Yes, today I would like to introduce you to a man who has discovered salmon as a symbol for his life.
The salmon knows no boundaries, it knows no barriers and lives in both salt and fresh water.
He loves to swim against the tide.
This man is also convinced that it is worth thinking and living outside the box and, in
this sense, always expecting the unexpected.
I am pleased to welcome Markus Bönig. Welcome to Kla.TV.
Moin Moin and Bonjour. I'm sitting in a café here in Paris right now.
This also explains a bit of the background noise. I apologize for that.
But when you're on the road like this, you can't always organize the perfect noise conditions.
Mr. Bönig, you studied business administration, worked in global corporations and then turned your
professional life completely upside down in your mid-30s.
You have decided to put your talents at the service of social problems, social tasks.
You love to swim against the tide.
Were you aware from the outset that you would sometimes face strong opposition with these projects?
Honestly, no. Of course, it wasn't clear where it would all lead.
I simply realized that I didn't want to have a normal career, make money and then do something meaningful at the end of my life.
I was looking for a way to combine the two.
And that was simply a great inspiration for me: Professor Yunus, who invented microcredit.
It was the trigger that made me throw everything overboard, because I think the idea of using
commercial means to solve social problems is so great.
Not about donations, but really thinking economically. And that is exactly what is important.
By economic solution I mean what Professor Yunus has demonstrated and what has inspired me so much.
In India, women don't get loans, the villages suffer from interest rate usury with 40 and 50 percent
interest rates and you are simply stuck in a vicious circle.
And this professor invented the so-called microloans.
Small amounts, targeted at women, to improve the social situation.
So he has founded a bank. He lends money.
He is first and foremost being economical, but he is doing this by deliberately breaking the rules
of the game. And that changes everything socially.
This logic can also be applied to the coronavirus era.
There was the social problem that you had to be tested in order to be able to go to work, school or university.
And now a solution has to be found. It can't just fall from the sky. It has to be financed somehow.
And that's where the social entrepreneur comes in, who comes up with a solution, brings the team together and
forms it. And simply acts economically and then offers it.
Here's a test, which also costs money. But it solves the social problem. And for very little money.
Just as the micro-loans charge interest, of course, but then perhaps six percent and not 50.
And it was similar with the Corona test. They were then available for 1.99 euros and not for who knows what amounts.
And in the end it's the same mechanics.
Okay. How do you deal with these self-appointed fact-checkers, for example, Volksverpetzer, who you simply place in the
right-wing corner without comment and try to discredit them with manslaughter arguments like lateral thinkers?
They don't bother me any more because I've been battle-hardened for a long time.
I left Cisco 15 years ago and initially spent 10 years working with pharmacists in the healthcare sector.
And they are very complaining and grumble about everything.
And in that respect, I had already had my trial by fire a long time ago and was therefore well prepared for the corona period
with all those who then work their way through you and of course immediately make you impossible and try to kill you socially.
It just somehow rolls off me. It just doesn't bother me at all.
On the contrary, for me it is an accolade when players like Psiram and t-online and Tagesschau do investigative work.
If they didn't do it, what I was doing would have been ineffective.
Okay. Yes, you've experienced a lot of contradiction during the corona period, as you've just briefly alluded to.
Above all because you offered alternatives to the stationary corona tests at the time.
And of course you were accused of profiteering from the pandemic. How do you see this from today's perspective?
I can only say that we should have fought much harder, much faster, much more.
It's unbelievable what we've put up with for so long. Nevertheless, we have achieved a lot.
We have been able to complete several million test certificates.
We have been able to help hundreds of thousands of users.
And I can only say that we did exactly the right thing. And the risk worked out well.
I already mentioned that in the preliminary talk. I had 341 criminal charges against me.
That can make you sleep a little uneasily.
And in no case has there been a court hearing.
They could all be pushed away by good lawyers in the end.
So here you really had to have courage in the truest sense of the word and go through with it without knowing how it would end.
Some people woke up in prison. I was lucky to have been spared it.
You've already mentioned it.
t-online also once so nicely tore up your activities with "a man turns completely hollow" or "completely free".
And then t-online wrote: "Bönig says openly in a video that the headquarters have been moved abroad to make it more
difficult for the criminal authorities to prosecute him.
t-online then asks: "But why does he want to achieve this if, according to his own
statements, he is not doing anything illegal?"
And then you replied: "It has been shown that a politically motivated judiciary can become very creative."
Can you elaborate a little on that statement?
Absolutely. In the end, it's not about whether you've done something wrong, it's
about finding something. Even if it's tax law.
Al Capone was not convicted for his murders, but for tax evasion at the end.
And that's exactly the danger. A doctor does something good and wakes up in prison,
that could have happened to me just as easily.
The difference is perhaps that we were really meticulous in making sure that things were
super clean, even if they were in the gray area.
So we have never claimed anything that is not true.
We really did tell the truth mercilessly.
We have said, for example, that it cannot be ruled out that you may have an allergic reaction to an ingredient
in the corona injection. You can say something like that.
This may not impress the other party, but it is not a basis for legal proceedings.
And perhaps that is really the direction we have always taken, that we are not vulnerable in terms of what we can do.
And we know that it will be tried anyway.
And the role model for me was simply Dutch organizations that had closed our accounts during
the Corona period and had a very exciting design.
A foundation combined with a limited company, so that the foundation is effectively the managing director of the limited
company. Something like this really only exists in Holland.
I simply learned that from the bad guys, how they do it, and built a construction just like that.
And then it's a bit more difficult to sue someone in Holland than in Germany. That happens
much less often. And that was exactly the aim.
Okay. Yes, and I say we started with Corona, but you're dealing with many, many other topics besides that.
So if you go to the website of the Freedom Chancellery, you will see topics such as "Corona reparation", "property
tax express", "war service blocker". "Contribution blockers" and so on, "measles vaccination blockers".
What else is there? What else is unexpected from Markus Bönig?
Well, the interesting thing is that we have realized that all arbitrariness on the part
of the state is ultimately of a legal nature.
In other words, if we want to defend ourselves, we need a kind of mass weapon on a legal level so that
thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands can defend themselves without needing a lawyer.
If I had already had that in the Corona era, so to speak! We could have defended
ourselves against it in our hundreds of thousands!
And that is precisely our approach. We work on everything where the state arbitrarily interferes with citizens'
rights and solve this with an automated website, with chat functions, with AI, with everything that is possible.
And we have now built new solutions that always do the same thing:
They empower citizens to defend themselves against an arbitrary state using very simple
means, as simple as sending back an Amazon parcel.
Put simply, that's what we do.
And we are now doing this in all possible areas.
We are working specifically on the property tax, which is unconstitutional. "Property tax express".
We have built a solution to stop broadcasting contributions, the "contribution stopper", the "war service
blocker", to build conscientious objections with AI support.
So it's a great thing to turn around the "parking ticket penalty" and this miserable traffic education, so to speak.
It's unbelievable that we're the boss in the ring and are constantly being bullied and feel as if we're
constantly making a mistake in the car. That's not necessary.
And we are building many more solutions of this type.
We certainly have ten more in the quiver waiting to be built.
Okay. You briefly mentioned in the preliminary discussion that the digital plenary session will be launched soon,
i.e. on September 3 this year, if I understood correctly.
What can people expect from this?
What I have just said are concrete, practical solutions, that it is always very important that we don't
just complain in general terms, but actually take action.
And these are only ever small solutions. We have a fundamental problem.
We have a democracy that is only called that and practically leaves the citizen in the corner
like a small child. I call it infantile democracy.
And we want to move towards a sovereign democracy. And that requires technology.
They have been around for a long time. And we have now bundled and built them.
The democracy app with the friends of democracy to simply do exactly what we would all
like to be asked directly and decide directly.
And we took our cue from the Vikings with the Thing . Everyone just comes together in one place.
That's a bit difficult with 84 million. And that's why we're doing it digitally.
And this is called a digital plenary session.
Once all in one place. A vote every month.
No petition, no survey, nothing like that.
Instead, the boss himself meets. All the people involved meet, decide and inform the
politicians. In the form of a citizens' decision.
That's coming up now. It will be founded on September 3.
And then, alongside the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, there will in future be the digital plenary assembly,
which is and will remain an institution of the citizens.
Okay.
There is another Bönig project. The Freedom Ambassadors.
You write in your newsletter: "The network of Freedom Ambassadors is much more than just a distribution structure.
We are building a system for censorship-free public communication.
A structure that allows us to bring every important message directly to households, without
filters, without gatekeepers, without framing."
Would you like to say a few words about this?
Absolutely. That's the biggest bottleneck. We are being censored.
We are not on the way to such a world, but have long since arrived there.
We are slowed down in terms of range and so on.
And that's why we have to get directly into people's homes without censorship. That's 41 million people in Germany.
To do this, we need exactly 8,200 people to distribute 5,000 flyers to each letterbox.
That is enough to reach the entire population.
And we need this both in the democratic issues, i.e. our monthly digital plenary session, and in the solutions we have built.
And that's why we have the Freedom Ambassador, who registers with us, secures his zip code area
and earns money with all these legal solutions.
Namely, 10 percent of the revenue we generate in his zip code belongs to him as a thank you.
And so economic things can be combined with voluntary things.
And that is perhaps also the link to social entrepreneurship, that you don't just rely on people doing it because they are so
nice, but because they have an individual benefit and advantage for themselves, which is
completely legitimate. That's how we humans tick.
And at the same time good things come out of it.
That's why this freedom ambassador is so important. And it is available for all our solutions.
And this is also available for the friends of democracy.
They can be the same people. They can also be others.
Anyone who wants to do something is called upon to register on one of the two websites freiheitskanzlei.de
or freundederdemokratie.org. And to be part of it.
And then please stop complaining and get on with it.
Well, let me say that unfiltered messages should go out to the people.
Unfortunately, our mass media are the opposite of this at the moment, as they tend to present themselves
as propaganda machines or would-be rulers somewhere.
In your opinion, which groups and people control today's media landscape?
There aren't that many of them. I would say there are ten people.
If you've got them in the bag, you've got public opinion in the bag. The public broadcasters, of course.
The Tagesschau is still very important.
But these are also the traditional media groups: Springer, Bauer and the like.
These are very few people. And that's nothing new.
It was already clear to smart people in the 60s that the idea of a free press is an illusion. It always has been.
These are profit-oriented companies that are of course not neutral.
If we want something neutral, we need other ways.
We absolutely need diversity, alternative media that are not controlled by a corporation.
And so perhaps a balanced information landscape will emerge.
That's why it's so important what you do here and many other alternative media that have been
founded. Great, that's exactly what's needed.
And we cannot hope that the large corporations will ever become sensible and act in the interests of the citizens.
They act in the interests of their advertising clients and the powerful who give them the money.
One last question, Mr. Bönig.
You also talk openly about your faith on your homepage.
As the child of a pious pastor's household, you first put your faith to one side, as you write.
And then, as a result of two car accidents, you came to the conclusion that you might want to shape your
life a little more consciously with God in the future.
Is that also a bit of a driving force behind the projects you are tackling today, for a free, more humane society?
Definitely. That's the background.
That is the human image. And my view of humanity is very simple.
We are created in the image of God. We are created with free will. And that is something very special.
And that means we are free to choose good and bad things.
And this voluntary nature is precisely what Mr. Lauterbach said at the end.
In the end, everyone will decide voluntarily. That must be clear to everyone.
We are not victims of anything that is guiding us here.
We can consciously decide what we want or don't want. This is how God created us.
And the two car accidents I had back then were really wake-up calls for me, which simply
told me that all good things come in threes.
You've now been in two bad car accidents and got out without a scratch.
You know where the hammer hangs. So don't overdo it, don't push your luck too hard.
And those were the triggers when I was 19.
And then I remained firm for the rest of my life.
And of course that also helps you to go through such a corona period in such a relaxed way, because you simply
tell yourself that in the end it all has to pass God by.
And if someone here wants to grab me because I fought for freedom, then so be it.
So you get really relaxed when you put all your hope into it. And that's exactly how I feel.
I can ride all these attacks so relaxed.
I am fully aware that there are some who are raging and foaming at the mouth because what we are doing is terrible.
We have dealt with 70,000 program complaints and 30,000 court cases relating to the
broadcasting fee before the administrative courts.
We have saved hundreds of thousands from the syringe.
So that's really bad if you actually want the opposite.
And the Tagesschau acted accordingly.
The investigative journalists have worked their way through me five times, literally foaming at the
mouth and trying to dismantle me. I am deeply relaxed.
My lawyer just said that you are one of the few where any form of reporting is the hammer.
Whether they tear you apart or praise you, it all helps.
Okay.
Mr. Bönig, thank you very much for the interesting interview.
I wish you, your family and all your supporters lots of strength and courage in all the things you are doing.
And I think it is important that we are simply light in this world together.
Just as you have already mentioned: We make the dark light.
Thank you very, very much. All the best to you.
Thank you.