What’s the most bizarre thing a politician from your country actually said?
August 29, 2025
“They should Pokemon GO to the polls” Hillary Clinton 2016
35 comments
[One guy after losing the election went on an angry rant where he said that the entire country is worthless and it’s people should be exterminated in Auschwitz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iRv0E8QTqk&t=126s). I don’t think anyone could top that.
>”Wer nicht arbeitet, soll auch nicht essen”, sagte Franz Müntering 2006.
“Who doesn’t work, shouldn’t eat”. This one stuck with me, as it was very tone-deaf coming from a supposedly left-wing politician.
There is one guy in polish politics who keep on repeating that Hitler had no clue about holocaust. There are even memes about him.
Also our former prime minister once said that in ancient times people used to throw rocks at dinosaurs to hunt them.
During the ISIS crisis 10 Years ago, the minister of the interior said “I can’t answer your question (regarding a possible attack), since parts of the answer would unsettle the public”
“Maybe you should sniff a little less coke”
— Former Pirate Party leader and fetishmodel Ancilla Tilia to singer Gordon during a debate on privacy
“I have no active memory of this”
— Former prime minister and current NATO head Mark Rutte after being exposed as a liar.
“Mais qu’est-ce qu’elle me veut de plus cette mégère ? Mes couilles sur un plateau ?”
*What more does that crone^1 want from me ? My balls on a plate ?*
– Jacques Chirac about Margaret Thatcher at the european council.
He had forgotten to turn off his microphone.
^1 Not the best translation but I can’t find any good one right now.
Lmao Hillary ffs 😭😫 “how do you do fellow kids” moment
“If we come from monkeys, why are there still monkeys to this day? And when do they become human again?(Naser Khader)
“We haven’t made money, we’ve made women” (Lars Løkke Rasmussen)
“I am in the beginning of my period”
(Helle Degn)
„Wenn Sie … vom Hauptbahnhof in München … mit zehn Minuten, ohne, dass Sie am Flughafen noch einchecken müssen, dann starten Sie im Grunde genommen am Flughafen … am … am Hauptbahnhof in München starten Sie Ihren Flug. Zehn Minuten. Schauen Sie sich mal die großen Flughäfen an, wenn Sie in Heathrow in London oder sonst wo, meine se … Charles de Gaulle äh in Frankreich oder in …äh… in … in…äh…in Rom.
Wenn Sie sich mal die Entfernungen ansehen, wenn Sie Frankfurt sich ansehen, dann werden Sie feststellen, dass zehn Minuten… Sie jederzeit locker in Frankfurt brauchen, um ihr Gate zu finden. Wenn Sie vom Flug … vom … vom Hauptbahnhof starten – Sie steigen in den Hauptbahnhof ein, Sie fahren mit dem Transrapid in zehn Minuten an den Flughafen in … an den Flughafen Franz Josef Strauß.
Dann starten Sie praktisch hier am Hauptbahnhof in München. Das bedeutet natürlich, dass der Hauptbahnhof im Grunde genommen näher an Bayern … an die bayerischen Städte heranwächst, weil das ja klar ist, weil auf dem Hauptbahnhof viele Linien aus Bayern zusammenlaufen.”
– Edmund Stoiber, 2002
In english:
“If you … from the main station in Munich … with ten minutes, without having to check in at the airport, then you basically start at the airport … at … you start your flight at the main station in Munich. Ten minutes. Take a look at the big airports, if you’re at Heathrow in London or somewhere else, my se … Charles de Gaulle uh in France or in …uh… in … in…uh…in Rome.
If you look at the distances, if you look at Frankfurt, you’ll see that ten minutes… you can easily find your gate in Frankfurt at any time. If you are coming from the flight … from … from the main station – you board the main station, you take the Transrapid to the airport in … to Franz Josef Strauß Airport.
Then you practically start here at Munich Central Station. Of course, this means that the main station is basically closer to Bavaria … … to the Bavarian cities, because it’s clear that many lines from Bavaria converge at the main station.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
EDIT: On 21 January 2002, the then Bavarian premier, Edmund Stoiber (CSU), made a famously incoherent
speech about a pet project of his: the construction of a new, fast connection between Munich central
station and Munich airport, using the ‘Transrapid’ (a German prototype of a magnetic levitation
train) to reduce travelling time from 60 down to 10 minutes. This became one of the very first political “memes” in germany so to speak.
EDIT 2: The english translation is pretty much on spot btw.
I don’t know if it’s the weirdest, but it’s probably the most famous one out of the weird thing François Bayrou (the current prime minister of France, the one who is about to be removed by the parliament next week) said. Here is an English translation.
>Those who know me know it, I’m obsessed with what the solar system represents. How many stars like the sun there are in the solar system. If I’m not mistaken, there are between 200 and 400 billions. And 1 billion, as everybody here knows, is 1000 millions. So there are between 200 and 400 times 1000 million suns in the solar system. It’s easy to represent what it means, you take a 1m x 1m cube, you fill it with the finest sand from the sea (tell me if I’m wrong) and each grain of sand is the equivalent of one sun in the solar system. And then if you ask me how many galaxies like the Milky Way there are in the solar system, that’s 2000 billions as it was recently found. It used to be believed to be 400 billions. The difference is slim, but it still means there aren’t enough grains of sand on Earth to represent the stars of the system of our universe.
This was during a speech in front of researchers in the museum of natural history during an event about women in sciences.
The president is also very bad with metaphors, but he loves doing them, so he keeps coming up with weird stuff that completely distracts from his point.
>The world is made of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to keep being herbivores, the carnivores will win and we will be a market for them. I think at least, it would be nice to choose being omnivores. I don’t want to be aggressive, I just want us to be able to defend on each of these topics. But I don’t want to let Europe be a big theater inhabited by herbivores that carnivore, as per their agenda, will come to eat.
He was talking about China and the US. And the metaphor is relatively easy to understand. It’s just the weirdest way to say he doesn’t want China and the USA to turn us into vassals.
One of our politicians at the ruling party literally stated that poor people are worth absolutely nothing, because they “don’t work hard enough”
This wasn’t really him complaining about chronically unemployed people, or just a misunderstood moment took out of context, he was quite literally stating this when asked about poor people, not even just people who actually don’t work, but just poor people in general
Edit: Hang on, I totally forgot about another Fidesz politician who randomly, out of nowhere started talking about how there is a possibility that “he will go insane, grab a Kalashnikov and shoot everyone in the room. Then I will pull out my atomic rocket, bomb the Parliament, and swim down the Black Sea in a diver’s suit and destroy the entire wildlife at the Danube Delta”
That is…. probably more insane
Liz Truss rambling about us importing cheese and then just saying “That is a DISGRACE” was probably the most bizarre moment for a PM. Frankly she is the most bizarre PM we’ve had by far.
Damn, that would be enough material for a whole book.
But my personal favourite:
“We will board tanks and raze Budapest with the ground!” – eternal drunk Ján Slota, 1999.
Bertie Ahern, Irish minister for finance,”I don’t have a bank account”, while being investigated for corruption
DUP politician famously attempted to take the piss out of the Irish language by standing in the chamber and saying “Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer.” The actual phrase in Irish is “Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle” and means Thank You Speaker.
Irish speaking politicians often say it before they speak but this was his attempt to mock it as he would he very much anti-Irish anything.
Another DUP MEP stood up in the European Parliament in 1988 and heckled the pope during a speech he was making, called him the anti-Christ and got dragged out of the room screaming bits from the bible.
I’m not saying it’s just the DUP that say stupid stuff but they’d be at the top of the leaderboard.
“Alors enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé…!”
Yves Leterme, Prime Minister of Belgium, when asked to sing the Belgian national anthem.
Ireland’s Taoiseach (PM) Bertie Ahern said that people moaning about the economy should go and suicide themselves, just months before the economic crash which did lead to a huge increase in suicides.
His exact quote:
“Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don’t know how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide”
He’s been a persona non-grata in Ireland since the crash (and even before because of various scandals), and now the bastard thinks he has a chance in our Presidential election.
Chávez once said he thought there used to be life in Mars, but capitalism destroyed everything and left behind the barren land we see now.
His successor Maduro claimed that he communicated with Chávez’s ghost who appeared to him in the form as a bird.
I can’t remember who said this. he said that during a speech
when I took office we were on the edge of a precipice , thanks to all our efforts we finally could step forward!
>*“More journalists? There are too many journalists. They should be liquidated”* the Czech president said, turning to the Russian leader. Mr. Putin kept his cool, giving a polite smile and noting that “liquidation” was unnecessary; their numbers could just be restricted.
I have a card game based on crazy sentences by Mariano Rajoy, ex Spain’s prime minister. I cannot choose just one
In 2018 Petr Cibulka said in pre-election TV debate “Hot phase of world war 3 will begin in europe in year 2025, 2026 last american soldiers will leave europe and in year 2027 NATO will fall apart.” His sideric pendulum gave him this info… together with info about most of Czech, european and NATO officials being infiltrated by russian KGB-FSB-GRU agents.
It stopped being so funny lately 😉 Anyway yeah – he is such a bizarre and interesting figure of our politics. He has a very small party, never made it into parliament in 30 years. He was a dissident before 1989, in totalitarian, communist Czechoslovakia and never really recovered from it, specially from witnessing old commie opportunists turning sides and starting successful democratic politic careers and businesses in the 1990s.
Sweden’s most bizarre thing is definitely without competition.
Background – 1992, a meeting in Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm where the majority is non-European immigrants. A right-wing populist party had just entered the parliament, with anti-immigrant rhetoric. A shooter was on the loose in the Stockholm area, specifically targeting immigrants. He had shot eleven people by the time of the meeting.
Prime Minister Bildt and Culture Minister Birgit Friggebo are meeting with the local community in Rinkeby. The meeting is full of immigrants who are concerned for their safety, and things start to get a little bit heated. Then Friggebo decided to intervene:
“Hallå! Nu tycker jag att vi gemensamt i denna sal sjunger We Shall Overcome”
“Listen up! I think it’s time for us here to all together sing We Shall Overcome”
That’s unbeatable.
“Your daughter will catch a cold wearing a cleavage like that!” – Incumbent president Marcelo Rebelo Sousa
“Yesterday was yesterday, today is a new day, look at the sky, it’s so beautiful” – António Costa
“I never have doubts and I’m rarely wrong” – Cavaco Silva, who now says he has doubts he even said that
“I’m sick of playing around! I’ve been kidnapped twice, it’s enough, I don’t like being kidnapped, it’s something that annoys me, man” – José Pinheiro de Azevedo, who also invented the idiom “Bardamerda” (kinda translatable to “screw that”)
“It would be good to have 6 months without democracy. we fix everything and then bring democracy back” – Manuela Ferreira Leite
>*There will be protests. Let them protest in front of the Parliament. Sooner or later they’ll get bored of it and will go home.*
Ferenc Gyurcsány, socialist PM, 2006. Ironically protesters didn’t really go home and the government had to resign 3 years later. Never foreshadow your own fate.
„The sun has fallen from the sky“. Vice-regional president of Carinthia the day the regional president of Carinthia, Jörg Haider, one of the early adopter aggressive populists and very divisive figure in Austrian politics for years, had wrapped himself and his car around a concrete fence with an alcohol blood level of 1,6‰, killing himself in the process.
Belgium had a prime minister that started singing La Marseillaise when asked to quote the national anthem.
That rambling rant Boris Johnson went on about Peppa Pig World, including this; “I loved it. Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place. It has very safe streets, discipline in schools, heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems. Even if they’re a bit stereotypical about Daddy Pig.” He also described Peppa Pig as “a Picasso-like hairdryer”, and imitated car noises.
Silvio Berlusconi once told Martin Schulz he should play the role of a Kapo in an oncoming movie about the Holocaust.
It’s not even the most bizzarre thing Berlusconi said, actually.
I feel like in Poland we have unfair advantage in this contest
Janusz Korwin-Mikke [far right ex-politician that got kicked out from own party]
* ,,There was a man who wanted Polish children to have a better life – **his name was Adolf Hitler**.”
* Heiling in europarlament and screaming ,,Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Euro”
* ,,I’ve lived to see the times when they’re telling me to be glad that Germany has changed its constitution and can now arm itself without restrictions. We’ll find ourselves between Germany armed to the teeth and Ukraine. Check the map fools. Poland does NOT lie between Germany and Russia—at most, between Russia and Slovakia. It lies between Germany and Ukraine—powerful allied states with territorial claims against us. Behind these states, we should have allies: France and Russia.”
Grzegorz Braun (his talking is too long so I will just sum things up) [far right politician that got kicked out from far-right coalition]
* Analysing whether Yoda from star wars is a jew
* Saying that Aushwitz is fake
* At the presidential debate – Going on a whole rant how oficer carries a handgun not to shoot at enemies from trenches, but to execute rowdy subordinate and to end own life
Krzysztof Bosak [far-right politician]
* as a response to a post about animal skins:
* ,,It is allowed. If it was evil then God would have created world in another way”
Magdalena Maria-Żukowska [left politician]
* ,,There are situations, where biological male gives birth.”
Hungary played 0:0 against Saudi Arabia (away), and that prompted then prime minister Gyurcsány Ferenc to say:
“*És én azt gondolom, hogy a focisták között, a szaúdi focisták között nagyon-nagyon sok terrorista is volt, a mi fiaink pedig halált megvető bátorsággal küzdöttek ezen terroristák ellen, és ilyen esetben a döntetlen idegenben, ez egy fantasztikus eredmény.*”
“I think there are a lot of terrorist among the footballers, among the Saudi footballers, and our boys did not fear death when they fought against these terrorist, so an away draw is a fantastic result”
>”As far as I know… effective immediately, without delay.” (“Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis… ist das sofort… unverzüglich.”)
“The internet is new/uncharted territory for all of us” (“Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland”)
Guess in which year Angela Merkel said this sentence. >!2013!<
Ireland’s eu commissioner Padraig Flynn famously fucked up on air.
From the audience, journalist Barry O’Halloran asks Pádraig Flynn (EU commissioner for social affairs in 1999) about his pay and expenses. Flynn acknowledges he is very well paid and calculates he earns about £100,000 net. However, this amount is necessary to fund his lifestyle.
“I run a home in Dublin, Castlebar and Brussels. I wanna tell you something, try it sometime when you have a couple of cars and three houses and three homes and a few housekeepers.”
The “try it sometime” quote has become famous. Not least on r/Ireland 🙂
>C’est pas parce que vous voulez renverser la table que vous descendez de la voiture dont vous vous abstenez de choisir le chauffeur
Translated with deepl :
>Just because you want to overturn the table doesn’t mean you get out of the car without choosing the driver.
I do not know what he was talking about, and I do not know what it meant…
Believe me, it’s not from JCVD
In 2008, the Prime Minister / Governor of Bavaria, Günther Beckstein, claimed that you can still drive a car after drinking 2 liters of beer. Not sure if most bizarre but people still joke about this almost 20 years later.
One of our cabinet members, Maria Stella Gelmini, said that we built a tunnel for neutrinos under the Gran Sasso Underground Research Center (east of Rome) and linking it to CERN in Geneva. The most hilarious thing? She was the Minister for public education and universities.
35 comments
[One guy after losing the election went on an angry rant where he said that the entire country is worthless and it’s people should be exterminated in Auschwitz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iRv0E8QTqk&t=126s). I don’t think anyone could top that.
>”Wer nicht arbeitet, soll auch nicht essen”, sagte Franz Müntering 2006.
“Who doesn’t work, shouldn’t eat”. This one stuck with me, as it was very tone-deaf coming from a supposedly left-wing politician.
There is one guy in polish politics who keep on repeating that Hitler had no clue about holocaust. There are even memes about him.
Also our former prime minister once said that in ancient times people used to throw rocks at dinosaurs to hunt them.
During the ISIS crisis 10 Years ago, the minister of the interior said “I can’t answer your question (regarding a possible attack), since parts of the answer would unsettle the public”
“Maybe you should sniff a little less coke”
— Former Pirate Party leader and fetishmodel Ancilla Tilia to singer Gordon during a debate on privacy
“I have no active memory of this”
— Former prime minister and current NATO head Mark Rutte after being exposed as a liar.
“Mais qu’est-ce qu’elle me veut de plus cette mégère ? Mes couilles sur un plateau ?”
*What more does that crone^1 want from me ? My balls on a plate ?*
– Jacques Chirac about Margaret Thatcher at the european council.
He had forgotten to turn off his microphone.
^1 Not the best translation but I can’t find any good one right now.
Lmao Hillary ffs 😭😫 “how do you do fellow kids” moment
“If we come from monkeys, why are there still monkeys to this day? And when do they become human again?(Naser Khader)
“We haven’t made money, we’ve made women” (Lars Løkke Rasmussen)
“I am in the beginning of my period”
(Helle Degn)
„Wenn Sie … vom Hauptbahnhof in München … mit zehn Minuten, ohne, dass Sie am Flughafen noch einchecken müssen, dann starten Sie im Grunde genommen am Flughafen … am … am Hauptbahnhof in München starten Sie Ihren Flug. Zehn Minuten. Schauen Sie sich mal die großen Flughäfen an, wenn Sie in Heathrow in London oder sonst wo, meine se … Charles de Gaulle äh in Frankreich oder in …äh… in … in…äh…in Rom.
Wenn Sie sich mal die Entfernungen ansehen, wenn Sie Frankfurt sich ansehen, dann werden Sie feststellen, dass zehn Minuten… Sie jederzeit locker in Frankfurt brauchen, um ihr Gate zu finden. Wenn Sie vom Flug … vom … vom Hauptbahnhof starten – Sie steigen in den Hauptbahnhof ein, Sie fahren mit dem Transrapid in zehn Minuten an den Flughafen in … an den Flughafen Franz Josef Strauß.
Dann starten Sie praktisch hier am Hauptbahnhof in München. Das bedeutet natürlich, dass der Hauptbahnhof im Grunde genommen näher an Bayern … an die bayerischen Städte heranwächst, weil das ja klar ist, weil auf dem Hauptbahnhof viele Linien aus Bayern zusammenlaufen.”
– Edmund Stoiber, 2002
In english:
“If you … from the main station in Munich … with ten minutes, without having to check in at the airport, then you basically start at the airport … at … you start your flight at the main station in Munich. Ten minutes. Take a look at the big airports, if you’re at Heathrow in London or somewhere else, my se … Charles de Gaulle uh in France or in …uh… in … in…uh…in Rome.
If you look at the distances, if you look at Frankfurt, you’ll see that ten minutes… you can easily find your gate in Frankfurt at any time. If you are coming from the flight … from … from the main station – you board the main station, you take the Transrapid to the airport in … to Franz Josef Strauß Airport.
Then you practically start here at Munich Central Station. Of course, this means that the main station is basically closer to Bavaria … … to the Bavarian cities, because it’s clear that many lines from Bavaria converge at the main station.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
EDIT: On 21 January 2002, the then Bavarian premier, Edmund Stoiber (CSU), made a famously incoherent
speech about a pet project of his: the construction of a new, fast connection between Munich central
station and Munich airport, using the ‘Transrapid’ (a German prototype of a magnetic levitation
train) to reduce travelling time from 60 down to 10 minutes. This became one of the very first political “memes” in germany so to speak.
EDIT 2: The english translation is pretty much on spot btw.
I don’t know if it’s the weirdest, but it’s probably the most famous one out of the weird thing François Bayrou (the current prime minister of France, the one who is about to be removed by the parliament next week) said. Here is an English translation.
>Those who know me know it, I’m obsessed with what the solar system represents. How many stars like the sun there are in the solar system. If I’m not mistaken, there are between 200 and 400 billions. And 1 billion, as everybody here knows, is 1000 millions. So there are between 200 and 400 times 1000 million suns in the solar system. It’s easy to represent what it means, you take a 1m x 1m cube, you fill it with the finest sand from the sea (tell me if I’m wrong) and each grain of sand is the equivalent of one sun in the solar system. And then if you ask me how many galaxies like the Milky Way there are in the solar system, that’s 2000 billions as it was recently found. It used to be believed to be 400 billions. The difference is slim, but it still means there aren’t enough grains of sand on Earth to represent the stars of the system of our universe.
This was during a speech in front of researchers in the museum of natural history during an event about women in sciences.
The president is also very bad with metaphors, but he loves doing them, so he keeps coming up with weird stuff that completely distracts from his point.
>The world is made of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to keep being herbivores, the carnivores will win and we will be a market for them. I think at least, it would be nice to choose being omnivores. I don’t want to be aggressive, I just want us to be able to defend on each of these topics. But I don’t want to let Europe be a big theater inhabited by herbivores that carnivore, as per their agenda, will come to eat.
He was talking about China and the US. And the metaphor is relatively easy to understand. It’s just the weirdest way to say he doesn’t want China and the USA to turn us into vassals.
One of our politicians at the ruling party literally stated that poor people are worth absolutely nothing, because they “don’t work hard enough”
This wasn’t really him complaining about chronically unemployed people, or just a misunderstood moment took out of context, he was quite literally stating this when asked about poor people, not even just people who actually don’t work, but just poor people in general
Edit: Hang on, I totally forgot about another Fidesz politician who randomly, out of nowhere started talking about how there is a possibility that “he will go insane, grab a Kalashnikov and shoot everyone in the room. Then I will pull out my atomic rocket, bomb the Parliament, and swim down the Black Sea in a diver’s suit and destroy the entire wildlife at the Danube Delta”
That is…. probably more insane
Liz Truss rambling about us importing cheese and then just saying “That is a DISGRACE” was probably the most bizarre moment for a PM. Frankly she is the most bizarre PM we’ve had by far.
Damn, that would be enough material for a whole book.
But my personal favourite:
“We will board tanks and raze Budapest with the ground!” – eternal drunk Ján Slota, 1999.
Bertie Ahern, Irish minister for finance,”I don’t have a bank account”, while being investigated for corruption
DUP politician famously attempted to take the piss out of the Irish language by standing in the chamber and saying “Curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer.” The actual phrase in Irish is “Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle” and means Thank You Speaker.
Irish speaking politicians often say it before they speak but this was his attempt to mock it as he would he very much anti-Irish anything.
Another DUP MEP stood up in the European Parliament in 1988 and heckled the pope during a speech he was making, called him the anti-Christ and got dragged out of the room screaming bits from the bible.
I’m not saying it’s just the DUP that say stupid stuff but they’d be at the top of the leaderboard.
“Alors enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé…!”
Yves Leterme, Prime Minister of Belgium, when asked to sing the Belgian national anthem.
Ireland’s Taoiseach (PM) Bertie Ahern said that people moaning about the economy should go and suicide themselves, just months before the economic crash which did lead to a huge increase in suicides.
His exact quote:
“Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don’t know how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide”
He’s been a persona non-grata in Ireland since the crash (and even before because of various scandals), and now the bastard thinks he has a chance in our Presidential election.
Chávez once said he thought there used to be life in Mars, but capitalism destroyed everything and left behind the barren land we see now.
His successor Maduro claimed that he communicated with Chávez’s ghost who appeared to him in the form as a bird.
I can’t remember who said this. he said that during a speech
when I took office we were on the edge of a precipice , thanks to all our efforts we finally could step forward!
lol
Oh that one time when president of you country says shit so dumb that Putin (at the time standing next to him) had to tone him down: [https://english.radio.cz/czech-president-sparks-outrage-comments-about-journalists-8192845](https://english.radio.cz/czech-president-sparks-outrage-comments-about-journalists-8192845)
>*“More journalists? There are too many journalists. They should be liquidated”* the Czech president said, turning to the Russian leader. Mr. Putin kept his cool, giving a polite smile and noting that “liquidation” was unnecessary; their numbers could just be restricted.
I have a card game based on crazy sentences by Mariano Rajoy, ex Spain’s prime minister. I cannot choose just one
In 2018 Petr Cibulka said in pre-election TV debate “Hot phase of world war 3 will begin in europe in year 2025, 2026 last american soldiers will leave europe and in year 2027 NATO will fall apart.” His sideric pendulum gave him this info… together with info about most of Czech, european and NATO officials being infiltrated by russian KGB-FSB-GRU agents.
[https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/aktivista-disident-petr-cibulka-kyvadlo-predpoved-treti-svetova-valka-2025.A250307_100251_domaci_vank](https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/aktivista-disident-petr-cibulka-kyvadlo-predpoved-treti-svetova-valka-2025.A250307_100251_domaci_vank)
It stopped being so funny lately 😉 Anyway yeah – he is such a bizarre and interesting figure of our politics. He has a very small party, never made it into parliament in 30 years. He was a dissident before 1989, in totalitarian, communist Czechoslovakia and never really recovered from it, specially from witnessing old commie opportunists turning sides and starting successful democratic politic careers and businesses in the 1990s.
Sweden’s most bizarre thing is definitely without competition.
Background – 1992, a meeting in Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm where the majority is non-European immigrants. A right-wing populist party had just entered the parliament, with anti-immigrant rhetoric. A shooter was on the loose in the Stockholm area, specifically targeting immigrants. He had shot eleven people by the time of the meeting.
Prime Minister Bildt and Culture Minister Birgit Friggebo are meeting with the local community in Rinkeby. The meeting is full of immigrants who are concerned for their safety, and things start to get a little bit heated. Then Friggebo decided to intervene:
“Hallå! Nu tycker jag att vi gemensamt i denna sal sjunger We Shall Overcome”
“Listen up! I think it’s time for us here to all together sing We Shall Overcome”
That’s unbeatable.
“Your daughter will catch a cold wearing a cleavage like that!” – Incumbent president Marcelo Rebelo Sousa
“Yesterday was yesterday, today is a new day, look at the sky, it’s so beautiful” – António Costa
“I never have doubts and I’m rarely wrong” – Cavaco Silva, who now says he has doubts he even said that
“I’m sick of playing around! I’ve been kidnapped twice, it’s enough, I don’t like being kidnapped, it’s something that annoys me, man” – José Pinheiro de Azevedo, who also invented the idiom “Bardamerda” (kinda translatable to “screw that”)
“It would be good to have 6 months without democracy. we fix everything and then bring democracy back” – Manuela Ferreira Leite
>*There will be protests. Let them protest in front of the Parliament. Sooner or later they’ll get bored of it and will go home.*
Ferenc Gyurcsány, socialist PM, 2006. Ironically protesters didn’t really go home and the government had to resign 3 years later. Never foreshadow your own fate.
„The sun has fallen from the sky“. Vice-regional president of Carinthia the day the regional president of Carinthia, Jörg Haider, one of the early adopter aggressive populists and very divisive figure in Austrian politics for years, had wrapped himself and his car around a concrete fence with an alcohol blood level of 1,6‰, killing himself in the process.
Belgium had a prime minister that started singing La Marseillaise when asked to quote the national anthem.
That rambling rant Boris Johnson went on about Peppa Pig World, including this; “I loved it. Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place. It has very safe streets, discipline in schools, heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems. Even if they’re a bit stereotypical about Daddy Pig.” He also described Peppa Pig as “a Picasso-like hairdryer”, and imitated car noises.
Silvio Berlusconi once told Martin Schulz he should play the role of a Kapo in an oncoming movie about the Holocaust.
It’s not even the most bizzarre thing Berlusconi said, actually.
I feel like in Poland we have unfair advantage in this contest
Janusz Korwin-Mikke [far right ex-politician that got kicked out from own party]
* ,,There was a man who wanted Polish children to have a better life – **his name was Adolf Hitler**.”
* Heiling in europarlament and screaming ,,Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Euro”
* ,,I’ve lived to see the times when they’re telling me to be glad that Germany has changed its constitution and can now arm itself without restrictions. We’ll find ourselves between Germany armed to the teeth and Ukraine. Check the map fools. Poland does NOT lie between Germany and Russia—at most, between Russia and Slovakia. It lies between Germany and Ukraine—powerful allied states with territorial claims against us. Behind these states, we should have allies: France and Russia.”
Grzegorz Braun (his talking is too long so I will just sum things up) [far right politician that got kicked out from far-right coalition]
* Analysing whether Yoda from star wars is a jew
* Saying that Aushwitz is fake
* At the presidential debate – Going on a whole rant how oficer carries a handgun not to shoot at enemies from trenches, but to execute rowdy subordinate and to end own life
Krzysztof Bosak [far-right politician]
* as a response to a post about animal skins:
* ,,It is allowed. If it was evil then God would have created world in another way”
Magdalena Maria-Żukowska [left politician]
* ,,There are situations, where biological male gives birth.”
Hungary played 0:0 against Saudi Arabia (away), and that prompted then prime minister Gyurcsány Ferenc to say:
“*És én azt gondolom, hogy a focisták között, a szaúdi focisták között nagyon-nagyon sok terrorista is volt, a mi fiaink pedig halált megvető bátorsággal küzdöttek ezen terroristák ellen, és ilyen esetben a döntetlen idegenben, ez egy fantasztikus eredmény.*”
“I think there are a lot of terrorist among the footballers, among the Saudi footballers, and our boys did not fear death when they fought against these terrorist, so an away draw is a fantastic result”
>”As far as I know… effective immediately, without delay.” (“Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis… ist das sofort… unverzüglich.”)
Günter Schabowski, on 9 November 1989, [inadvertently breaks down the Berlin Wall all by himself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTBnOoBEJP0).
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“The internet is new/uncharted territory for all of us” (“Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland”)
Guess in which year Angela Merkel said this sentence. >!2013!<
Ireland’s eu commissioner Padraig Flynn famously fucked up on air.
From the audience, journalist Barry O’Halloran asks Pádraig Flynn (EU commissioner for social affairs in 1999) about his pay and expenses. Flynn acknowledges he is very well paid and calculates he earns about £100,000 net. However, this amount is necessary to fund his lifestyle.
“I run a home in Dublin, Castlebar and Brussels. I wanna tell you something, try it sometime when you have a couple of cars and three houses and three homes and a few housekeepers.”
The “try it sometime” quote has become famous. Not least on r/Ireland 🙂
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2018/1219/1018097-front-running-politician-pee-flynn/
Nicolas Sarkozy, former French President :
>C’est pas parce que vous voulez renverser la table que vous descendez de la voiture dont vous vous abstenez de choisir le chauffeur
Translated with deepl :
>Just because you want to overturn the table doesn’t mean you get out of the car without choosing the driver.
I do not know what he was talking about, and I do not know what it meant…
Believe me, it’s not from JCVD
In 2008, the Prime Minister / Governor of Bavaria, Günther Beckstein, claimed that you can still drive a car after drinking 2 liters of beer. Not sure if most bizarre but people still joke about this almost 20 years later.
One of our cabinet members, Maria Stella Gelmini, said that we built a tunnel for neutrinos under the Gran Sasso Underground Research Center (east of Rome) and linking it to CERN in Geneva. The most hilarious thing? She was the Minister for public education and universities.