Our Green Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, is increasingly a deranged and dangerous man, obsessed with unusual conspiracy theories. He believes that an “axis of autocrats” have instrumentalised TikTok and X to wage “hybrid warfare” on liberal European democracies. Specifically, he holds that these autocrats are directing domestic populists to poison public discourse with the help of Evil Algorithms. To beat back this nefarious influence, the European Union should comprehensively regulate – that is, censor – social media. Once again, we must much abridge central democratic freedoms, like the freedom of expression, to protect democracy from itself.
Habeck has been saying things like this for a while now, but his ominous Saturday speech in the Schinkel Church at Neuhardenberg Castle broke new ground in both detail and emphasis. Habeck’s remarks followed the twin political catastrophes of Trump’s election and the collapse of the traffic light coalition, and they came just as Habeck announced his intention to stand as Chancellor candidate for the Green Party. This was just not any speech, in other words, but rather a major policy statement by one of Germany’s most prominent politicians in advance of the approaching elections.
Habeck will never be Chancellor, but chances are high that the Greens will return to government when we vote again in February, and Habeck is a dominant voice in his party. Green policy statements also bear significance extending well beyond Green circles, reflecting as they do the general political outlook of the German elite. Demoralised by Trump’s election and their growing domestic unpopularity, our rulers are determined as never before to find some way of shutting up those inconvenient people who disagree with them. If only they can get us to stop sharing our unfiltered views on the internet, we can get back to the halcyon days of 2019 again, when the child saint Greta Thunberg was leading the children of the world on a glorious crusade against carbon dioxide and the Greens were polling stronger than ever before.
Hellbound and Down 