning German politician even went so far as to say unvaccinated people should not be allowed to celebrate Christmas at all. Can you imagine? That’s the level we were talking about.
We are not teaching our children anymore. What does it actually mean to live in a communist country? What does that mean? What did it mean to live under total totalitarian Soviet rule? What did that actually mean? Look to China and there you have it. Is this what we want? I don’t think so.
That’s what I’m fighting. I do not want a government to literally have so much power and control over people that with the flip of a switch their life is pretty much over. They can’t go anywhere anymore. That’s what we are looking at.
I’ve just seen Vera Sharav. She’s a Holocaust survivor, by the way. She was speaking very clearly about the future totalitarian regimes. They no longer require electrified, barbed-wire wired fences. All they need is a phone, a digital ID, a QR code, and then they can do whatever they want with you. That is scary.
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes. You may have read Aaron Kheriaty’s book, The New Abnormal, and he actually talks about things like how in the 1920s and 1930s, the German medical system was the top of the world. A lot of people don’t understand that. The Volk, the people as a whole, were the thing that they were trying to perfect, as opposed to what we think of in Hippocratic medicine. There, the doctor’s responsibility is to do no harm to the individual, whoever that may be, whatever their situation, and whatever bad decisions they may have made about their life. It’s not a moral question. It was very powerful to learn that.
Ms. Anderson:
But what is also shocking, Germany was a highly developed society with lots of smart, well-educated people, but it was possible for this society to turn evil to an extent that is unimaginable. That should get you thinking, how was that possible? That’s the question we always get asked, “How was that even possible?” Take a look at the last three years and you have your answer.
There is another thing that we really need to embrace as individuals. We just need to be clear on one thing. Each and every one of us is capable of inflicting the most horrible atrocities on our fellow mankind, given the right circumstances. But if you are not aware of the fact that you are able to do the same thing, then you have no mechanism to fight it once you are put in a position like that.
There’s a lot of people that would like to think that they would’ve been in the resistance back then. Take a look at what you did in the last three years and you have your answer. Most of the people would not have been in the resistance back then, because they just went right along with everything the government asked them to do.
Mr. Jekielek:
There is a famous line from Solzhenitsyn, “The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart.”
Ms. Anderson:
Exactly. But we need to be aware of that. That’s the only way that we will be able to fight it. You had neighbors that had nothing better to do than to spy on their neighbors. If they had more than two people in their apartment, they would call the cops on them. On what planet is that okay? It is not your business. This whole fearmongering was going on, which, by the way, is something I’m accused of all the time, but it was actually done by the governments all around the world.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let me just jump in here. What fearmongering are you being accused of exactly?
Ms. Anderson:
By outlining the fact that if governments have too much power, eventually we will no longer have a democracy, is the fear mongering I’m accused of. But actually, the government is really terrifying people by saying “You’re all going to die a horrible death.” In Germany, there was a manual, an outline on how to get the people to do what the government wanted them to do to adhere to these restrictions.
They outlined it there specifically, “Even though kids are at no risk of this COVID, we have to make them afraid. If they catch it and then they infect their grandparents, they’re responsible for having killed their grandparents.”
That’s the kind of thinking that went on in the governments. Talk about fearmongering. This is fearmongering. A completely blown out of proportion kind of pandemic. For what? It was so the pharmaceutical companies could make billions and billions of dollars.
Mr. Jekielek:
I have to get this straight. There’s a number of places in the world now, notably in the UK documented by Laura Dodsworth, where there’s unequivocal evidence that the government was involved in sowing fear, and had a specific strategy for doing so. You’re telling me that this is the case in Germany as well and documented line by line. Is that what you’re saying?
Ms. Anderson:
That is what I’m saying. It was supposed to be a documentation only for internal use, but it got leaked. God bless the internet. Yes, it was right there. They were targeting kids, and then, they were also specifically talking about addressing the most rooted fear in people, which is suffocation. They said, “You will suffocate, and you will die a horrible death.” It says it right there.
Mr. Jekielek:
A lot of what you’re talking about is similar to things that have happened in other places around the world. There is the fact that this didn’t just happen in Germany, this didn’t just happen in the UK, and this didn’t just happen in the U.S. It’s almost like the same approach was used.
This type of evidence would be found almost everywhere, because why would the same methods be used? Have you thought about this kind of global coordination?
Ms. Anderson:
Absolutely. That is actually the scariest part of all of this. Had it only been two or three countries going rogue, we would have had the hopes another country would step in and put a stop to it.
Mr. Jekielek:
There were exceptions.
Ms. Anderson:
There were exceptions.
Mr. Jekielek:
Of course, there were significant ones.
Ms. Anderson:
Right. But just looking at it, they were in lockstep with all of this. They literally read from the same script, repeating the same lines, “Build back better, safe and effective.” Every single Western democracy was pretty much doing the same thing. That’s the most scary part about this, because who is going to bail us out?
It’s not going to be China, it’s not going to be North Korea, and it won’t be Russia either. Who will do it? It’s actually up to the people. We have to do it. But yes, it is quite frightening that they were all in agreement with whatever they did.
Mr. Jekielek:
What has to be done at this point? In the U.S., a number of congressional members are involved in this subcommittee on COVID, and there’s also the weaponization of the federal government. There’s a number of subcommittees that are actively trying to look at these questions in Congress now.
But people don’t have a lot of faith in Congress right now, or perhaps in Parliament. I don’t exactly know what the situation is in Germany and in the EU. What do you see as reasonable for the people to act on?
Ms. Anderson:
First of all, what I always say is to turn off your freaking television set. It’s dumbing you down. That would be the first step to take. Especially in the Western democracies, we need to revisit democracy. What is it, what is it supposed to do, and what is it not supposed to do? The people are the employers of the elected representatives and of the government. The people get to tell the government what to do, not the other way around.
But especially in the Western democracies, it’s almost as though we are such spoiled brats. We do not put any value on freedom, democracy and the rule of law anymore. We just kind of think it fell out of the blue sky on one fine day, “Oops, here it is. It’s always going to be here.” No, it won’t.
As Ronald Reagan said, “It’s only one generation away.” People need to realize once again what we have now. Our freedom had to be wrestled from the former elites. Our fathers and forefathers literally spilled blood over this so that we could live in a free and democratic society. But what we are doing now is just pretty much slandering it away as though it does not hold any value anymore.
We really need to revisit what does democracy even mean? We need to get back to actually holding elected representatives and the government accountable for what they did. We should never allow them to be able to move democratic processes further and further away from the people. The EU institutions are, by the way, an example of that.
What we are going to be seeing next is we will have transnational lists. The people will vote for their representatives who they don’t even understand anymore, because they speak a different language. How will you be able to let your representative know what policies you want, if you don’t even speak the language?
We’ve been seeing that. Look at the WHO [World Health Organization]. They were trying to seize executive powers from the member states. They’re not accountable to us, they weren’t elected by us, and this is going on everywhere.
Mr. Jekielek:
Are you talking about the International Health Regulations and the treaty that’s coming?
Ms. Anderson:
That’s an example.
Mr. Jekielek:
Okay.
Ms. Anderson:
An example, yes. We see this on so many levels of how they’re trying to actually take away the people’s right to elect their representatives and hold the politicians accountable. We need to be aware of this.
What we will be seeing in the time to come is a lot of politicians will say, “We’ve been saying this all along, and we’ve been seeing this, and we’ve been on your side. “ People kind of tend to forget, so come up with an archive.
The internet is here. Come up with documentation. Any politician trying to gaslight you into thinking that he’s always been on your side, pull it up and say, “Oh, excuse me, is that what you said? Did you try to lock me in my home because I was dangerous?” Get an archive going so people will not forget what the so-called elected representatives did to the people.
Mr. Jekielek:
This is also an interesting question. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. In Poland, I interviewed Lech Wałęsa recently, the former Polish president and now Solidarity leader. I was thinking about how societies emerge out of communism. He has a lot of supporters, and he has a lot of critics. How do societies emerge out of communism? How do societies emerge out of totalitarianism?
How do they emerge out of a situation where a very significant portion of the population became complicit in something that was bad? If you subscribe to Mattias Desmet’s idea or Hannah Arendt’s ideas, they maybe did not even fully grasp what they had become a part of, which makes it even more complicated. How do you do that? Because it’s very hard for people to admit they were wrong. There’s that famous Mark Twain saying, “It is much easier to make people believe a lie-
Ms. Anderson:
It’s much easier to make people believe a lie, than to make them believe that they’ve been lied to.
Mr. Jekielek:
Fantastic. Thank you for that.
Ms. Anderson:
No problem.
Mr. Jekielek:
Exactly. In fact, this is our situation. We didn’t even talk about these genetic vaccines and their impact on society, but a lot of people got involved believing perhaps they were doing the right thing and now may have to face the fact that something went horribly wrong, and they were a part of it. There’s resistance to that. This is a difficult social situation. That’s what I’m getting at. How do we get out of this?
Ms. Anderson:
I’m so glad you mentioned Lech Wałęsa because when you look back to the 1980s in Poland, it was Solidarity that really started all of this. They were eventually able to overcome this communist regime under totalitarian rule by the Soviets, and he went through a lot.
What people need to understand is as long as you give the government power over you, meaning as long as you buy into their fear mechanisms and as long as you fear them, they have power over you. Take that away from them. Just make it known. You say, “Yes, I understand you have a lot of power over me and you could put me in jail, I get that, but guess what? I don’t care. Go ahead and do it.”
Going back to Nazi Germany, there is this saying, “First they came for the Social Democrats. I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t a Social Democrat. Then, they came for the union members. I didn’t say anything, it didn’t concern me. I wasn’t a union member. Then, they came for the Jews. I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t a Jew. And then, they came for me and there was no one left to speak up for me.” That’s exactly what we’re seeing. Break that chain and just say, “You can threaten me with whatever? Go ahead. I don’t care.”
Because every once in a while, there are things way more important than your fear. Trust me. Once we end up in a totalitarian regime and it’s full blown, given the technological means they have at their disposal today— we’re not talking about 30 years of GDR, 40 years of GDR, or 70 years of the Soviet Union—we’re talking about a very, very long time. That’s what you should fear. That and only that. Don’t fear your government is pretty much what I’m trying to say.
Mr. Jekielek:
That can be hard for people, though.
Ms. Anderson:
I understand. I understand that people have a mortgage to pay, and they need to make ends meet every month. I get all of that.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s fear of the government, but it’s also wanting to not go outside of your social group. I wonder if that’s not even a stronger mechanism, just having watched what happened over the last few years. That’s extremely difficult to do, to be the person that steps out. That’s why I’m so interested in people like yourself, because there weren’t a lot of people standing up on the floor in the EU talking like you did.
Ms. Anderson:
Democracy lives off of debate. If everyone is thinking the same thing, then something goes horribly wrong. If I don’t believe in what I should believe in, then I won’t say I will. But that’s another mechanism that totalitarian regimes and dictatorships always implement. You single out a specific group, you scapegoat them or slander them, and the rest will just not voice their opinion anymore because they don’t want to become those guys. Then you are complicit in what is about to happen and you are a bystander and you are not doing anything to keep it from happening. You shouldn’t do that.
Mr. Jekielek:
Those are very wise words. Since we mentioned the truckers, what is your reaction to this new Rouleau Commission? This is the commission that was looking at whether the use of the Emergencies Act by the Trudeau government was justified. What is your reaction to their findings? I’m paraphrasing here, but their findings were that it was justified.
Ms. Anderson:
That’s actually shocking that they came to that conclusion, because from what I saw, it was nowhere even close to being justified. That was actually bashing down citizens’ protest, taking away their rights to freedom of assembly, freezing their bank accounts, and literally labeling them as terrorists, which was the prerequisite for freezing their bank accounts. This is so absurd, and now they came to the conclusion this was justified.
This is really a blueprint for all the governments around the world now. Whenever they fear the uprising of opposing citizens, which is the citizens’ right, by the way, they just invoke an emergency act. There you go, you no longer have any opposition.
Mr. Jekielek:
It allowed the Canadian government to suspend certain civil liberties.
Ms. Anderson:
Exactly.
Mr. Jekielek:
The earlier version of this was called the War Measures Act, actually.
Ms. Anderson:
Yes, exactly. They’ve gotten away with it. We will be seeing this in the future too. Whenever there is opposition from the citizens, opposing government, and protesting government, there you go. All they have to do is invoke an Emergencies Act. That did not turn out too well when they did that back in the 1930s in Germany, as we all know now, because that’s how the Nazis really started out. They invoked an emergency act.
Mr. Jekielek:
In Canada, to be fair, they got rid of it pretty quickly.
Ms. Anderson:
Yes, they got rid of it. Maybe they won’t next time. Who knows?
Mr. Jekielek:
I’m very curious what your opinion is on 15-minute cities. It’s a new idea that we’re only beginning to hear about. Maybe you can remind us what they are. I understand they’re coming to Europe now. There is legislation pushing in that direction already.
Ms. Anderson:
Yes, it is. The Digital Green Certificate, the COVID pass, was a test balloon to get people to have to produce some kind of a QR code, just getting people used to that. Now, they’re slamming us with these 15-minute cities. Make no mistake, it’s not about your convenience.
It’s not that they want you to be able to have all of these places that you need to get to close by. It’s not about saving the planet either. With the 15-minute cities, they will have to have those before they can lock you down, and that’s what we were talking about here.
In Great Britain, some counties have already passed legislation. They will be able to impose a climate lockdown. That’s the next step. That’s what we are talking about. In order to do that, they will have to have these 15-minute cities.
The next step will be you are only allowed to leave your immediate area two or three times a year. But there’s other people that may have more money, and they can actually buy your passes off of you. Guess what? The poor people will be left in these 15-minute neighborhoods while the ones that are better off get to go wherever they want to go. This is what we are talking about.
Look at Saudi Arabia, for instance. They’re putting up Neom City. They call it, “The Line.” This is a structure in the middle of the desert, 200 kilometers-long, 200 meters-wide, 500 meters-high, and it will house up to 9 million people. Isn’t that just brilliant? If I wanted to get total control of the people, that’s exactly where and how I would house them, and then, have them on a three-meals-a-day prescription. Guess what will happen if you do not do as you are told? They will probably cancel those meals. It’s so easy.
That’s what we’re talking about. When you really take all of this together, there is no other way for me to actually say this. It will be a complete impoverishment and enslavement of all the people. I’m stating it so clearly because that’s what it seems like, and that’s what it looks like to me.
Mr. Jekielek:
Just briefly explain what does 15-minute city mean?
Ms. Anderson:
A 15-minute city is basically a neighborhood where you can reach everything you need within a 15-minute foot walk, a doctor, grocery store, and so forth. The bare necessities will be provided within a 15-minute foot walk. However, if you now fancy another store and it does not happen to be in your neighborhood, guess what? You won’t be going to that store anymore. Like I said, total control is what we’re talking about.
Mr. Jekielek:
Again, it sounds attractive. You have everything within walking distance. Where does the control come in exactly?
Ms. Anderson:
They can decide you are no longer allowed to leave your 15-minute immediate area. They don’t have to fence it in or anything. It will be done via digital ID.
Mr. Jekielek:
With a social credit system?
Ms. Anderson:
Something like that.
Mr. Jekielek:
Kind of maintaining compliance.
Ms. Anderson:
Yes. There’s pilot projects already going on in Bologna. There, it’s called the Bologna Wallet. In Vienna, it’s called the Vienna Token. It’s voluntary for now, and it’s only pretty much enticing people. If you do this, you get some tickets for a little less, to go to the theater. Voluntary. Once again, first step. But soon, there will be a time when you don’t have a choice anymore. You have to have this Digital Green Certificate with this QR code. Then, they will tell you where you can go, what you can do, and what you cannot do.
Mr. Jekielek:
As we finish up, I was almost wondering whether you want to work yourself out of a job here, because you’re a member of the European Parliament. But I get the sense you have some suspicion about these larger institutions like the European Parliament or the European Commission. What are your thoughts here?
Ms. Anderson:
If it was up to me, Germany would leave this hellhole today, not tomorrow. Is that what you were getting at?
Mr. Jekielek:
Why?
Ms. Anderson:
Because the institutions, they’re not only undemocratic, they’re anti-democratic. First of all, look at the way the Parliament is elected. It’s a gross violation of the principle; one man, one vote. Every German representative in the new Parliament has to get more than 850,000 votes for one seat. But a representative from Malta only needs 64,000 votes. I know that’s kind of interesting, though. But yes, that’s the way it’s done.
Then, you look at the institutions, and how they work together. We are not a parliament. It’s actually a disgrace to call it a parliament, if you will. We have certain competencies we don’t have. We don’t have budget control, which actually is a good thing. Because if we had budget control, then the national parliaments would have been stripped of that.
We do not pass any laws, by the way. We don’t. We vote on resolutions, which are like letters we write to the EU Commission, “It would be nice if you could do this, that or the other.” But we do not actually pass laws. Passing the law, the legislation is done by guess who? By the Council. The Council is composed of the members of the National Executive.
If the German government wanted to pass a law and the German Parliament said, “No, we are not going there. We’re not doing this,” story over, right? Not in this case. Now the respective minister just travels to Brussels, speaks with his colleagues, passes the law there, which then has to be implemented as a EU law in all of the member states. There goes your rule by the people, for the people. It’s just over with.
Other elected representatives of other countries get to pass legislation that the Germans will have to put into law and adhere to even though they never wanted it. So, there you go. That’s why this entire EU institution is anti-democratic. It’s just another step to a more clubeletarian, elitist world.
Because all of the companies, they no longer have to negotiate with 27 different states. It’s just this one entity. Ursula von der Leyen is such a brilliant negotiator, isn’t she? She secured 4.6 billion doses of these mRNA shots, which her husband, sitting on various boards of these companies directly benefited from. Seriously? That’s what we consider democracy now? Interesting.
Mr. Jekielek:
As we finish up, what are you working on now?
Ms. Anderson:
What I have been doing the entire time is trying to expose their lies, whenever they come up with some kind of a legislation program. They’re so eager to tell people it’s in their best interest, and they promise an ever-increasing better world to live in. I just look at what they are trying to tell the people, and what they are actually doing to the people.
That’s the only thing we can really do at this point, just to educate people on the lies. The governments, and all of these so-called elected representatives feed them to buy into their sick narratives about some kind of agenda. Whether it’s climate change, whether it’s transgender, or whether this whole COVID madness, you see it everywhere. That’s what we’re trying to do.
We are working on this to see what we can do, because the WHO is not done yet with trying to seize these executive powers of the member states. I’m working with a few really good lawyers on that. But we need the people to back us up on this, because after all, we only do what the people want us to do. They need to do something, stand up, take to the streets and let their governments know they will not put up with this anymore, then, the stronger we will be able to voice our opinion.
Mr. Jekielek:
Christine Anderson, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ms. Anderson:
It was a pleasure being on. Thank you.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Christine Anderson and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
