A German regime emerges

In the first part, I explained that the term "regime" is inherently a value-neutral analytical category. The term refers to the actual power relations and influence practices within a state, which, when used as a "regime," are intended to be distinguished from the official government and its organs and practices. This makes it clear that every state can be meaningfully examined in terms of what the actual ruling regime is, in addition to the official government.

In conclusion, I put forward the thesis that the current German regime of self-proclaimed "parties of the democratic center" is essentially based on four pillars of power: political arbitrariness in the judiciary, the control of positions over centers of power and influence, control of the dominant political discourse, and a systematically fear-mongering ideology with unrealistic dogmas about alleged internal, external, and global threats to their existence. Now it's time to examine this in more detail.

Lack of separation of powers and postal sovereignty

First, there are the public prosecutors' offices, which are politically bound by directives and report to the justice ministers. This makes it possible to delay or completely thwart the prosecution of party cartel crimes, as well as to pursue undesirable individuals with a wide reach with particular severity. The coalition's plan to deprive citizens of their right to vote after multiple convictions for "incitement to hatred" is alarming. The structural compliance of the German judiciary with the government suggests that the soft term "incitement to hatred" could be used in the current German regime for legal attacks on undesirable politicians – just like the already established ideological persecution laws for "hate and incitement."

Related to this is the second pillar of power: the systematic appointment of loyalists to all key government agencies. This applies to a long list of influential institutions, including the recently infamous Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which regularly capitulated to political directives during the coronavirus crisis and compliantly supported political directives with pseudoscientific "expertise."

Most important, however, is the security apparatus, and especially the appointment of the presidents of the seventeen domestic intelligence agencies for spying on the population (known as the Office for the Protection of the Constitution), with more than 8,000 employees and a budget that has steadily grown in recent years. In their annual reports, they can discredit opponents of the party cartel as "enemies of the constitution" according to terminology agreed upon with the interior ministers.

This apparatus plays an important role in the reputational stigmatization of potential competitors of the cartel parties, which currently mostly focuses on the AfD. Lars Klingbeil, for example, recently felt justified in the discourse created in this way in calling Alice Weidel a "Nazi" on television. As noted above, he has no reason to fear prosecution for this in Germany's semi-constitutional state.

Its staff prefers to prosecute citizens who call Robert Habeck an “idiot” or create a photomontage of Nancy Faeser holding a sign that reads “I hate freedom of speech” with morning house searches and suspended sentences of several months.

Control of the leading discourse

The third pillar of power of the current German regime is the more or less effective control of the mainstream political discourse. This is primarily ensured by approximately 10 billion euros in compulsory contributions to public broadcasting, whose directors often carry party membership cards. It is therefore logical that genuine criticism of officials and loyalists of the cartel parties tends to be expressed very late and only in measured doses.

This is extremely stressful for journalists working there, who see their job as monitoring those in power in the public interest. It makes their daily work in the struggle over what can and cannot be said on the station very difficult. Numerous books by former public broadcasting employees bear detailed witness to this. The broadcasting councils organized among party circles would be a topic in their own right.

In the German regime, journalists are also directly corrupted. Bundestag document 20/5822 contains the response to a 2023 inquiry by the AfD parliamentary group asking whether the government paid journalists. This was the case for more than 150 journalists, primarily from the public broadcasting service and major legacy media outlets such as Die Zeit, Spiegel, and Tagesspiegel.

The Federal Intelligence Service also pays journalists, but their names are not disclosed "for reasons of public interest." It is considered preferable that the public not know which journalists are paid by the intelligence service for biased articles against government critics and for court reporting in support of government action.

If a program such as a migration report in the new series “Klar” on NDR breaks out of the desired corridor of opinion, a “non-governmental organization” such as the “Neue Medienmacher:innen” (New Media Makers), which has received start-up funding from the Chancellery, is immediately on hand to condemn the “anti-immigration” reporting and express desires for censorship (this newspaper reported).

New German Ideology

The fourth and final pillar of power of the current German regime is psychological. Three ideological-dogmatic basic theses, which combine to create a panorama of a permanent state of emergency and supposedly existential threats, are propagated with all their might: Internally, democracy is existentially threatened by right-wing extremists; externally, the country is existentially threatened by Russian expansionist plans; and, overall, the human world is threatened by a self-inflicted climate catastrophe.

I call the three fundamental theses of the party cartel "ideological-dogmatic" because they are proclaimed as indisputable truths that every "democrat" must acknowledge, even though they are in fact being controversially discussed in social and scientific debates by knowledgeable people from all over the world. Nevertheless, the denial of these fundamental theses is aggressively scandalized, and doubters are vilified as Putin supporters, enemies of the state, and climate deniers.

This defamation of dissidents occurs for good reason, at least within the logic of the current German regime: The claim of an acutely threatening crisis at the internal, external, and planetary level is used extensively in the coalition agreement to explain why the regime's four pillars of power must be further secured and even expanded.

Here are just a few highlights: The “NGO” front for controlling public discourse, which the Union recently put under the microscope with more than 500 critical questions and is financed with generous state money, is being continued – with reference to a threat “from the right”.

A historically unprecedented expansion of the debt ceiling is justified by the alleged Russian threat, which many non-government-paid military and intelligence experts are completely unable to recognize. The current threat assessment by the US intelligence services, for example, states that Russia is very cautiously avoiding an "unintended escalation" with NATO. The US government describes Russia as having grown militarily strong, but extremely strained in terms of personnel due to the war – there is no mention of Russian plans to invade Central Europe. Meanwhile, in Germany, the intensified state influence, even on children, through "youth officers" and an "initially voluntary," heavily promoted military service, is justified by fear of the Russians.

The "energy transition into nothingness" (Hans-Werner Sinn), which has given Germany some of the highest energy prices in the world and caused industrial value creation to shrink since its inception, is being continued as a face-saving project by the Greens and SPD – with reference to the allegedly looming climate catastrophe. The coalition agreement contains pages of enigmatic private language that can serve as a cautionary tale of the blinding effect of decades of cultivated fear discourse.

There, occult shifting mathematics is presented between the variables of “CO₂ pricing,” “EU emissions trading,” and other theoretical artifacts, in whose formulas targets for the year 2040 are proportionally offset by “negative emissions” and “highly qualified and credible CO₂ emissions in non-European partner countries.”

The fact that one will act “technology-open” here and there is strongly emphasized, because this is the exception to the general ideological-dogmatic commitment to expensive and non-baseload “renewable energies”, of which the coalition agreement only hopes that they will one day be able to do without subsidies.

Wind and solar energy – of which we already have more in Germany than we can use on windy and sunny days, and which we then partially sell abroad to buy expensive foreign coal and nuclear power on calm and overcast days – will be further expanded . Because we must "pragmatically make the energy transition" (the oldest ideological offspring of climate dogma) a success.

The only non-ideological glimmer in the entire energy chapter of the coalition agreement: "We will remain an energy importing country," and only with subsidies can we slow the exodus of our energy-intensive industries. Speaking to Caren Miosga recently, Merz added that heating and driving are becoming increasingly expensive for citizens—that "climate protection" must be worth it.

The dream kingdom is becoming more and more expensive

The current German regime is based on ideological-dogmatic assumptions that have absolutely nothing to do with the life experience of the population or with objective scientific discourse. The entire milieu surrounding the party currently polling strongly is said to be right-wing radical, structurally anti-Semitic, and "anti-constitutional." That would be one in four people you meet on the street, and many of your neighbors.

Russia? Is it about to invade Central Europe? The climate? Well, Germany isn't a wrong-way driver, but rather the pioneer of ecological self-deindustrialization, to which the world will once again thank for its exemplary role. Such a dream empire, with political "firewalls" against tens of millions of citizens, with moralistic agitation as "foreign policy," and ecological fantasies of saving the world, must be secured with ever greater effort.

It is therefore only logical that the coalition agreement provides for the improvement of digital control options through a mandatory digital ID and an equally mandatory electronic patient record, around which an “ecosystem” of services is to be formed.

These are all new tools for tracking and profiling citizens in the information space, for whose use a new "technical central office" is being established. "Digital policy is power politics," the coalition agreement states. The powers of the security authorities to retain data are being appropriately expanded. At the same time, the Freedom of Information Act, which helps uncover the abuse of such powers in the current regime, is vaguely addressed: The aim is to reform it "with added value for the citizen." The signs point to exposing citizens to a data state with reduced power checks.

Conclusion

As I said: Every country has a regime, which also includes the official government. It's normal for the surface to conceal the normality that determines its design. On the eve of the election, I called this party cartel the "black-red-green unity party" and warned that whoever voted for its branches would at best get a change of color, but not a change of government. That's exactly what has happened now.

The coalition changes, the single party simply continues to govern and, for the time being, provides for itself: with the positions and the debt framework it needs to continue for a few more years in stylish offices and with salaries that are relatively astronomical given their qualifications, to pursue the destruction of German prosperity on the altar of “fighting” imaginary and conjured up “enemies” at home, abroad, and even within the ecosystem itself.

The German regime is open to anyone who wants to see it. It's worth taking a closer look. All state power should emanate from the people. But that's not the case. After his orgy of dishonesty, full of open contempt for voters, Friedrich Merz should never become chancellor. There should be immediate new elections.

We citizens can go to these new elections and this time vote out the coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU/SPD/Greens) by force. After casting our ballots, we can stand next to the polls as election observers and monitor the counting—we have this right. We can keep our own records of the results and then compare them with the official election results. This way, we can ensure that the elections were fair, equal, and secret, and that the German regime is once again opening up to liberalism and power control.

Michael Andrick is a philosopher, columnist for the Berliner Zeitung, and bestselling author. His collection of essays and aphorisms, "I'm Not There – Notes for a Free Spirit," will be published on May 5 by Karl Alber.

Do you have feedback? Write to us! [email protected]