German Politician Denied US Entry Over A MEME? With Guest Christopher Kofner
The "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) party shocked Europe recently, scoring big wins in the recent EU Parliamentary elections. Brussels is terrified of the supposed "far right" gaining more power in Europe. But is AfD really "far right"? Today, AfD economist and regional spokesman Christopher Kofner joins the Liberty Report to explain what all the panic is about...and to for the first time reveal his own recent BIZARRE run-in with US Customs as he attempted to attend a conference in the US hosted by a libertarian think tank. You won't believe what happened to him!!!
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
As you might be able to guess, Dr. Paul is out today.
But we're going to have a fun show anyway.
We're going to talk about some really interesting stuff.
We're going to talk about a crazy, crazy story brought to me by a friend of mine who happens to be an economist and politician in Germany.
And we're going to talk a little bit about European politics as well while we have him on.
But we want to cut right to the meat of the matter.
Our guest is from the Alternative for Germany party, the AFDA party.
His name is Christopher Kaufner.
Welcome to the program, Christopher.
Daniel, thank you very much for having me.
It's great to have you on the show.
You sent me an email today, me and a mutual friend of ours, about a trip you were taking to the U.S. If I'm not mistaken, you were to attend a conference that was given by the AIER, which is a libertarian-oriented economics think tank.
You've got to be careful, those libertarians will get you in trouble.
But our audience is going to be fascinated to hear what happened.
Give us a whole play-by-play, the whole blow.
What was the whole thing about?
Random Questioning At AIER Conference00:13:43
Why did you come over?
What was your interest in?
What happened to you?
Yes, Daniel, you're right.
Freedom, liberty seems to be quite a dangerous idea, unfortunately, even in the United States, or maybe especially in the United States, as I unfortunately have found out.
So, yes, myself, I'm an economist.
I advise the Alternative for Germany party, the IFD right-wing party in Germany in economic policy.
And I'm myself a right-wing libertarian, in the sense of maybe Murray Rothbard, and Frank Meyer, maybe.
And so I was looking for opportunities to participate in further education courses, seminars in the United States on libertarian economic policy kind of stuff.
And I was accepted by one institute or seminar organized by the American Institute of Economic Research and the Academy of Capitalism, which was titled Classical Liberalism and Business, a seminar, which is going on right now, basically at the University of Springfield, Illinois.
I was invited to participate.
I booked the flights in May.
I got an official visa waiver, an official basically an approval of the Department of Homeland Security to travel to the United States.
And so I did because I really wanted to participate in this further education course and make some new friends, network, and so on.
Well, the flight took basically 12 and a half hours because I was going over London and then from London to Chicago.
And at the moment when I wanted to get up out of the plane, there was an announcement that there will be a random selection of visitors for further questioning.
So I went out the plane and right at the ramp of the plane, there were two officers of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
And they were looking at all the passports.
But when they got to meet, I said, oh, Mr. Kaufner, please come with us.
You were chosen randomly for some questioning.
And then, well, the whole audio started basically because I was interrogated by them and the FBI for about 10 hours.
And for a long time, I didn't know what time it was.
The lights are on, no windows.
You know, there were a bunch of a lot of people at the waiting room going in and out, mostly people from Muslim countries.
I was basically the only white person there.
And how did you just stop me for a second?
How did you feel when you first saw the officers and said, we have some questions for you?
What was the first thing that went through your mind?
The thing is, maybe, you know, I know that what the secret services of the Western countries are saying about the IFDA and about Russia.
And so basically, I thought to myself, wow, really, I'm that a threat to them with my views.
I'm such a threat because, you know, I'm not stupid, I try to believe of myself.
And so I wouldn't have come to the United States if I would have thought that my views and what I'm doing are so, or the IFDA, which I participate in, are such a threat to the security of the United States.
But it seems to be like that.
But I don't think that I'm a threat to the United States.
I think I'm a threat to the Biden regime, basically, or the regime which stands behind them.
So you're sitting here in a room.
10 hours is an unbelievably long time to be questions.
What kinds of things could they possibly ask you for 10 hours?
So I was interrogated, not of course, not the whole 10 hours, but with long waiting periods.
But at least maybe there were five interrogations, six if you count the interrogation by the FBI as well, which took place at the end, which was also quite funny.
I can tell later about that.
They questioned me.
Well, first of all, they took my phone and they took my laptop away.
They confiscated them.
And they gave me back my laptop at the end, but they didn't give me back my phone.
And I still don't know if and whether and when I get it back.
So that's for that.
I tried to contact, by the way, the Cosmos Border afterwards and the embassy.
And, you know, still no answer in that sense.
So they interrogated me about basically about the IFD.
And they said, you know, serious legacy media claim that the IFD is racist and right-wing extremist.
What do you think about that?
Is that true?
And then basically another question was about alleged Russian influence on the IFD and how I see it from the inside.
Can I confirm that and so on?
They asked me about my views on the conflict in Ukraine, on my views on German foreign policy and they asked me about my connections to the US Republicans and as well to a member of the European Parliament of the IFD, Maxim Lenkrap.
Those were the main questions.
And I mean, it sounds like they were just trying to get a briefing or something.
Did they say, did they ever explain why you were being detained, what you did that made them want to detain you?
They never said that.
They never said that.
They never gave a reason why I was detained.
They just really want.
So the thing is, what was obvious that they allowed me to come to the United States just to get maybe my phone and just to interrogate me.
That was obvious because they were waiting for me basically.
Two officers, as I said, they took me to this interrogation room, to the waiting place.
And they questioned me again and again about allegations of the IFD being right-wing extremists, about allegations of Russian influence and so on.
And if I may, I would just quickly like to repeat what I told them because and they were quite astonished from my replies because they were not the replies they were hoping for.
Basically concerning the allegations of right-wing extremism.
I said, well, we are right-wing party, but we're not right-wing extremists.
We have the same views as Trump.
And if you believe that Trump is not a racist, then you cannot say this because the same serious legacy media, which claim that, they claim the same thing about the IFDA in Germany.
And we are only against mass immigration.
We are in favor of controlled immigration.
Of course, you want a sovereign German foreign policy, which means good relations, strong and mutually beneficial relations with the United States, but also better economic and trade relations with Russia, of course, because German industry is very dependent on that.
And a more sovereign policy in general of Germany.
And then, according, well, on the claim that there's Russian influence, you know, and I know the topic quite well, so they were quite astonished.
I said that basically there is no systemic Russian influence on the IFD.
Because systemic influence for me is if you get financial payments for political events, for election campaigns, for benevolent media coverage, for example, if you're talking about the media.
And the only country in the world which has this kind of influence on German politics, I have to be quite honest with you, is of course the United States, because you all have all those democratic think tanks like the Atlantic Bridge, Marshall Fund, ESME Institute.
And if you want to become an accessible politician in Germany, you have to participate in those organizations and participate in that American soft power.
And then you make a steep career.
Same as if you look at the party convents of all the other parties in Germany, they are all sponsored by American large corporations like McDonald's or Microsoft or Google and so on.
The IFDA is not.
Well, to be honest, of course, there are some relations between the IFDA and Russia.
For example, when there was each 9th of May on the Victory Day celebration victory over Nazi Germany, it is a tradition of every country to invite representatives of the governments and of the parties to this kind of like official gala events, maybe.
And then you come and you are invited, you have a wine, and that's it.
And then, of course, IFD politicians were invited to participate in the elections in Russia to look at them.
If they're going on, honestly, and so on.
But that's not, for me, that's not systemic influence.
And when I told them that... I was just going to say, it doesn't seem that controversial to celebrate the destruction of Nazi Germany, the Nazi machine.
I mean, that's hardly controversial.
I mean, that seems like it's pretty shit.
Again, it contradicts the claim that we are a racist.
Yeah, I mean, I just can't believe it was whatever kind of part.
Exactly.
So go ahead.
I'm sorry I interrupted you.
Yeah, so and then, of course, they were questioning me about my views in Ukraine.
I told them my honest views, you know, are that my personal views are the same views as the IFDA.
That, of course, we regret that Russia invaded Ukraine.
We are against that.
But then you have to look at the larger picture, you know, because the war didn't start in 2022.
It started in 2014.
It started with the coup d'etat organized by the West, which is, I don't think anyone can deny that anymore.
It was, let's say, the whole crisis was increased and started and accepted due to the eastward expansion of NATO.
If you look at the map, there are no Russian bases around the United States, but there are a lot of United States bases around Russia.
The United States would never allow a Chinese military base on Mexican soil or Soviet missiles on Cuba, as you might know.
Yes.
So why?
But they crossed the red lines for Russian national interests.
And that's how the conflict started.
United States didn't allow a peace settlement in April 2022, which was negotiated in Turkey.
And so that's what I told them.
And then again, I said we want to be a sovereign country.
Germany is not sovereign.
Of course, we have the most U.S. troops after Japan nowadays.
I think that's about 50,000, if I'm not mistaken.
American troops.
We have the NSA, largest facilities in Europe, in Bavaria, for example.
Nuclear devices of the United States military, which can be launched remotely from the United States.
Of course, we have Ramstein drone airbase, which where people, civilians getting killed in Syria, for example, which is all based on the United States military in Germany.
And the question is, would they leave if we would ask them to?
I don't think so.
And so, of course, we want more sovereignty.
And of course, the thing is, we want cheap gas from Russia because this is the basis for our industry.
There's no easy way out of it.
You might criticize this strong dependence, but it's not the thing which you can change from yesterday to today because that's what we see right now.
We see a full de-industrialization of the German industry because of this kind of switch away from cheap Russian gas.
We are now buying very expensive American liquefied natural gas, about five times the cost.
Of course, the people exporting liquefied natural gas from the United States are very happy about the situation.
But then again, let me just one more sentence, please.
We are, and I'm personally absolutely in favor of very strong, mutually beneficial trade, economic, political, cultural relations with the United States because my personally, and I think a lot of people in the party, we look up to a lot of things in the United States.
We look up to the tradition of freedom.
We look up to the tradition of the ideas which stood behind the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
And we, of course, look up to right-wing discourse in the United States because we think that this kind of discourse, right-wing think tanks, research, like as the Ron Paul Institute, but also others, they are something we can learn from as a German right-wing party.
And that's what I told them.
And again, they didn't like my answers because it didn't fit into what they wanted to hear from me.
Yeah, they wanted to find a secret copy of Mein Kampf or something in your backpack.
But, you know, as...
Oh, they didn't find that.
Yeah.
They found a...
They found a red MAGA head.
Oh, I found that.
Oh, no, that's your problem.
I was just going to say, I mean, basically, everything you outlined seems like basic Republican, especially under Trump, basic Republican policy.
And as a libertarian-oriented or free-market-oriented economist, you clearly understand the benefits of trade.
So you could call it dependency on Russian gas, but in fact, it's mutually beneficial.
Trade is what keeps peace.
Trade is what builds economies.
Trade is what enriches people.
And the destruction of the relationship, as you know better than anyone in your countrymen, know better than anyone, the destruction of the relationship, the economic relationship between Russia and Germany, has resulted in the deindustrialization of Germany, which will affect it for generations now.
You know, even your friend almost next door, Radek Sikorsky, saying, thank you, USA, for blowing up the pipeline and destroying the German economy.
So it doesn't sound like a very radical view.
Why Germany Shifted Left?00:12:35
And in fact, in the U.S., the far left press would call that far right.
But we kind of call it mainstream conservatism here.
It doesn't seem that radical, or at least it shouldn't.
But let's move ahead now.
You said some funny things happened when the FBI broke into the room and started chatting with you.
So how did this whole thing end?
Well, no, quite the opposite.
I don't want to be disrespectful, but those two very young officers that were younger than myself, I guess 29 or something like that, they were not the typical image from American blockbusters which I had about FBI officers.
One young man and one young woman, I don't remember her name, unfortunately, but his name was Zach, and he looked like Frodo, to be honest.
And they put on this artificial smile.
And, you know, it was like I had been interrogated for nine hours now, so I wasn't too humorous at that point, of course.
And they, oh, you are so interesting to us.
You know, we came out and Saturday evening, you know, we don't usually work at that time, but we were told about you.
You're so interesting to us.
We'd like to talk to you.
And I just, I wasn't humorous, but still, I had maybe one joke in myself left.
And I said, well, I'm very sorry that you had to come out Saturday evening instead of going out to clubbing or whatever.
They didn't laugh at that.
Yeah, so they, of course, questioned me again.
And, you know, and I told them the same stuff, and they only nodded.
But the thing is, you can see if people nod in agreement or just nodding, you know, like, yeah, we are listening.
And when I told them that, you know, look, the United States would never agree with a Chinese base or a Russian base in Mexico.
And of course, you have regions where powers want to control.
And that's just normal justice for Russia, justice for the United States or Europe, whatever, or China.
They kind of agreed with me.
I'm very certain that they knew what I'm talking about.
And they, of course, agree.
So that was an interesting experience.
And then after that, a young woman from the Border Customs Patrol again, not the main guy who interrogated me the other six hours before that.
He just left.
After having said I'll be back in a minute.
He just left basically.
She then told me that I'm being denied entry into the United States and I should apply for a visa and cry again.
You know, all those kind of like words which don't mean anything.
They just said I'm being denied entry.
And I asked, so what's the official reason why I'm being denied?
Why did you detain me for like 10 hours now?
Oh, I have to ask again.
So she went back, talked to the officer, came back and said, well, we found some images on your phone and that's why you were not allowing the entry.
And basically this, it was basically just the main image was that was a meme.
A meme.
An image, a meme.
Yeah, it was a meme, like a joke image, which wasn't even mine because, you know, if you have WhatsApp, sometimes people post stuff in groups and it gets posted, it gets downloaded automatically on your phone.
I guess you can switch off, but you know, I came to the United States.
I didn't think that in any way I'm afraid or there's anything I should worry about because I have nothing to hide.
I told them my positions as I told you and there's nothing to hide and I didn't think that's any in any way anything bad.
I'm not saying anything else which any like normal Republican would say.
So if that's allowed in the United States, why I'm not allowed to say it as a guest.
So she showed me a meme depicting Biden and Zelensky as soldiers of the D-Day landings.
And so in black and white, and then with the subtitle saying kind of like, warmongers should be in the front row or in the front lines.
So if they are the people behind the conflict in Ukraine and so on, they should be fighting.
And I think that's an honest position.
They should be fighting.
Just in Germany, we have politicians who want to send German boys to the New Eastern front.
And I think they should be sent to the front themselves if they are so eager about that.
And basically, and then, you know, and I asked, I told her, Are you serious?
I'm being deported for a meme.
And she couldn't hide her laughter.
So she laughed too.
She laughed too.
She had to laugh.
She tried didn't do.
And then I said, you know what?
Just for the protocol, because they were taking a protocol at that point, not before that, I said, please write down for the protocol that I do not like this image because I really respect the veterans of the United States Army, which fought at D-Day.
And I do not respect Biden and Zelensky and being of those two categories being compared to each other.
Please write that down.
So they did.
I have it in my protocol.
Wow.
Wow.
What a story.
It's an incredible story.
I mean, we have a saying over here, the left can't meme.
And I think that probably is what happened.
The humor hit a brick wall with these people.
It's hardly a reason to be kicked out of the country and denied entry.
So, well, I hope you'll update us on this when you get more information or when you get your phone back, maybe.
I hope that.
You know, I was told by many friends now, you know, we have the same situation in Germany.
They said to me, well, you're stupid.
You just sort of put charcoal on your face and cried through the Mexican border.
And you could have entered without a problem.
Maybe even get some kind of social assistance.
EBT card, maybe.
I wonder, I mean, I sort of wonder if the German government tipped the U.S. off and said, hey, we got a troublemaker coming your way.
Why don't you give him a bit of a hassle or something?
You know, who knows?
Could be, could be.
But I think that the German Secret Service is not in a position to tell the United States intelligence what to do.
I think that it's working the other way around.
The other way around, yeah.
Well, we're going to go in a second, but I just want to give you a chance to talk about the off day.
We watched how well they did, particularly in the eastern part of Germany in the recent parliamentary elections.
Maybe that's part of the reason.
Maybe they're getting scared.
But tell our viewers who haven't been following European politics what happened in the recent elections and what you think that may portend for the future of European politics and even German politics.
So yes, recently we had European elections, which unfortunately doesn't mean anything at all in Europe, or it's maybe a symbolic thing because of course the European Parliament does not have the right to bring in any motions.
It just approves or disapproves motions of the European Commission.
It approves more than disapproves, unfortunately, because the European Union has become a supranational institution which dictates basically everything now in the national states of the European Union, which we are against, of course.
But we could see not only in Germany, but generally in Europe, we could see a right shift in the voting behavior, and especially in France and Italy, but also in Germany, we got out very well, got a lot of more votes.
And for example, in Germany, we are now the strongest party among young voters, which shows that there is this new kind of shift among the young voters, which used to be left liberal before that, voting green.
Now they are all, you know, the new rebels are the right-wingers.
Those who want to drive normal cars with combustion engines.
They think men are men and women are women and just want to have a good life and be themselves and be patriots of their countries.
And the young people, they are attracted to those ideas.
That's the new rebels.
And now the other elections which we are having will be in September, which are state elections in three eastern German countries.
And there we are the strongest party.
We are the second strongest party in Germany in general, but in those eastern states, we are the strongest party.
And we might now, if you win, it might be possible that we will bring forward the state government of those three states.
And it would be a kind of revolution, of course, because that would mean that now radical alternative views on migration, on the European Union, on the Euro, on the culture war and so on, would finally also succeed in Germany.
And don't forget, and that's also the reason I was detained, of course, is because Germany is, if not the most, but a very important geopolitical country in Europe.
You can have right-wing governments in Italy and in France, but it won't change that much.
It will change the future of the West if Germany will become a right-wing government.
It's funny, you know, you use the words radical and alternative, but when you're the second most popular political party in the country, that kind of just sounds like you're mainstream because 50 percent, that's what they're talking about, you know, Trump voters.
Well, that's like 50% of the people.
How can it be radical?
How can it be extreme?
I can explain that because nowadays, what used to be normal 20 years ago now has become radical and right-wing.
Because the liberal left has used its influence in Germany, especially you could see that Marsh through the institutions, as we call it, 1986, left-wing through the universities, through the media.
It's all left-wing controlled in Germany.
And now they used those decades to move the discourse of what you can think and what you can say in Germany to the left or even to the radical left.
So everything which is not left or radical left now in Germany is being labeled as right-wing extremists and so on.
But basically what we are saying is not more radical than what was normal to say just 20 years ago.
Yeah, easily.
Well, in the name of democracy, they do want to ban your political party and prevent you from participating in the electoral process.
How is the move to ban RFD going in Germany?
Well, you need to understand in Germany, we are one of the few countries in Europe, apart from Belarus, Russia, and Turkey, which uses its internal secret service to go after the internal opposition of opposition parties, which, you know, think about it, it could mean something.
And they are labeling us as being right-wing extremists.
And the reason basically what they're giving why we can be labeled as such is because we say that there are ethnic Germans apart from just having a German passport.
We're not saying that ethnic Germans are better or worse than other people.
We don't say that anywhere, neither privately nor in official documents.
We're just saying you have, of course, a core of ethnic white Germans.
It's just a nation state.
It's a history.
And we want to preserve that.
But also there are people which have a German passport, a broader range.
And you can, of course, immigrate legally.
If you integrate, if you learn the language, if you behave well, if you work, pay your taxes, you're welcome.
But also, you want to preserve the German heritage.
And we say there are Germans just ethnically.
And because just we are saying that, we are being demonized as being right-wing extremists.
Of course, not only that's the reason, but of course, that we want peace in Ukraine and want to have more national sovereignty back from the European Union.
And because of that, we are being demonized.
And since the Secret Service, this internal service has put these labels on the IFD, now they are trying to ban us.
But I don't think that will work because there are very high legal barriers for banning a political party in Germany.
Of course, that is one good legacy we had after 1945, just to not repeat what happened in 1933 under the Nazis, just banning parties.
And so they will have a very difficult time.
But of course, they're trying to use that label to frighten potential voters from voting for us.
The more they do it, actually, the more it helps us because people understand that it's just being used, misused.
The same as the more often people describe the United States immediate legacy media describe Trump as a racist, the more people will actually wake up and vote for him because you can cry wolf only once, not 100 times.
Thanks Much, Future Conference00:00:39
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, keep us posted on this, and you know, let's give it another shot.
Next time the Ron Paul Institute has a conference, we'll extend an invitation to you and see if you can make it past our Border Patrol.
No memes, don't bring any memes with you.
Just they're very dangerous.
I understood that.
But we will see you here at a future Ron Paul Institute conference, and we'll make up for it.
So, thanks so much, Christopher, for joining us.
We really appreciate it.
A lot of great insights.
Take care.
Be safe over there, and we'll be in touch.
And to our viewers, yes, yes, thanks.
And to our viewers, thanks so much for tuning in to a special episode of the Liberty Report today.