Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech on February 14 at the Munich Security Conference—in which he criticized European nations for what he described as a “retreat” from free speech principles and an embrace of mass migration—drew disagreement and public rebukes from some foreign leaders, including German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
Pistorius, who spoke at the conference later that day, emphasized the need to “explicitly contradict and oppose” Vance’s comments about the current state of European democracy, adding that the assertions he made were “not acceptable.”
The German government official’s comments were quickly shared across social media platforms, with many internet users adding their own thoughts on the Vance and Pistorius speeches. Martin McSweeney, a left-wing commentator on X and Substack, tweeted a 700-word post on X criticizing Vance’s speech, and his post included a video excerpt of Pistorius’ comments in Munich. “I am incandescent with rage right now. I feel sick to the stomach,” McSweeney said. “[Vance] came to Europe to vomit his Christo-fascist bile on leaders from the UK and across Europe, in what appears to be a retribution tour designed to assert American power.” McSweeney also shared the same fiery statement in a post on his Substack, Truth Matters, the same name as his X account.
The next day, a Facebook user shared McSweeney’s commentary and falsely claimed it was the transcript of Pistorius’ Munich speech. That user claimed the German official referred to Vance as a “christo-fascist,” which Pistorius did not. “Answer of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to the speech of what he calls Christofascist vice President Vance,” the user said before quoting the entirety of McSweeney’s post.
“I cannot just ignore what we heard before. I cannot not comment on the speech we heard by the U.S. vice president,” Pistorius actually stated in German during his Munich address. “He spoke of the annulment of democracy and, if I understood him correctly, he compares the condition of Europe with the condition that prevails in some authoritarian regimes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable.”
Pistorius’ comments, with a voiceover translation from Bayerischer Rundfunk, a Munich-based German public broadcaster, can be viewed below.
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