Richard Wagner: A Life

I.

It is curious to note how often art-controversy has become edged with a bitterness rivaling even the gall and venom of religious dispute. Scholars have not yet forgotten the fiery war of words which raged between Richard Bentley and his opponents concerning the authenticity of the “Epistles of Phalaris,” nor how literary Germany was divided into two hostile camps by Wolf’s attack on the personality of Homer. It is no less fresh in the minds of critics how that modern Jupiter, Lessing, waged a long and bitter battle with the Titans of the French classical drama, and finally crushed them with the thunderbolt of the “Dramaturgie;” nor what acrimony sharpened the discussion between the rival theorists in music, Gluck and Piccini, at Paris. All of the intensity of these art-campaigns, and many of the conditions of the last, enter into the contest between Richard Wagner and the Italianissimi of the present day.

The exact points at issue were for a long time so befogged by the smoke of the battle that many of the large class who are musically interested, but never had an opportunity to study the question, will find an advantage in a clear and comprehensive sketch of the facts and principles involved. Until recently, there were still many people who thought of Wagner as a youthful and eccentric enthusiast, all afire with misdirected genius, a mere carpet-knight on the sublime battle-field of art, a beginner just sowing his wild-oats in works like “Lohengrin,” “Tristan and Iseult,” or the “Rheingold.” It is a revelation full of suggestive value for these to realize that he is a musical thinker, ripe with sixty years of labor and experience; that he represents the rarest and choicest fruits of modern culture, not only as musician, but as poet and philosopher; that he is one of the few examples in the history of the art where massive scholarship and the power of subtile analysis have been united, in a preeminent degree, with great creative genius. Preliminary to a study of what Wagner and his disciples entitle the “Artwork of the Future,” let us take a swift survey of music as a medium of expression for the beautiful, and some of the forms which it has assumed.

This Ariel of the fine arts sends its messages to the human soul by virtue of a fourfold capacity: Firstly, the imitation of the voices of Nature, such as the winds, the waves, and the cries of animals; secondly, its potential delight as melody, modulation, rhythm, harmony—in other words, its simple worth as a “thing of beauty,” without regard to cause or consequence; thirdly, its force of boundless suggestion; fourthly, that affinity for union with the more definite and exact forms of the imagination (poetry), by which the intellectual context of the latter is raised to a far higher power of grace, beauty, passion, sweetness, without losing individuality of outline—like, indeed, the hazy aureole which painters set on the brow of the man Jesus, to fix the seal of the ultimate Divinity. Though several or all of these may be united in the same composition, each musical work may be characterized in the main as descriptive, sensuous, suggestive, or dramatic, according as either element contributes most largely to its purpose. Simple melody or harmony appeals mostly to the sensuous love of sweet sounds. The symphony does this in an enlarged and complicated sense, but is still more marked by the marvelous suggestive energy with which it unlocks all the secret raptures of fancy, floods the border-lands of thought with a glory not to be found on sea or land, and paints ravishing pictures, that come and go like dreams, with colors drawn from the “twelve-tinted tone-spectrum.”

Shelley describes this peculiar influence of music in his “Prometheus Unbound,” with exquisite beauty and truth:

 "My soul is an enchanted boat,
 Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
 Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
 And thine doth like an angel sit
 Beside the helm conducting it,
 While all the waves with melody are ringing.
 It seems to float ever, forever,
 Upon that many-winding river,
 Between mountains, woods, abysses,
 A paradise of wildernesses."

As the symphony best expresses the suggestive potency in music, the operatic form incarnates its capacity of definite thought, and the expression of that thought. The term “lyric,” as applied to the genuine operatic conception, is a misnomer. Under the accepted operatic form, however, it has relative truth, as the main musical purpose of opera seems, hitherto, to have been less to furnish expression for exalted emotions and thoughts, or exquisite sentiments, than to grant the vocal virtuoso opportunity to display phenomenal qualities of voice and execution. But all opera, however it may stray from the fundamental idea, suggests this dramatic element in music, just as mere lyricism in the poetic art is the blossom from which is unfolded the full-blown perfection of the word-drama, the highest form of all poetry.

II.

That music, by and of itself, cannot express the intellectual element in the beautiful dream-images of art with precision, is a palpable truth. Yet, by its imperial dominion over the sphere of emotion and sentiment, the connection of the latter with complicated mental phenomena is made to bring into the domain of tone vague and shifting fancies and pictures. How much further music can be made to assimilate to the other arts in directness of mental suggestion, by wedding to it the noblest forms of poetry, and making each the complement of the other, is the knotty problem which underlies the great art-controversy about which this article concerns itself. On the one side we have the claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through the intrinsic sweetness of harmony and tune, and the intellect must be satisfied with what it may accidentally glean in this harvest-field; that, in the rapture experienced in the sensuous apperception of its beauty, lies the highest phase of art-sensibility. Therefore, concludes the syllogism, it matters nothing as to the character of the libretto or poem to whose words the music is arranged, so long as the dramatic framework suffices as a support for the flowery festoons of song, which drape its ugliness and beguile attention by the fascinations of bloom and grace. On the other hand, the apostles of the new musical philosophy insist that art is something more than a vehicle for the mere sense of the beautiful, an exquisite provocation wherewith to startle the sense of a selfish, epicurean pleasure; that its highest function—to follow the idea of the Greek Plato, and the greatest of his modern disciples, Schopenhauer—is to serve as the incarnation of the true and the good; and, even as Goethe makes the Earth-Spirit sing in “Faust”—

 "'Tis thus over at the loom of Time I ply,
 And weave for God the garment thou seest him by"—

so the highest art is that which best embodies the immortal thought of the universe as reflected in the mirror of man’s consciousness; that music, as speaking the most spiritual language of any of the art-family, is burdened with the most pressing responsibility as the interpreter between the finite and the infinite; that all its forms must be measured by the earnestness and success with which they teach and suggest what is best in aspiration and truest in thought; that music, when wedded to the highest form of poetry (the drama), produces the consummate art-result, and sacrifices to some extent its power of suggestion, only to acquire a greater glory and influence, that of investing definite intellectual images with spiritual raiment, through which they shine on the supreme altitudes of ideal thought; that to make this marriage perfect as an art-form and fruitful in result, the two partners must come as equals, neither one the drudge of the other; that in this organic fusion music and poetry contribute, each its best, to emancipate art from its thralldom to that which is merely trivial, commonplace, and accidental, and make it a revelation of all that is most exalted in thought, sentiment, and purpose. Such is the aesthetic theory of Richard Wagner’s art-work.

III.

It is suggestive to note that the earliest recognized function of music, before it had learned to enslave itself to mere sensuous enjoyment, was similar in spirit to that which its latest reformer demands for it in the art of the future. The glory of its birth then shone on its brow. It was the handmaid and minister of the religious instinct. The imagination became afire with the mystery of life and Nature, and burst into the flames and frenzies of rhythm. Poetry was born, but instantly sought the wings of music for a higher flight than the mere word would permit. Even the great epics of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were originally sung or chanted by the Ilomerido, and the same essential union seems to have been in some measure demanded afterward in the Greek drama, which, at its best, was always inspired with the religious sentiment. There is every reason to believe that the chorus of the drama ofÆschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides uttered their comments on the action of the play with such a prolongation and variety of pitch in the rhythmic intervals as to constitute a sustained and melodic recitative. Music at this time was an essential part of the drama. When the creative genius of Greece had set toward its ebb, they were divorced, and music was only set to lyric forms. Such remained the status of the art till, in the Italian Renaissance, modern opera was born in the reunion of music and the drama. Like the other arts, it assumed at the outset to be a mere revival of antique traditions. The great poets of Italy had then passed way, and it was left for music to fill the void.

The muse, Polyhymnia, soon emerged from the stage of childish stammering. Guittone di Arezzo taught her to fix her thoughts in indelible signs, and two centuries of training culminated in the inspired composers, Orlando di Lasso and Pales-trina. Of the gradual degradation of the operatic art as its forms became more elaborate and fixed; of the arbitrary transfer of absolute musical forms like the aria, duet, finale, etc., into the action of the opera without regard to poetic propriety; of the growing tendency to treat the human voice like any other instrument, merely to show its resources as an organ; of the final utter bondage of the poet to the musician, till opera became little more than a congeries of musico-gymnastic forms, wherein the vocal soloists could display their art, it needs not to speak at length, for some of these vices have not yet disappeared. In the language of Dante’s guide through the Inferno, at one stage of their wanderings, when the sights were peculiarly mournful and desolate—

 "Non raggioniam da lor, ma guarda e passa."

The loss of all poetic verity and earnestness in opera furnished the great composer Gluck with the motive of the bitter and protracted contest which he waged with varying success throughout Europe, though principally in Paris. Gluck boldly affirmed, and carried out the principle in his compositions, that the task of dramatic music was to accompany the different phases of emotion in the text, and give them their highest effect of spiritual intensity. The singer must be the mouthpiece of the poet, and must take extreme care in giving the full poetical burden of the song. Thus, the declamatory music became of great importance, and Gluck’s recitative reached an unequaled degree of perfection.

The critics of Gluck’s time hurled at him the same charges which are familiar to us now as coming from the mouths and pens of the enemies of Wagner’s music. Yet Gluck, however conscious of the ideal unity between music and poetry, never thought of bringing this about by a sacrifice of any of the forms of his own peculiar art. His influence, however, was very great, and the traditions of the great maestro’s art have been kept alive in the works of his no less great disciples, Méhul, Cherubini, Spontini, and Meyerbeer.

Two other attempts to ingraft new and vital power on the rigid and trivial sentimentality of the Italian forms of opera were those of Rossini and Weber. The former was gifted with the greatest affluence of pure melodiousness ever given to a composer. But even his sparkling originality and freshness did little more than reproduce the old forms under a more attractive guise. Weber, on the other hand, stood in the van of a movement which had its fountain-head in the strong romantic and national feeling, pervading the whole of society and literature. There was a general revival of mediaeval and popular poetry, with its balmy odor of the woods, and fields, and streams. Weber’s melody was the direct offspring of the tunefulness of the German Volkslied, and so it expressed, with wonderful freshness and beauty, all the range of passion and sentiment within the limits of this pure and simple language. But the boundaries were far too narrow to build upon them the ultimate union of music and poetry, which should express the perfect harmony of the two arts. While it is true that all of the great German composers protested, by their works, against the spirit and character of the Italian school of music, Wagner claims that the first abrupt and strongly-defined departure toward a radical reform in art is found in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with chorus. Speaking of this remarkable leap from instrumental to vocal music in a professedly symphonic composition, Wagner, in his “Essay on Beethoven,” says: “We declare that the work of art, which was formed and quickened entirely by that deed, must present the most perfect artistic form, i.e., that form in which, as for the drama, so also and especially for music, every conventionality would be abolished.” Beethoven is asserted to have founded the new musical school, when he admitted, by his recourse to the vocal cantata in the greatest of his symphonic works, that he no longer recognized absolute music as sufficient unto itself.

In Bach and Handel, the great masters of fugue and counterpoint; in Rossini, Mozart, and Weber, the consummate creators of melody—then, according to this view, we only recognize thinkers in the realm of pure music. In Beethoven, the greatest of them all, was laid the basis of the new epoch of tone-poetry. In the immortal songs of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Franz, and the symphonies of the first four, the vitality of the reformatory idea is richly illustrated. In the music-drama of Wagner, it is claimed by his disciples, is found the full flower and development of the art-work.

William Richard Wagner, the formal projector of the great changes whose details are yet to be sketched, was born at Leipsic in 1813. As a child he displayed no very marked artistic tastes, though his ear and memory for music were quite remarkable. When admitted to the Kreuzschule of Dresden, the young student, however, distinguished himself by his very great talent for literary composition and the classical languages. To this early culture, perhaps, we are indebted for the great poetic power which has enabled him to compose the remarkable libretti which have furnished the basis of his music. His first creative attempt was a blood-thirsty drama, where forty-two characters are killed, and the few survivors are haunted by the ghosts. Young Wagner soon devoted himself to the study of music, and, in 1833, became a pupil of Theodor Weinlig, a distinguished teacher of harmony and counterpoint. His four years of study at this time were also years of activity in creative experiment, as he composed four operas.

His first opera of note was “Rienzi,” with which he went to Paris in 1837. In spite of Meyerbeer’s efforts in its favor, this work was rejected, and laid aside for some years. Wagner supported himself by musical criticism and other literary work, and soon was in a position to offer another opera, “Der fliegende Hollander,” to the authorities of the Grand Opera-House. Again the directors refused the work, but were so charmed with the beauty of the libretto that they bought it to be reset to music. Until the year 1842, life was a trying struggle for the indomitable young musician. “Rienzi” was then produced at Dresden, so much to the delight of the King of Saxony that the composer was made royal Kapellmeister and leader of the orchestra. The production of “Der fliegende Hollander” quickly followed; next came “Tanhäuser” and “Lohengrin,” to be swiftly succeeded by the “Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” This period of our maestro’s musical activity also commenced to witness the development of his theories on the philosophy of his art, and some of his most remarkable critical writings were then given to the world.

Political troubles obliged Wagner to spend seven years of exile in Zurich; thence he went to London, where he remained till 1861 as conductor of the London Philharmonic Society. In 1861 the exile returned to his native country, and spent several years in Germany and Russia—there having arisen quite a furore for his music in the latter country. The enthusiasm awakened in the breast of King Louis of Bavaria by “Der fliegende Holländer” resulted in a summons to Wagner to settle at Munich, and with the glories of the Royal Opera-House in that city his name has since been principally connected. The culminating art-splendor of his life, however, was the production of his stupendous tetralogy, the “Ring der Nibelungen,” at the great opera-house at Baireuth, in the summer of the year 1876.

IV.

The first element to be noted in Wagner’s operatic forms is the energetic protest against the artificial and conventional in music. The utter want of dramatic symmetry and fitness in the operas we have been accustomed to hear could only be overlooked by the force of habit, and the tendency to submerge all else in the mere enjoyment of the music. The utter variance of music and poetry was to Wagner the stumbling-block which, first of all, must be removed. So he crushed at one stroke all the hard, arid forms which existed in the lyrical drama as it had been known. His opera, then, is no longer a congeries of separate musical numbers, like duets, arias, chorals, and finales, set in a flimsy web of formless recitative, without reference to dramatic economy. His great purpose is lofty dramatic truth, and to this end he sacrifices the whole framework of accepted musical forms, with the exception of the chorus, and this he remodels. The musical energy is concentrated in the dialogue as the main factor of the dramatic problem, and fashioned entirely according to the requirements of the action. The continuous flow of beautiful melody takes the place alike of the dry recitative and the set musical forms which characterize the accepted school of opera. As the dramatic motif demands, this “continuous melody” rises into the highest ecstasies of the lyrical fervor, or ebbs into a chant-like swell of subdued feeling, like the ocean after the rush of the storm. If Wagner has destroyed musical forms, he has also added a positive element. In place of the aria we have the logos. This is the musical expression of the principal passion underlying the action of the drama. Whenever, in the course of the development of the story, this passion comes into ascendency, the rich strains of the logos are heard anew, stilling all other sounds. Gounod has, in part, applied this principle in “Faust.” All opera-goers will remember the intense dramatic effect arising from the recurrence of the same exquisite lyric outburst from the lips of Marguerite.

The peculiar character of Wagner’s word-drama next arouses critical interest and attention. The composer is his own poet, and his creative genius shines no less here than in the world of tone. The musical energy flows entirely from the dramatic conditions, like the electrical current from the cups of the battery; and the rhythmical structure of the melos (tune) is simply the transfiguration of the poetical basis. The poetry, then, is all-important in the music-drama. Wagner has rejected the forms of blank verse and rhyme as utterly unsuited to the lofty purposes of music, and has gone to the metrical principle of all the Teutonic and Slavonic poetry. This rhythmic element of alliteration, or staffrhyme, we find magnificently illustrated in the Scandinavian Eddas, and even in our own Anglo-Saxon fragments of the days of Cædmon and Alcuin. By the use of this new form, verse and melody glide together in one exquisite rhythm, in which it seems impossible to separate the one from the other. The strong accents of the alliterating syllables supply the music with firmness, while the low-toned syllables give opportunity for the most varied nuances of declamation.

The first radical development of Wagner’s theories we see in “The Flying Dutchman.” In “Tanhhäser” and “Lohengrin” they find full sway. The utter revolt of his mind from the trivial and commonplace sentimentalities of Italian opera led him to believe that the most heroic and lofty motives alone should furnish the dramatic foundation of opera. For a while he oscillated between history and legend, as best adapted to furnish his material. In his selection of the dream-land of myth and legend, we may detect another example of the profound and exigeant art-instincts which have ruled the whole of Wagner’s life. There could be no question as to the utter incongruity of any dramatic picture of ordinary events, or ordinary personages, finding expression in musical utterance. Genuine and profound art must always be consistent with itself, and what we recognize as general truth. Even characters set in the comparatively near hack-ground of history are too closely related to our own familiar surroundings of thought and mood to be regarded as artistically natural in the use of music as the organ of the every-day life of emotion and sentiment. But with the dim and heroic shapes that haunt the border-land of the supernatural, which we call legend, the case is far different. This is the drama of the demigods, living in a different atmosphere from our own, however akin to ours may be their passions and purposes. For these we are no longer compelled to regard the medium of music as a forced and untruthful expression, for do they not dwell in the magic lands of the imagination? All sense of dramatic inconsistency instantly vanishes, and the conditions of artistic illusion are perfect.

 "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
 And clothes the mountains with their azure hue."

Thus all of Wagner’s works, from “Der fliegende Hollander” to the “Ring der Nibelungen,” have been located in the world of myth, in obedience to a profound art-principle. The opera of “Tristan and Iseult,” first performed in 1865, announced Wagner’s absolute emancipation, both in the construction of music and poetry, from the time-honored and time-corrupted canons, and, aside from the last great work, it may be received as the most perfect representation of his school.

The third main feature in the Wagner music is the wonderful use of the orchestra as a factor in the solution of the art-problem. This is no longer a mere accompaniment to the singer, but translates the passion of the play into a grand symphony, running parallel and commingling with the vocal music. Wagner, as a great master of orchestration, has had few equals since Beethoven; and he uses his power with marked effect to heighten the dramatic intensity of the action, and at the same time to convey certain meanings which can only find vent in the vague and indistinct forms of pure music. The romantic conception of the mediæval love, the shudderings and raptures of Christian revelation, have certain phases that absolute music alone can express. The orchestra, then, becomes as much an integral part of the music-drama, in its actual current movement, as the chorus or the leading performers. Placed on the stage, yet out of sight, its strains might almost be fancied the sound of the sympathetic communion of good and evil spirits, with whose presence mystics formerly claimed man was constantly surrounded. Wagner’s use of the orchestra may be illustrated from the opera of “Lohengrin.”

The ideal background, from which the emotions of the human actors in the drama are reflected with supernatural light, is the conception of the “Holy Graal,” the mystic symbol of the Christian faith, and its descent from the skies, guarded by hosts of seraphim. This is the subject of the orchestral prelude, and never have the sweetnesses and terrors of the Christian ecstasy been more potently expressed. The prelude opens with long-drawn chords of the violins, in the highest octaves, in the most exquisite pianissimo. The inner eye of the spirit discerns in this the suggestion of shapeless white clouds, hardly discernible from the aerial blue of the sky. Suddenly the strings seem to sound from the farthest distance, in continued pianissimo, and the melody, the Graal-motive, takes shape. Gradually, to the fancy, a group of angels seem to reveal themselves, slowly descending from the heavenly heights, and bearing in their midst the Sangréal. The modulations throb through the air, augmenting in richness and sweetness, till the fortissimo of the full orchestra reveals the sacred mystery. With this climax of spiritual ecstasy the harmonious waves gradually recede and ebb away in dying sweetness, as the angels return to their heavenly abode. This orchestral movement recurs in the opera, according to the laws of dramatic fitness, and its melody is heard also in the logos of Lohengrin, the knight of the Graal, to express certain phases of his action. The immense power which music is thus made to have in dramatic effect can easily be fancied.

A fourth prominent characteristic of the Wagner music-drama is that, to develop its full splendor, there must be a cooperation of all the arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as poetry and music. Therefore, in realizing its effects, much importance rests in the visible beauties of action, as they may be expressed by the painting of scenery and the grouping of human figures. Well may such a grand conception be called the “Art-work of the Future.”

Wagner for a long time despaired of the visible execution of his ideas. At last the celebrated pianist Tausig suggested an appeal to the admirers of the new music throughout the world for means to carry out the composer’s great idea, viz., to perform the “Nibelungen” at a theatre to be erected for the purpose, and by a select company, in the manner of a national festival, and before an audience entirely removed from the atmosphere of vulgar theatrical shows. After many delays Wagner’s hopes were attained, and in the summer of 1876 a gathering of the principal celebrities of Europe was present to criticise the fully perfected fruit of the composer’s theories and genius. This festival was so recent, and its events have been the subject of such elaborate comment, that further description will be out of place here.

As a great musical poet, rather epic than dramatic in his powers, there can be no question as to Wagner’s rank. The performance of the “Nibelungenring,” covering “Rheingold,” “Die Walküren,” “Siegfried,” and “Götterdämmerung,” was one of the epochs of musical Germany. However deficient Wagner’s skill in writing for the human voice, the power and symmetry of his conceptions, and his genius in embodying them in massive operatic forms, are such as to storm even the prejudices of his opponents. The poet-musician rightfully claims that in his music-drama is found that wedding of two of the noblest of the arts, pregnantly suggested by Shakespeare:

 "If Music and sweet Poetry both agree,
 As they must needs, the sister and the brother;
 One God is God of both, as poets feign."

From Great German Composers, by George T. Ferris (1840-1932), published in 1891.


Featured: Portrait of Richard Wagner, by Franz von Lenbach; painted ca. 1882-1883.


In the Propaganda War

On September 25, 2022, I was standing at the window in my room on the 5th floor of the Park Inn hotel in Donetsk. I watched as an artillery shell hit an apartment building. 800 meters away from me, part of the facade came crashing down. At about the same time, I got a text message from T-Online. The editor, Lars Wienand, wanted to know if I was an election observer at the referenda in the Russian-occupied territories. I was on one of several research trips to Ukraine and Russia. I clarified that I belonged to a journalist group. Apparently, he only asked pro forma. Because my denial did not interest him at all.

What came next is a moral picture of self-proclaimed quality journalism and foremost academic culture. I therefore must tell you about myself. But, in fact, this is really all about you. About your freedom of opinion and information, about your freedom of research and teaching. It’s about Article 5 of the German Basic Law. It is about how, in the service of propaganda, desk jockeys try to censor public opinion, to politically cleanse academic life and to destroy livelihoods; and in this way make an example, to force anticipatory obedience by creating fear—in you.

While my associate and I were trying to escape militias, snipers, artillery shells and mines in the Donbass, desk-jockey editors in Germany were launching a journalistic attack. I was made into an election observer at Putin’s sham referendums, an apologist for the Kremlin, a journalist on a political errand. As a result, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and the Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (HMKW) in Berlin cancelled my lectureships. They fell for a hoax that has been fabricated in such a way that someone has to fall for it. Such denunciation campaigns, for which T-Online is well-known, only work when others join in. No one checked. This points to the kowtowing of academic elites to propaganda.

Here are the facts:

In Luhansk and Donetsk, I attended two press conferences at the request of the local authorities. I also did this during research in the Kosovo War in 1999 and in Afghanistan in 2002—both wars of aggression, by the way, that were also illegal under international law. There were no mandates from the UN Security Council.

Nevertheless, I accompanied German soldiers on their missions, took part in military briefings and press conferences, spoke there myself, explained my research assignment and reported on my experiences. This is nothing unusual, if only because all those involved need to exchange information, for example, about where mines had not yet been cleared or where dispersed free fighters were on the move. Anyone who, like me, has been in a minefield (near Orahovac) or under fire (near Prizren) knows the importance of such coordination. Thus, I was “embedded” in the KFOR. No one would have thought of accusing me of this or even of claiming that I could not report independently, that I would even spread KFOR propaganda or justify a war of aggression in violation of international law.

My stay in Donetsk demonstrated yet again how dangerous such research is: our hotel was shelled with heavy artillery from Marinka, while a 155-millimeter shell just missed the Park Inn and my room on the 5th floor. Our local associate and driver Yevgeny was killed six weeks later by HIMARS rocket fire.

Exchanging information, including that concerning the mood of the population, is virtually a matter of survival in a war zone. That’s why I also talked to Russians. As a journalist, I am constantly talking to people who have different origins or different opinions. That is the core of my work. It’s not about having something in common with them, but that’s how information is researched. Moreover, no one would have thought of accusing Peter Scholl-Latour, for example, who was the first to film from the Viet Cong side, in the 1973 Vietnam War, of spreading communist propaganda. Reporter Martha Gellhorn survived eight wars (Spain 1937; Finland 1939; China 1941; Italian front 1943; Normandy invasion 1944; Vietnam War 1966; Six Day War 1967; civil war in El Salvador from 1980). She was also “embedded” in the U.S. Armed Forces (at the rank of captain) during World War II. No one ever thought of accusing her of one-sided reporting.

Reporting from a war and crisis zone is absolutely impossible without contact with the people involved—even if they have blood on their hands.

One more thing: This war in Ukraine will end at the negotiating table—or we’ll all be blown up. One can get used to the idea of negotiating with Russians. I have been talking to people from Russia for 25 years. Among them are government employees as well as opposition members. I have friends on both sides of the front, in Russia and in Ukraine. For more than 20 years, I have been bringing back films from Russia that critically examine grievances in Putin’s state. The Swiss Infosperber and the Canadian The Postil Magazine have taken the trouble to link these contributions so that everyone can see them. My research in Russia has brought me two unpleasant encounters with the FSB domestic intelligence service. Once we narrowly escaped arrest. There are witnesses to these events.

It is quite brazen when desk jockeys in universities or editors of online media, who have no idea about the conditions in war and crisis zones and have hardly attracted attention with their own independent research results, accuse me, who has stuck my neck out for independent reporting, of propaganda. They should first of all listen carefully so that their own heads are not crammed with propaganda.

At the beginning of the press conference, I made it clear that I was not speaking as an election observer, but as a journalist doing research for a book project. This was correctly translated into Russian by Sergey Filbert. We were both properly accredited. The planning of the trip had begun in the spring of 2022, when there was no talk of referenda. The date was communicated to us only three days before, in Moscow. The research trip was paid for by ourselves; we did not receive any offers of bribes. We were able to move completely independently in the war zone. The local military authorities did not impose any conditions.

During the press conference, I explained that this referendum did not meet the requirements for a free and secret-ballot election. However, I also explained that the results reflect the mood of the population. After all, the Donbass has been shelled by the Ukrainian army since 2014, and there have been more than 14,000 deaths, according to UN figures. For this reason, the population came into opposition to the government in Kiev. All this was too much for the journalistic satraps of the power elites: the truth about the Donbass must not reach German living rooms—that would undermine the propaganda narratives.

T-Online portrayed me as an election observer, although I clearly stated that I was not an election observer. The portal insinuated that I was indifferent to Putin’s war of aggression. I took legal action against this. Russian media may have called me an election observer, but it would have been T-Online’s job to check the factuality of this. Media is a filter pretending to be a clear window. In journalism, it’s not enough to sit at a desk and stare at a computer. Because on the Internet, you can only find what someone else has uploaded—according to their own selection and their own interests. Anyone who knows that is looking for a reference source in the real world.

It would have been easy to find out. A call to the Civil Chamber of the Russian Federation, which is competent according to the Constitution, would have sufficed; the contact details can be found on their website. Something like, “Could you send me a list of your election observers?” Don’t worry. German is a very popular foreign language in Russia; English can also help in a pinch. Presumably, the Civil Chamber media center would have referred to its website. There you will find a press release dated September 29, 2022, about a hearing before the Civil Chamber in Moscow with all election observers. I was not a participant in the hearing, nor am I named in the press release. Time needed for such? Maybe 15 minutes. Those who are afraid to talk to Russians could have entered my name into a search engine. They would have come across my website, or the portal Vimeo. My reports from Russia can be viewed on these sites. The effort involved? Perhaps 10 minutes. But T-Online forged ahead without any such source in the real world and thus violated its duty of care. The principle of craftsmanship: Audiatur et altera pars—which is why I researched on both sides of the front—was also put aside. The number of clicks is more important than clean craftsmanship. All this shows that it was obviously not about research, but about denunciation. Because such denunciation campaigns generate clicks and increase advertising revenues.

This made it all the more urgent for T-Online to call the universities mentioned. Helge Buttgereit’s account probably hits the nail on the head: “The T-Online journalist learned of Mr. Baab’s presence on site, researched his background and made a press inquiry to the Berlin University of Media, Communication and Business (HMKW). “Do you know what your lecturer is doing there? At the mock referendums? He’s legitimizing them! Do you think that’s good?” That’s how it might have been. It doesn’t matter how exactly, because according to its own statement, the university was on the phone with the delinquent, who was made one by his mere presence in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then a statement was hastily published on the homepage. The gist: We condemn and distance ourselves (HMKW, 26.9.22). Meanwhile, the article appeared on the net. Author Wienand could now add the accomplishment of his mission right away; online many things can be changed and enhanced quickly.”

The call from HMKW was indeed not long in coming. We were on the edge of the gray zone and had just escaped direct fire. The line was full of static. All I heard was, “We will sharply separate ourselves from you… What you are seeing on the ground is bogus objectivity!” That the shells that just flew around our heads were only fired for appearances—I would not have thought of that. Someone who at best has newspaper knowledge wants to know the truth in the war zone by remote diagnosis from a distance of 2,100 kilometers. That would be a challenge even for experts on Eastern Europe. But the chancellor of HMKW, Roland Freytag, is not an expert on Eastern Europe; his area is psychology. In his field, such a thing is called “projection.”

In the HMKW press release, I was accused of having legitimized the “sham referenda” and of having made myself the fig leaf of the aggressors. It was incompatible with the basic principles of HMKW to employ me further. But if research on the ground legitimizes the local rulers, then the press is no longer allowed to check the propaganda of the warring parties against reality and is limited to spreading their propaganda lies. For only on the spot is something possible that cannot be done at the desk—and nor in editorial offices or academies—a reality check. [Walter Lippmann observes: “The newspaper covers a lot of events that are beyond our world of experience… Apart from the interested party, seldom is anyone able to verify the accuracy of a report.”]

So, what Freytag says and does, how the CAU behaves, is an attack on press freedom and an attempt at indirect censorship. Quite apart from the fact that journalists would then also no longer be allowed to report on abuses or violations of the law in Russia, as I have done. This means that these universities support the disinformation of a war party and thus become a war party themselves. They are thus violating Article 5 of the German Basic Law and the freedom of opinion, research and teaching enshrined in the Basic Law.

HMKW Chancellor Roland Freytag was an obedient GDR citizen, a fellow traveler of the SED system. Then came the time of change, and he changed roles. Now he strongly advocated democracy and invoked the new freedoms. That’s how he got to the top as a turncoat. He was one of the speakers at the big demonstration on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989, which heralded the beginning of the end of the SED state.

A turncoat from the GDR like Roland Freytag wanted to explain to me (who has demonstrably been resistant in different systems), and from a distance—the reality that I was currently researching on the ground. This behavior belongs in the textbook of anticipatory obedience. For here we are dealing not only with an uninformed know-it-all, but with the primacy of propaganda, albeit Western propaganda. Professor Freytag obviously learned a lot in the SED state—above all, to swim with the tide. The attitude is: If the prevailing opinion does not fit reality—all the worse for reality.

Kiel University also immediately terminated my teaching contract. In contrast to HMKW, however, the teaching contract had already been written out. This made it possible to take legal action. The notice was given in an expedited procedure, because there was imminent danger. Therefore, the hearing required by administrative law was waived. Christian Albrechts University saw its reputation at risk because I assumed the role of an election observer in the Donbass, or at least gave that impression. Again, no proper examination of the false allegation. The dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Professor Christian Martin, wrote, according to the administrative file before the court, “I also don’t know what there is great to look at in Donbass.” That is the rejection of any form of science. Because its findings are measured against reality. Again, it was obviously not about proper examination, but about protecting oneself in panic from supposedly bad press, and hastily submitting to the prevailing climate of opinion. This shows that it was not about knowledge, but about commitment—commitment to a war party, Ukraine and NATO. This has nothing to do with science.

When it comes to the reputation of Kiel University, it is worth taking a look at the past. For the heroism of the faculty in defending democracy and peace was kept within narrow limits from the beginning of the 20th century. Before and during the First World War, hurrah-patriotism and anti-democratic-monarchist sentiments prevailed. The “meaning of sacrificial death for the fatherland” was explained to the youth. During the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920, armed Freikorps were formed at Kiel University, who wanted to crush the Weimar Republic and engaged in firefights with the defenders of democracy in Muhliusstrasse and Bergstrasse. When the National Socialist era dawned in 1933, professors and students at Kiel University did not want to stand on the sidelines. They went into battle against the intrusion of “Western liberalist and democratic ideas,” in order to create a “new unity out of blood;” and on May 3, 1933, they confessed to the Kiel student body: “The study of history takes its innermost justification only from its service to the present”—the National Socialist one, of course. From 1933 on, liberal, social democratic or Jewish scholars were expelled—at least 38 out of 222, according to other accounts even half. (See the work of Ralph Uhlig and Hans Christian Petersen, “Expertisen für die Praxis. Das Kieler Institut für Weltwirtschaft 1933 bis 1945,” in Christoph Cornelissen].

Joachim Krause, a political scientist from Kiel, who has since retired, justified the war of aggression waged by a U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in 2003, which violated international law, saying that it was a matter of “protecting the system of collective security against a state that… quite deliberately sets out to undermine this system… in order to gain leeway from it for the renewed production of weapons of mass destruction…” Except that these weapons of mass destruction have never been found and corresponding claims have turned out to be lies. I am not aware that he was deprived of his professorship for this. Here one sees how CAU measures with a double standard. Kiel University may have many reasons to worry about its reputation; I am probably the least of them. Roberto de LaPuente writes: “If journalist Patrik Baab had spoken of Germans’ ‘escalation phobia,’ he might still be doing his teaching job at Kiel University today. However, he was doing journalism: That is the worst reproach one can face today.” This is how journalism becomes an offense. The freedom of research and teaching is replaced by political correctness. In this way, CAU itself takes sides in the propaganda war.

It becomes completely dubious when the university involves uninvolved parties. It refused to rent a room in the guest house to my American friend Professor Robert E. Harkavy, unlike in previous years, and justified this by saying that my lawsuit against CAU was not helpful in the matter. [“You might have heard that the institute/the university is in a legal dispute with Patrik. That does not make things easier.” Email from Wilhelm Knelangen to Robert E. Harkavy on January 18, 2023, 7:18.]

What does Robert Harkavy, a scientist who has been associated with this university since 1982, have to do with my lawsuit? The foreign press spoke of a return of National Socialist “Sippenhaft.” Such things endanger the reputation of CAU, not my research in the Donbass.

Harald Welzer and Richard David Precht speak of the “ethics of mind surplus”: “And the morality presented with power and vehemence springs by no means from the firm stance one supposedly takes, but one moralizes opportunism.” It is a matter of swimming along in the current of prevailing opinion. Pierre Bourdieu has described the habitus behind this as “respectful conformism.” Respect, of course, for the supposedly powerful. When it comes to appropriate campaign journalism, T-Online has the knack for provoking hasty reactions by way of fear of bad press. That is one side. The other side is the complete absence of clean craftsmanship and moral courage on the part of those called upon. The alacrity with which they make themselves accomplices in the campaign is actually laughable. One believes oneself safe in the protection of the power elites. This is the opportunism of intellectuals.

This cancel culture has nothing to do with a democratic public sphere. After all, democracy means allowing even those positions to have their say in the arena of the public sphere that one does not like. But in the meantime, many academics and journalists are carriers and promoters of identity-politics thinking. It aims at putting specific social groups in the center and enforcing a higher recognition of such groups. Cultural, ethnic, social, or sexual characteristics are used. This politicization of identity is directed against the universalism of the Enlightenment. It is thus a central discourse characteristic of the Counter-Enlightenment. The assumption that different cultures can arrive at knowledge through different paths and claim special rights for themselves is historically seen as a precursor to racial thinking and national superiority. In this perspective, freedom no longer means being argumentatively convincing in the arena of debate, but rather professing one’s allegiance to a group, demonstrating a certain attitude. All those who do not submit to the collective process thus lose their claim to validity. Thus, identity politics approaches are directly connectable to fascist figures of thought. The historian Götz Aly: “National Socialism was also an identitarian movement!”

When press organs present denunciation campaigns instead of facts; when leading university members launch an attack on the freedom of the press and thus on the freedom of opinion and information; when professors smash the freedom of research and teaching without necessity—rights with constitutional rank, mind you—then one can confidently speak of anti-democratic thinking. It does not spread in circles of the intellectually disadvantaged. Rather, intellectuals—or what is left of them, academics—make themselves the drivers of anti-democratic thinking. T-Online is stepping out of the role of reporter, just as those responsible at CAU have stepped out of the role of academic discourse participant. They have become political-ideological actors in the process of opinion control and mind control, and thus self-appointed censors with the goal of narrowing the public debate space to the state-desired area, indeed to the soup plate horizon of their own huckster’s soul.

“Major press outlets also bear responsibility. Rather than seeking to contextualize events properly for their readers, the media have trumpeted the government’s preferred narrative. Whatever its motivations, the mainstream media have implemented, and continue to implement, a regime of propaganda that misinforms the public and can only be perceived by Russia as an affront to the national character of its people. Online providers of information are doing much the same. In fact, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and First Amendment lawyer Glenn Greenwald has shown, massive censorship of dissenting views is now occurring at many levels of society in both the United States and Europa. Although it is difficult to look at the horrific images coming out of Ukraine without revulsion and anger, succumbing to blind emotion and embracing the dominant Western narrative is a dangerous error. It empowers the worst forces in Washington, including the nexus of bureaucratic power and commercial interest… This narrative also enables the most Russophobic and militaristic of European leaders, as well as those with the least guts to stand up to misguided American policies. The narrative clouds the minds of American and European citizens, leading to jingoism and war-mongering” (Benjamin Abelow).

From Anne Morelli one can read how this war hysteria is promoted by propaganda—also, and especially, by the propaganda used by NATO:

  1. The Kremlin is to blame for everything. After all, it has invaded a weaker neighboring country. We don’t really want war.
  2. It is an “unprovoked” war of aggression. The enemy is solely responsible for this war.
  3. Putin is a fascist, a butcher. The enemy has the face of the devil—or at least of a villain.
  4. In Ukraine, what is being fought for is “western values” or “freedom.” The real interests are disguised with honorable, higher goals.
  5. The enemy intentionally commits heinous war crimes—as in Bucha. When our people make mistakes, it’s stupid.
  6. We have hardly any losses, but the enemy has enormous losses. We hear this on both sides now, the actual numbers are secret.
  7. We fight for a good cause—the enemy must learn to lose; we are morally in the right after all.
  8. Even poets and thinkers support our cause.
  9. The enemy uses internationally outlawed weapons, uranium munitions, poison gas, biological weapons, cluster bombs.
  10. Whoever questions our propaganda is a Putin-stooge, a lumpen-pacifist, a submission-pacifist, a right-wing cross-front agitator, the Fifth Column of Moscow.

I got dragged into this propaganda narrative. Because one thing must not happen under any circumstances—that the truth about this war become known. Therefore, the reporter on the ground must be made out to be a fig leaf of the aggressors and supporter of a war of aggression. The goal then becomes to undermine his credibility through denunciation and political purges. For under no circumstances should one’s own outrages, one’s own shared responsibility, one’s own interests and the suffering of others be allowed to reach German living rooms. This would enable people to do what propaganda undermines—the reality check. Instead of war fever, there would then be disillusionment. Propaganda works particularly well when people themselves have no knowledge.

Part of the propaganda narrative is to omit essential historical facts in connection with this war, or at least to push them into the background. Here, without claiming to be exhaustive, are the most important:

  1. NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s borders despite promises to the contrary;
  2. The Maidan Coup and the masterminds around Victoria Nuland responsible for it;
  3. Then-Vice President Joe Biden’s bragging about how he used financial blackmail to force the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating a corruption scandal involving an energy company with the then Vice-President’s son, Hunter Biden on its board;
  4. Ukraine’s biological weapons production facilities;
  5. The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and similar organizations;
  6. President Zelensky’s self-enrichment and secret foreign assets;
  7. Human rights abuses in Ukraine;
  8. Zelensky’s laws restricting freedom of expression and banning political parties;
  9. Reprisals against the Russian Orthodox Church;
  10. Endemic corruption in Ukraine.
  11. The blocking of a peace agreement all ready for signature, negotiated between the warring parties in Istanbul in March—for which there are at least six sources, two of which were involved in the negotiation process.

[“According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries”Fiona Reed and Angela Stent. “I have one claim. I claim there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire”Naftali Bennett. “The Grinding War in Ukraine Could Have Ended a Long Time Ago”Branko Marcetic. More broadly on the Ukrainian conflict—Harald Kujat].

In light of this, Noam Chomsky laments the collapse of the democratic debating space: “Perhaps parts of the intellectual class are so deeply immersed in the propaganda system that they cannot even perceive the absurdity of what they are saying. Either way, it’s a drastic reminder that the arena of rational discourse is collapsing precisely where there should be hope that it will be defended.” In academic circles, that is.

Denunciation cascades, triggered by academic and media networks, in league with influencers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., have one goal in the end: to shatter the economic livelihood of the targeted individuals. So, this is not about democratic discussion, but the opposite: preventing democratic discourse about structural violence. The critics of NATO propaganda are to be deprived of their livelihood. This is not about individual cases. Rather, an example is to be made. The goal is to force anticipatory obedience by generating fear. This is essentially initiated by states or supranational organizations such as the EU, but also by state-sponsored institutions. But the drivers are the eco-libertarian and militaristic-conservative academic milieus.

The overarching characteristic of all these cases is that university decision-makers believe themselves to be under the protection of the executive branch and therefore act with the arrogance of borrowed power. The result is a conglomeration of academic soul-sellers who are either beholden to transatlantic organizations or U.S. foundations, or who spread their narratives in anticipatory obedience. The actors themselves, according to Upton Sinclair, do not notice: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

It is no coincidence that at least at one university, it was precisely those who consider themselves committed to transatlantic networks, such as the German Marshall Fund, who actively pursued my expulsion. This shows where the real masterminds of censorship and denunciation sit. By this, it is by no means meant that the operators receive instructions from Langley. Rather, the alacrity of their actions proves that they see themselves in a kind of debt to be discharged. After all, it’s all about invitations to conferences, scholarships, research trips and the approval of research projects. David Michaels, former director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, calls such scientists “science-for-sale specialists”—scientists who can be bought for money. This does not necessarily mean direct payments. They believe that it is better for one’s career to act as a legitimacy canvasser for American interests.

The entanglements of Kiel professor Werner Kaltefleiter in intelligence machinations of the BND and CIA during the Cold War have been elaborated by Katja Backhaus. According to press reports, CAU received 2.7 million euros from the German Ministry of Defense and NATO between 2005 and 2012, most of which went to Professor Joachim Krause’s Kiel Institute for Security Policy (ISPK). These funds went primarily to a counterinsurgency project in Afghanistan. The project partner at the time was Victoria Nuland’s Center for a New American Security, which has set itself the task of protecting American interests and is partly paid for by the arms company Northrop Grumman. Krause also belongs to the Integrity Initiative, a program of the British Institute for Statecraft, which is close to NATO and British intelligence services. Officially, it is supposed to expose Russian disinformation, but it is actually about NATO propaganda. The Integrity Initiative’s German Cluster in 2019 included political scientist Hannes Adomeit, now deceased, his friend Joachim Krause, former MI6 agent Harold Elletson, and Marie-Luise Beck of the Center for Liberal Modernity. Critics call Krause a “NATO janitor.” No wonder he accuses the German people of an “escalation phobia” in the Ukraine war. Of course, my research does not fit into such war propaganda, so it must be sanctioned.

T-Online yet again. The portal also acted as a denunciation portal against Professor Ulrike Guérot and Professor Gabriele Krone-Schmalz and put together press campaigns aimed at triggering a political purge and destroying the economic livelihood of these two targeted professors. Then I found out that the State Protection Department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior also keeps a file on me—as an alleged election observer. This kind of thing usually happens on orders from above. So, one may ask whether the office of the Minister of the Interior itself orchestrates such denunciation campaigns. And secret services do what they are there for: Chinese whispers. Here, one has to ask whether journalists also cooperate with intelligence services and do the dirty work for the BND, for example, as the federal government openly stated in its answer to a parliamentary question in the German Bundestag. The same applies to university employees.

In this way, a censorship and denunciation cartel is being created as if by magic, which is supported by US foundations and NATO apron organizations. The Pentagon alone employs 27,000 PR specialists with an annual budget of five billion dollars, whose goal is to influence the media with targeted messages, with experts for interviews or footage for television. During NATO’s war against Serbia in 1999—it’s not only the Russians who wage wars of aggression in violation of international law—31 PR agencies ensured that public opinion was brought into line: the Serbs were portrayed as the bad guys, the Muslim Bosnians as their victims. As a result of such manipulation, virtually no one understands what was actually going on in Yugoslavia.

None of this works with coercion; it works only with consent. This active participation shows the susceptibility of the academic elites to anti-democratic thinking. When anti-democratic thinking is then combined with racial thinking, we are on the threshold of fascist figures of thought. Political scientist Florence Gaub on April 12, 2022, on the talk show, Markus Lanz: “We must not forget, even if Russians look European, that they are not Europeans—right now in the cultural sense—who have a different approach to violence, who have a different approach to death.” Such phrases open the door to racism. Ukrainian author Serhij Zhadan calls Russians a “horde,” “animals,” “filth”: “Burn in hell, you pigs.” This is the language of fascism. For this, Zhadan received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

Conformism becomes a weapon: As in the case of Ulrike Guérot, who was dismissed from the University of Bonn, and Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, who is subject to massive attacks, the aim is censorship and acts of political cleansing that are unworthy of a democracy. In the process, the campaigns also aim to destroy the livelihoods of the targeted individuals. This alone documents their anti-democratic character. The smashing of democracy is preceded by the smashing of the democratic public sphere. The media and universities play a decisive role in this transformation, because they make themselves the bearers of counter-enlightenment and influence the transformation of democratic consciousness. T-Online and many other media, as well as the University of Kiel and HMKW in Berlin, have made themselves the warring party in the propaganda battle without need. This has consequences that extend beyond their direct sphere of influence. They are contributing to the poisoning of the social climate and are thus sawing away at the foundations of democracy.

Scolding colleagues is not usually my style, but it is appropriate here. I summarize: 1. Very bad craftsmanship: no verification by second source in the real world. 2. Political denunciation because of economic calculation. 3.Obliviousness to history and ignorance, both of one’s own and of Ukraine’s history. 4. Opportunism: succumbing to propaganda unchecked. 5. Anticipatory obedience: making oneself a tool of propaganda. 6. Anti-democratic thinking and acting. The result is a sum of dangerous stupidity that is capable of dragging this country into the abyss once again.

Some people speak here of the intellectuals’ refusal to work. But that is not the case. It is a matter of business. Those who work with their heads, sell their heads to the highest bidder. They are paid for their ideas, with which they organize the cultural hegemony of the power elites and their rule.

We are sitting in the bus from the Chonhar border crossing to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea. Only now does the tension fall away. I lean my head against the window and nodded off. In dream images, the fear that I had locked away at the bottom of my soul in the war zone catch up to me. Shelling, mines, arrests swirl in tangled scraps and perform a witches’ sabbath in my half-sleep. Only gradually do I realize that another St. Vitus dance awaits me on my return: that of journalistic contract writers, “a well-organized gang of literary rustlers,” as Heinrich Heine put it, “who go about their business in the Bohemian forests of our daily press.” A sentence by Zygmunt Bauman comes to my mind: “Not wanting to see, not wanting to look, and thus suppressing the possibilities of another coexistence with less suffering, is part of suffering and contributes to its perpetuation.” Another hour to Simferopol. As the bus rocks, I ponder the misery of intellectuals.


Patrik Baab is a political scientist and journalist. His reports and research on secret services and wars do not fit in with the propaganda of states and corporate media. He has reported from Russia, Great Britain, the Balkans, Poland, the Baltic states and Afghanistan. His most recent book is Auf beiden Seiten der Front—Meine Reisen in die Ukraine (On Both Sides of the Front—My Travels in Ukraine). More about him is found on his website.


Featured: Join the Navy. Poster by Richard Fayerweather Babcock (1887-1954), published in 1917.

Nord Stream! And Lutherania Descends into the Maelstrom

“Thank you, USA!”
Radek Sikorski, MEP

“Thank you, Olaf Scholz!”
Society for German Garden Gnomes

In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven [Edgar Allan Poe, Descent into the Maelström (1856)].

Most observers—even those extremely hostile to Scholz—tend to see him as a blithering idiot, stooge or punching-bag for the Annalena “Miss Piggy” Baerbock faction. However, on February 21, 2023, Professor Michel Chossudovsky published a piece on the Nord Stream blast referring to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ own statements, and suggesting that the latter had, from the outset, been in on the plan to physically demolish Nord Stream.

As the Professor’s article did not, however, report the passages below from Scholz’ intervention in German at the notorious Washington press conference on February 7, 2022 allow us to do so now. There, President Biden publicly announced that the Deed would be Done. Picking up where Biden had left off (“I promise you we will be able to do it…”) Scholz stated the following:

Olaf Scholz ((from 5 mins. 9 seconds):

“Let’s be clear. In order to concretely implement whatever sanctions be needed, should it come to an attack on the Ukraine, our preparations have been intense. We must do whatever may be called for, to make Russia understand that the measures will be tough and far-reaching. Obviously, we will not toss all our cards onto the table: the Russians must be made to realize that a great deal more may occur, than they would even imagine. Meanwhile making it perfectly plain that we’re well prepared. The measures will be far-reaching.”

[More here].

To get a handle on the purported “blithering idiot,” “stooge,” or, rather more likely, Quisling, backtrack to the 1980s.

Where There’s a Steklov, There Must be a Schmolz

According to the French version of Wikipedia, two short lines of which brush off Scholz’ role in the CumEx affair—it just happens to be the biggest tax fraud in German history—in 1982 at 24 years of age Olaf Scholz was appointed Federal Vice-President of the JUSOS (Young Socialists), quite the power-brokering agency in the social-democracy at the time. The French weekly L’Express then described him as “far closer to the DDR’s Communists than to West-German leaders”, as Scholz made a name for himself calling for Germany to leave NATO, and for all US medium-range nuclear weapons to be withdrawn from her territory.

In his role as JUSO VP (1982-1988) and VP of the International Union of Socialist Youth (1987-1989), Scholz crossed over to the DDR several times. One of his meetings with Egon Krenz and the DDR Nomenklatura made prime-time television in the DDR:

As the nail-hard East German delegation stares impudently across the table at the baby-faced West German youths, giddy with their own sense of importance, one can only wonder… at what went on behind the scenes. Trained in the USSR, with the Stasi and the apparatchiki weeviling into the woodwork, the Nomenklatura rarely wasted the main chance. In any event, the above video conveniently popped up on YT on August 19, 2022, just as Olaf Scholz appeared before the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry (PUA) on the CumEx affair.

One should perhaps add that until 1989, given the red-tape, surveillance and harassment on both sides of the Wall, few Westerners ever attempted to travel to the East bloc. But Olaf Scholz, plainly, had slippery skin.

Olaf Scholz, A Babe in the DDR Wood

“Europe, not Euroshima!”
Freie Deutsche Jugend slogan

As one might imagine, Olaf Scholz’ profile as one more braying ass in NATO’s stable of useful idiots, resembles that of his contemporary Jens Stoltenberg, known as Steklov to the KGB whilst still a “socialist” teenager.

Thus, on February 5, 2022 Markus Decker, ex-member of the Freie Deutsche Jugend or FDJ (Free German Youth, outlawed as anti-constitutional in West Germany from 1951), penned a short note confirming that , in 1983 he attended an FDJ camp at Werder an der Havel in the DDR, with Olaf Scholz essentially at its helm.

“Scholz was six years older than I … he headed the delegation (West German—editor’s note) to Werder, and was more a player, than a mere onlooker. Scholz travelled to the DDR several times. According to reports, he was waved through the checkpoints, and inter alia met with someone who would be much talked of in 1989: Egon Krenz, Secretary of the SED (Socialist Unity Party) Central Committee. Scholz belonged to the Stamokap wing, State Monopoly Capitalism… the dimension of the problem concerns the actual surveillance of Olaf Scholz in West Germany. Seven or more West German citizens under the aliases ‘Kugel,’ ‘Gustav,’ ‘Giesbert,’ ‘Konrad,’ ‘Holm,’ ‘Heine’ and ‘Udo’… forwarded no less than 19 reports (to the West German authorities—editor’s note) between 1978 and 1987 on Scholz and his activity on behalf of JUSO-Hamburg…”

Ah, “Peace ! First amongst the Rights of Man! Europe, not Euroshima! (Frieden ist unser erstes Menschenrecht! Europa darf kein Euroshima werden!), such were the slogans produced for the Werder an der Havel camp, nicht wahr, Herr Kanzler?

Speaking frankly, had Olaf Scholz stuck to his anti-NATO, peacenik, communistic views his enitre life – like the unrepentant Rainer Rupp, ex-spy, now a militant essayist—whether one agreed or not, one would have simply shrugged one’s shoulders and said “at least he’s coherent.”

And Scholz would never have become mayor of Hamburg, then finance minister, and now soon to be ex-chancellor, but a Potsdam Town Councillor. Hence the joke doing the rounds when Scholz turned his coat: Es ist Schmolzder Scholz is geschmolzen—Scholz has liquified.

But for Scholz to have liquified, geschmolzen, to the point of applauding an act of war by the US against his own country, of agitating for injecting experimental gene therapy into his own population, of appointing as Foreign Minister an individual, Miss Baerbock, whose vulgarity, ignorance and recklessness beggars belief, of actively pressing for Operation Barbarossa II… there had to be either a carrot or a big stick at the other end. Given the implications of the CumEx affair, it looks rather like the big stick.

Whatever is this “CumEx” business, the maelstrom down which Scholz and Co. will eventually no doubt vanish? According to the specialized site FinanzWende, which has been tracking Olaf Scholz’ role from the word go, CumEx refers to a series of share-deals effected with the sole purpose of tricking the tax authorities into refunding (unpaid) taxes several times over to a chain of players, linked by an underground network.

Share-bundles are bought and sold in swift succession close to the dividend due-date, with (cum) or without (ex) dividend-entitlement. As the deal-wheel spins swiftly, the real share-holder at any one time is unclear to the tax authorities; they end up refunding capital gains tax to all the players who then divvy up the loot.

CumCum deals are similar: these enable foreign shareholders to draw tax refunds in Germany, a thing normally forbidden. Which is why one finds the Hamburg lawyer Hanno Berger, plying that trade from Switzerland, or Freshfields Germany partners, or the Canadian Maple Bank, all with their fingers in the pie.

Via a judgment handed down on December 15, 1999, the Federal Finance Court (Bundesfinanzhof) had carelessly opened a breach for such deals, by holding that for tax purposes, a single share might have two owners, with property passing to the buyer at the time of the sale despite the share still being “in the hands” of the vendor. In late December 2002, the German Bank Association (Bundesverband deutscher Banken) wrote to the Finance Ministry about CumEx, to suggest that legislation be designed to mitigate liability for the banks involved. The argument then bandied about was that CumEx/CumCum was a tax loophole rather than a criminal scheme to defraud the tax authorities.

From that point on the CumEx/CumCum merry-go-round took off: over a period of roughly fiften years Germany was cheated of about 10 billion Euro tax revenue through CumEx deals and roughly 28 billion through CumCum. On the European level, the losses in tax revenue for the various countries have been estimated at roughly environ 150 billion Euro.

As it happens, the German authorities were tipped off to the scam early on. According to Finanzwende, between 2005 and 2007 a whistleblower contacted BaFin (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, the banking oversight agency), in vain. In 2007, “alarm bells rang in the Finance Ministry: a whistleblower reported that CumEx deals were taking on monstrous proportions … nevertheless, the Ministry neither sent the oversight agencies into the banks, nor ordered a freeze on all federal tax refunds from the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern, nor alerted the Prosecution Service.

There would be much, much more to say. Plainly, by no later than 2007 not a single political or financial figure in Germany could have been unaware of the fact that THE far more profitable CumEx and CumCum deals had come to replace “plain vanilla” banking, that the gamers were making at least 20 % on such deals, and that the tax base was being looted. By 2012, official investigations and legal proceedings both civil and criminal were underway in several Länder, especially in Cologne where officials were notably diligent; by 2014 Landesbank Baden-Württemberg for example, agreed with to the tax agents to return 150 million Euro in undue refunds.

In January 2016, the Cologne Prosecutor launched an enquiry into Warburg Bank at Hamburg (150 million Euro at stake), and February 2016, a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry into CumEx was set up.

Under such circumstances—and the publicly-available documentation on CumEx/CumCum runs into the thousands of pages of which we have been able to read only a fraction—there can be no doubt whatsoever that Olaf Scholz, whether as Mayor of Hamburg (2011-2017), or Federal Finance Minister (2018-2019), was well aware that a major scam was afoot.

By some quirk of fate, Die Akte Scholz (The Scholz File), a study by investigative reporters Oliver Schröm and Oliver Hollenstein, appeared only a few days after the Nord Stream blast (September 26, 2022); the book picked up from leads in the impounded private journal of Warburg’s Hamburg boss Christian Olearius. For a pitiless and quite thorough summary of events as related in Die Akte Scholz, see this three part video by young German financer Kolja Barghoorn:

Founded in the late 18th Century, the Warburg Bank, although with tentacles extending worldwide (Paul Warburg was amongst the Federal Reserve’s founders in 1913), holds the splendid city of Hamburg, all very prim, proper and Lutheran, in its grip. As for Christian Olearius, who in 40 years multiplied the bank’s turnover by five, nothing stirred in Hamburg without him, lastly but not leastly CumEx deals for its notables.

“Warburg’s Using the Threat of Bankruptcy”

In 2016 and 2017 Scholz, then Mayor of Hamburg, thrice received Christian Olearius and Max Warburg at Town Hall, although investigators were already engaged in a CumEx tax-fraud enquiry against Olearius.

Whilst elsewhere in Germany, the tax authorities and prosecutors were tearing hither and thither, striving to shut down the CumEx scam, nothing of the sort occured at Hamburg. There, the tax people, led by the mysterious Svenja Pannhusen (all trace of her seems to have vanished from the Internet) not only declined to chase up the Warburg Bank for refunds, but made so free as to disclose civil servants’ OTR musings to the bank. Scholz himself apparently suggested the following, terribly original argument to the tax office: “Warburg is Too Big to Fail. And is threatening to go bankrupt (Existenzgefaehrdung)”. According to Die Akte Scholz, then-Mayor Scholz told Olearius of his exchanges with Svenja Pannhusen and the Hamburg Finance Senator, the interesting Peter Tschentscher who was to take over from Scholz as Mayor in 2018.

And thus we have the Hamburg tax authorities letting Warburg’s CumEx shenanigans slide right up to – you guessed it – the Statute of Limitations (December 2016, 47 million Euro time-barred, just in time for a Warburg Christmas). But, Perfection being Not of this World, not even in the Warburg World, the Federal Ministry of Finance, deaf to screams of protest from the Hamburg tax office, managed to file a demand for 42 million Euro in tax refunds from Warburg, just before the cut-off date in late 2017.

Amongst the truly strange Machers, as we say in Yiddisch, tugging strings in the environment, one stumbles upon the man who may be Olaf Scholz’ actual controller, a certain Colonel Alfons Pawelczyk; in 2021, he was raided by the Cologne authorities, again in relation to CumEx, Warburg and Scholz.

Defense Industry Boring into the Woodwork?

Whilst Scholz was still Mayor, his party, the Hamburg SPD, is known to have taken 45,000 Euro in donations from the Warburg Bank, thanks to Pawelczyk’s good offices – tip of the iceberg? Given how much politicians cost these days? Another peculiar Macher in Scholz’ entourage is fellow SPD’er Johannes Kahrs, in tight with Warburg and with defense industry figures. In 2022, CumEx investigators from Cologne (them-thar pests again!) cracked open one of Kahrs’ strong-boxes, only to find banknotes in the amount of 218,000 Euro, the origin of which Kahrs has not yet cared to explain.

In the USA, lying to the US Congress or Senate is an offence (perjury), for which in theory punishment is severe. Funny. Perjury seems to worry no-one in Beautifool Germanie.

Indeed, since 2020, Olaf Scholz has had to appear before the Hamburg Town Council, known as the Bürgerschaft (2021, 2022), and before the Federal Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry (2020, 2023). As some of these hearings took place behind closed doors, there is doubtless much of which we are unaware.

Be that as it may, and going by a report that appeared on 16th January 2023, Scholz was economical with the truth before the Parliamentary Commission. Minutes of a Commission session held in July 2020, initially kept secret (Why?), have just appeared. Amongst the many inconsistencies, one learns that in July 2020 Scholz was able to bring to mind a conversation with Christian Olearius of Warburg, of which he had, however, lost “all concrete recollection” by September 2020. Cat got his tongue? N’other joke doing the rounds of Lutherania: CumEx Lingus.

At the time of writing, despite the dismal delays and lack of expert investigators, 1500 individuals and 130 banks are being prosecuted at various levels in the CumEx/CumCum affair. Bearing in mind that this is by far the most serious looting operation against the German taxpayer, and one that carried on merrily for over 15years, one can only be bewildered by the German authorities’ forbearance, compared to the unprecedented armed raids conducted by German police, prosecutors and secret service against a gaggle of grey-bearded garden gnomes going by the name of “Reichsbuerger” in December 2022. That said—Rejoice! Retro-engineering the truth, Andromeda Yacht style should pose no problem to Chancellor Scholz.


Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

Journalism as an Offense: The Baab Case

If journalist Patrik Baab had spoken of Germans’ “escalation phobia,” he might still be doing his teaching job at Kiel University today. However, he was doing journalism: That is the worst reproach one can face today.

Journalists who have more than just attitude, namely professional ethics, are having a hard time these days. A current example: Seymour Hersh. Using an anonymous source, the American journalist has worked out who is to be held responsible for the attacks on Nord Stream I and II—namely, the US Navy and Norway. The German press pounced on this eminence of American investigative journalism, making the man look like a novice. The criticism came from “colleagues,” journalists who spend most of their working lives sitting at desks or copying from each other.

They are rather unfamiliar with field studies. For them, journalistic work simply means accepting prefabricated opinions, only questioning them when instructed to do so. When the U.S. government denied Hersh’s report, these critics of Hersh accepted the denial as a credible opinion—here their journalistic intuition once again ended abruptly.

Much like Hersh, German journalist Patrik Baab has fared similarly in the recent past. He left his desk to do something that contemporary journalism in Germany hardly ever does anymore—get an impression on the ground. In the end, that is exactly what he is accused of. As a journalist, it is apparently advisable in these times and lands, to remain dutifully seated in front of one’s laptop and do research on Wikipedia and in the vastness of Twitter. But never in eastern Ukraine.

Baab in Eastern Ukraine

NDR journalist Patrik Baab was on the road in eastern Ukraine last September. The reason for his trip there—research for a book project. For him, taking a close look at conditions on the ground is part of the journalistic standard, as he also points out in his book Recherchieren. Ein Werkzeugkasten zur Kritik der herrschenden Meinung [Research: A Toolbox for the Critique of Prevailing Opinion]. At that time, those controversial referendums were taking place in Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson, which were supposed to allow the regions to join the Russian Federation. Baab was present. He observed the events on the ground as a journalist—but not, as he was subsequently accused, as an election observer.

Usually, election observers are appointed or invited. Patrik Baab never received such an invitation; to a certain extent, he was there on his own behalf. As a researcher and curious journalist. Nevertheless, the reaction followed promptly: A report by Lars Wienand for the news portal of t-online drew attention to the fact that an NDR reporter—Baab—was acting as an election observer at those referendums and thus legitimizing Russia’s controversial approach.

In other words, a journalist was reproached for doing his job. If the mere presence of a journalist at critical events led to the legitimization of these events, then—viewed dialectically—reporting in the true sense would no longer be conceivable. Because the journalist would already be an influencing factor qua existence, who could no longer act as a chronicler of events, but would only change events through his presence. Perhaps this is the reason why on-site research is becoming increasingly rare today—because they want to stay out of it—which would be tantamount to an oath of revelation for the profession.

Decision, After a Few Minutes

Baab was promptly accused of having aligned himself with Putin’s cause. His visit to eastern Ukraine was proof of that. Patrik Baab himself distances himself from Russia’s war against Ukraine. His CV as an NDR reporter includes countless films and features that report critically about and from Russia—and thus do not make the Russian leadership look good. Infosperber has linked to some of Baab’s productions under an article on the case: They prove that the journalist always kept a sober distance in regards to Russia—professionally speaking.

Although the accusation that Patrik Baab was present as an election observer cannot be verified (here, election observers have their say, Baab was not present and also not invited), the Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (HMKW) in Berlin distanced itself from Baab. In the past, the journalist had often worked there as a lecturer. Among other things, the HMKW’s justification stated that Baab was “providing a welcome fig leaf for the aggressors.” In addition, he was engaging in “journalistic sham objectivity”—the HMKW statement can be read here. Interesting is the introduction of the justification report, in which they speaks of having learned of the matter only “a few minutes ago, through the article, Scheinreferendum, hurra, by Lars Wienand (t-online.de)”—after minutes they had already decided? That doesn’t sound like a prudent approach, more like a favorable moment for people who want to make a political example.

Since Patrik Baab did not have a valid contract with HMKW, he could not take action against this decision of a few minutes. In the case of the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel (CAU), the situation is somewhat different. It withdrew his teaching contract one week after HMKW. The reason—factually the same. Apparently, they didn’t even bother to contact Baab in advance. The reason given by CAU was that there was “imminent danger.” One puzzles over what this is supposed to mean: Baab was standing with tanks in front of Kiel—that’s not possible, because the tanks heading for Ukraine are not in front of Kiel, they are in Kiel.

In this matter an appeal is now pending, the “revocation of the teaching activity” seems to be unfounded for many reasons. Baab was not an election observer, he was doing his job: CAU has demonstrated a lack of due diligence in checking press reports on Baab’s trip. It has done exactly what Baab, as a journalist, urgently warns against—it has adopted unverified allegations.

Kiel University: Followers, by Tradition—and More

Without going into the historical misdeeds of CAU in depth, Kiel University has a tradition of having a rather divided relationship to democratic standards—to put it kindly. In 1914, for example, it excelled in jingoistic patriotism, and years later it supported the Kapp Putsch with a Freikorps (the author Axel Eggebrecht gave a very vivid account of this in his book, Der halbe Weg. Zwischenbilanz einer Epoche), and not only did not stand aside in 1933, but clearly encouraged professors to support the new rulers. Moreover, the author Katia H. Backhaus, in her work, Zwei Professoren, zwei Ansätze. Die Kieler Politikwissenschaft auf dem Weg zum Pluralismus (1971—1998) [Two Professors, Two Approaches. Kiel Political Science on the Way to Pluralism (1971—1998)], elaborated that CAU faculty worked closely with intelligence services (with German and also American ones) in the 1980s.

This historical dimension of CAU will be addressed separately in the near future, as it deserves further consideration. It should be remembered, however, that a professor by the name of Joachim Krause from the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel recently attracted attention. He recently called for escalation and spoke of an “escalation phobia” in large parts of the German population. Krause has admittedly not even been reprimanded by CAU. In retrospect, there would be at least one more reason to do so.

Twenty years ago, Krause justified the war of aggression by the United States and the British against Iraq, which violated international law. Krause’s 2003 analysis bears eloquent witness; it can be read here. In the concluding remarks, one reads “that the U.S. policy toward Iraq (including the threat of regime change by force) is extraordinarily consistent with the international order of collective security and is also necessary.” And further: “The primary motive of U.S. policy is to put a state in its place that challenges the current international order like no other.” Obviously Krause let himself be influenced with this statement by those hawks of U.S. policy who at that time were already talking about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and whose insistence resulted in that lying appearance of Colin Powell before the UN Security Council.

War of Aggression by the USA: No Selfish Energy Interests

Critics, who even then spoke of an unlegitimized war of aggression, were immediately rebuffed by Krause. He wrote: “There is no evidence to support the assumption that U.S. policy is primarily guided by selfish energy interests.” The French and Russians, however, are different, being oriented “by very narrowly defined financial interests in oil exploration in Iraq.” The U.S. foreign policy, so Krause explained at that time quite unabashedly, acts for reasons of good intentions—just imagine if someone would want to accuse Putin or Russia in general of that today.

CAU accuses Patrik Baab of not doing his journalistic work properly because he is biased—at least, that is the quintessence that one has to come to, if one takes a look at the reasoning. But an academic who works in security policy and at the same time talks about “escalation phobia”: How does that go together? Is that the choice of words of someone who specializes in security policy issues? Why does Krause not accuse anyone of failing in their task?

If Patrik Baab had spoken of escalating the war to the point of a potential nuclear strike, he would be blithely lecturing in Kiel today. His offense was that he did not allow himself to be turned into an academic utility idiot, but pursued his work ethos—he does not postulate any ideological empty words, but does what he knows how to do: Reporting.

Basically, this seems to be—as already touched upon above—the worst accusation that one can currently be confronted with. For quite some time, journalism has been understood as something that constructively accompanies the structures of power. It is not implemented as a corrective, but rather takes up the banner of guiding politics through everyday life. If possible, without causing too much of a stir. Synonymous with this development are the legions of journalists who serve as so-called fact checkers. Their task is not to bring facts to light, but to create facts that support and back up political guidelines or decisions. By definition, the fact check should be open-ended: However, if you start with an intention, there can be no drawing back; rather, everything is already closed off and fenced in.

Real Journalism: Endangering the Way Things are Going

Journalists like Patrik Baab come from a different time, when it was still considered natural to even sometimes antagonize the powerful or even just one’s own editor. Of course, journalists are narcissistic, a fact that Patrik Baab himself confirms in his book mentioned above: They always want—and wanted—to make a big deal about themselves. In other days, this was achieved by an investigative coup, by a piece of information that was difficult to bring to light and that could be presented. Today, you make a splash by supporting narratives that business and politics want to establish. In this new sense, Baab is admittedly a bad journalist—precisely because he is a good journalist.

Some students at Kiel University have also recognized this. They are demanding justice for Baab. Their statement on a small Telegram channel about the “Baab Affair” [Affäre Baab] reads” “Comprehensive research that illuminates all angles is a journalistic quality characteristic and not a moral crime. We therefore demand Patrik Baab’s immediate reinstatement at CAU.” Julian Hett, initiator of the burgeoning resistance against CAU’s actions also told me: “The t-online article gave false factual claims, which have since been corrected. Thus, it was clear for me: reputation before truth! The last three years of Covid politics at the university have already shown me in which direction the whole thing is developing. Therefore, there is an urgent need for reforms that put truth back in the center and allow debates, even if they are controversial. Instead, however, efforts are being made to introduce gender language in an all-encompassing way.”

The Baab case shows that journalism is an offense these days. But only if it is carried out with all due diligence. Those who play journalism from their desks because they are halfway capable of comprehending dpa reports are sitting on the safe side of a profession that is in the process of finally abolishing itself. To prevent this, it is imperative that the expertise of a man like Baab not be lost. He should not be one of the last of his kind—he still has a lot to show many young people whose dream job is journalism. To stop letting him teach ultimately means losing his expertise. Only people who see journalism as court-reporting can want that: And these are the forces of counter-enlightenment.


Roberto J. De Lapuente is a journalist who writes from Germany. He is the author of Rechts gewinnt, weil Links versagt [The Right Wins because the Left Fails]. This article appears through the kind courtesy of neulandrebellen.


Featured: Man in a Bowler Hat, by Rene Magritte; painted in 1964.

Research is Not Allowed: The Case of Patrik Baab

In the summer of 2022, I was a student in the seminar given by journalist and guest lecturer Patrik Baab at my university, Christian-Albrechts-Universtiät (CAU) in Kiel, Germany. We studied examples of investigative journalism in the seminar, through which Mr. Baab guided us in understanding the rules of the craft of journalism. One example that I studied was the scandal of star-reporter Claas Relotius from the German magazine Der Spiegel who faked up to 40 reports. The investigative work by Relotius’ colleague, Juan Moreno, revealed the scandal, while also serving as an example of proper research and fact-checking. Also, this showed to us students, what it means to put oneself into dangerous waters. Because researching a colleague was not well regarded by Der Spiegel, Moreno got threatened by his chiefs, that if he continued the research, he could be fired.

A similar thing happened to Patrik Baab. In autumn of 2022, he made another of his many trips to East-Ukraine to research the war on the ground, for his upcoming book. According to Mr. Baab, German media didn’t report meticulously and elaborately enough, so he wanted to get his own understanding of the war. He happened to arrive at the time of the election, by the Russian government, in the contested territories Luhansk and Mariupol, and wanted to report on the opinions of citizens who went to the election. Then, something unexpected happened to him. Surrounded by the local conflict, he had got a call from Germany. In it, he was told that his presence during the elections had somehow legitimized the Russian election. By way of an article in the German online magazine T-Online, this explanation became “settled truth” for the German press, that Mr. Baab was researching in East Ukraine and that he was supposedly an official observer of the election in Luhansk and Mariupol. The German university CAU revoked his teaching assignment, a mere twenty-four hours after the publication of the article in T-Online. [Read more here, here, and here]

Double Standards and Reputation

In German there is a saying: “Wasser predigen und Wein saufen,” which means “preaching [the merits of] water while guzzling wine.” This perfectly describes the double standards of CAU. Mr. Baab’s teaching content in summer 2022 gave us students a clearer understanding on how to research and how to check facts properly. But more importantly, he taught us what the main tasks of journalism are and how important proper research is for our democracy, since journalism is the Fourth Estate. This is vital, especially for research into areas that we only occasionally accept as plausible, just as this war when given a deeper look reveals errors, and at times entanglements.

But what CAU has shown us with the revocation of Mr. Baab’s teaching assignment is that they neither research nor check facts and sources—although their students are taught this at their university. The article from T-Online was corrected immediately after Mr. Baab complained about their wrong claims. CAU could also have checked these claims easily, said Mr. Baab. But rather, they reacted emotionally, because the university won’t endanger its reputation. This is because every university is seeking a good reputation and won’t lose it by any means. A good reputation gives research funds, which the universities nowadays are dependent on. The story of CAU is full of such reputation-defending actions. [Read more here]

I was shocked to hear that Mr. Baab’s teaching assignment got revoked for the winter semester of 2022. But neither was this surprising to me. Over the past three years, critic of Covid, climate change and other “sensitive” topics in Germany are getting canceled. Now and again, one saw acknowledged scientists and academics criticize the political course—but shortly afterwards, they experienced shit-storm campaigns not only in social media, but above all in the German press, with the debate-disqualifying term “conspiracy theorist.” At the end of 2020, for example, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, together with his wife and lecturer at CAU Karina Reis, had published their book, Corona Fehlalarm!? In it, they criticized the German Covid measures and explained why they think so on a scientific basis. Professor Bhakti was also a guest lecturer at CAU. After publishing their book, CAU reacted with a very concise statement which said that the book contains wrong claims, therefore the university distances itself from these claims—which also meant the revocation of Bhakdi’s teaching assignment.

Two and a half years later, the claims that were postulated in the book were right. The question is: Did those responsible at the CAU act against their better judgment in order to preserve their reputation? Because eventually, Bhakdi’s claims are based on biology and medicine. As in Mr. Baab’s case, it’s again what students learn in the university, while the University itself throws all this knowledge over board.

Student Opinions

Regarding the revocation of Mr. Baab’s teaching assignment, it is hard to get a read of the opinions of the students at CAU. Very few students have actually heard about it. This makes sense, because it gives the impression that CAU would love to delete everything that is related to Mr. Baab. On my demand, students that were participants in Mr. Baab’s seminar in the summer of 2022 like myself, showed mixed opinions. Most of the students didn’t respond. One wrote to me, that he fully understands the action of CAU and that he completely shares the opinion with CAU that Mr. Baab supports Vladimir Putin.

Then there was another response which tried to understand both CAU and Mr. Baab. On the one hand, the student said that understands why CAU reacted in the way that it did, because it was being emotional. For him, being associated with the aggressor (Russia) is not what CAU would want or need. But in the end, there’s also no way to end war, other than to negotiate with the aggressor. On the other hand, Mr. Baab’s research in the East-Ukraine can’t be seen as wrong behavior, because he’s a journalist and so he’s supposed to do this kind of research. On a human basis, he also assessed Mr. Baab as a person, who doesn’t want to support Russia and who knows what he’s doing.

Another response was fully on Mr. Baab’s side and argued that Mr. Baab did nothing wrong. He just did, what he is supposed to do as a journalist. That is what he taught us in the seminar. According to Mr. Baab’s research, it is also not evident that he supports the Russian side. The whole case should be seen as doubtful, because the statement of CAU is too short to justify their decision. If CAU had good reasons for their action, they could have stated them, in order to get any doubts out of the way. What has ended up happening is that the university doesn’t tolerate proper journalism.

Another picture was drawn in the student paper, Der Albrecht. Two authors who were also participants in Mr. Baab’s seminar in the summer of 2022, wrote an article about Mr. Baab’s trip in the East Ukraine and his accompaniment by the Russian-German Blogger, Sergey Filbert. What the two student authors express in their article is, “Kontaktschuld,” or “contact-guilt,” that is, “guilt by association.” So, the student article questioned why Mr. Baab was accompanied by the controversial blogger Filbert. But the fact that CAU terminated Mr. Baab’s contract because of this Kontaktschuld wasn’t even questioned. More than that, the article expresses that the authors support the canceling of investigative journalism.

A few students at the Campus of CAU also had mixed opinions. I informed them about what had happened to Mr. Baab and I described the accusations leveled against him. To make things as neutral as possible, I explained what CAU might have thought, when they revoked Mr. Baab’s teaching assignment. Some people said that they found such a thing happening very odd, and they wouldn’t want to say anything about it. The fact that Mr. Baab’s research in East Ukraine was sufficient to revoke his contract left most people I asked in confusion. But another student told me that she is ashamed about it, what CAU had done. She said that it was better not to continue studying at this university.

The Initiative for Patrik Baab

My fellow students and I founded in January 2022 a student group called “Dialog Grundrechte und Gesundheitsschutz” (“Dialogue for Basic Rights and Occupational Protection”). We seek to encourage a debate culture. Instead of debating about gender reforms, we want to tackle bigger topics, such as Covid, War and Democracy. Also, we connected with the student movement called, Studenten stehen auf (Students Stand Up). So, we are in good contact with the universities throughout Germany. Our student group and the student movement has stood up for Mr. Baab.

Next, we wrote a statement, where we submitted our opinion about the revocation of Mr. Baab’s contract and we also made demands. Therefore, we got in contact with Mr. Baab and allowed him to present his point of view. Then, we wanted to publish our statement via round-mail to reach every student and employee at CAU. As a student group, we are allowed to send two mails via round mail in one year. But the committee at our university declined our demand. They explained that our content didn’t correspond with the guidelines and that such messages should not be used to kick off debates.

University policy is an important pier of democratic culture in universities. Debates are the momentum to get democratic involvement. Why should a student group use this e-Mail distributor, when it is not allowed to kick off debates? It seems rather that the university loves to avoid a debate like this one. Obviously, CAU wished to delete the chapter about Mr. Baab.

Here’s our statement:

Dear Students and Staff at CAU,

It is with regret that we have learned of the dismissal of journalist and lecturer Patrik Baab. Mr Baab was a guest lecturer at CAU and offered the seminar “Recherchieren—ein journalistischer Handwerkskasten zur Kritik der herrschenden Meinung” [Research-a journalistic toolbox for critiquing prevailing opinion], which he first offered in the summer semester of 2022 and which was to continue in the following winter semester.

Because of his visit to Luhansk and Mariupol, Mr. Baab was accused of legitimizing the elections, which should indeed be viewed critically. The CAU’s accusations are based on a T-Online article, which has since been revised for containing allegedly false facts. The original article alleged that Mr Baab was an official election observer. However, the CAU still stands by its original position. Here is the CAU’s statement:

“Patrick Baabs Auftreten als ‘Beobachter’ der völkerrechtswidrigen Scheinreferenden in den russisch besetzten Gebieten der Ukraine verleiht dem russischen Vorgehen den Anschein von Legitimität. Die CAU distanziert sich ausdrücklich von Herrn Baabs Reise und ihren Implikationen und wird keine Lehrveranstaltungen anbieten, die von Herrn Baab unterrichtet werden. Der Lehrauftrag wird gekündigt.”

[Patrick Baab’s appearance as an “observer” of the sham referendums in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, which violate international law, gives the Russian actions the appearance of legitimacy. CAU expressly distances itself from Mr. Baab’s trip and its implications and will not offer any courses taught by Mr. Baab. The teaching assignment is terminated.]

The use of the term “observer” still leaves room for interpretation that Mr. Baab was an official observer. According to publicly available information, Mr. Baab first visited Western Ukraine and then went to Eastern Ukraine as an independent researcher. His aim was to hear the opinions of local residents and report on the situation first hand. The journalist’s activities in Luhansk and Mariupol should be seen as unbiased reporting and not as one-sided support for Russia.

Furthermore, it is a principle of journalism to be present at the action, rather than researching from a distance.

Mr. Baab’s teaching post at CAU was then hastily terminated in an urgent procedure, without giving him the opportunity to defend himself. With this action, CAU wanted to protect its reputation. Regrettably, this action disregarded the democratic right to defend oneself from statements of fact. The university is supposed to be a place of freedom of science, freedom of speech and freedom of education and should therefore support investigative journalism. Terminating Mr. Baab’s contract conflicts with these principles.

We, the university group “Dialog Grundrechte und Gesundheitsschutz,” condemn the hasty action of CAU and demand the immediate withdrawal of CAU’s statement of September 27, 2022, and the resumption of Mr. Baab’s teaching post.

An anonymous group that was motivated by our protest, hung up a banner, with the inscription “Solidarität mit Patrik Baab” (Solidarity with Patrik Baab), on a bridge at the most transited street at CAU. Thereupon, a video was made about the action, which went viral on social media.

The next step of our student group is to spread our statement in printed form to the students of CAU. Aside from that, on April 11th our student group will host a lecture form Mr. Baab, where he recount in front of a large audience what has happened to him so far. We are hopeful and optimistic, that Mr. Baab’s “case” will get the attention that is necessarily needed for him and that our university regrets the decision they made.


Julian Hett is a student student in philosophy and sociology at the Kiel University CAU. He is one the founders and first chairman of the student group “Dialog Grundrechte und Gesundheitsschutz.”


Featured: Le Silence [The Silence], by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer; painted in 1895.

Propaganda Fairytale of the “Mainstream Left,” or When Fans of Capitalism Converge with Marx

Whether arms deliveries, “human trafficking” for the labor market, or authoritarian paternalism, government and media like to market this as “left-wing reason.” Der Spiegel even uses Karl Marx to propagate “green capitalism.” In truth, the rulers are deliberately deceiving us.


They once fought against domination and exploitation, for workers’ and women’s rights. Many felt their chains and joined them. The left was once the thorn in the side of the owners of capital and their ruling lobbyists. The history of industrial capitalism is paved with strikes and revolts that were bloodily put down. The enemy was visible.

Today, in the age of digitized monopoly capitalism, it is different. With psychologically ever more sophisticated propaganda, the rulers have successfully ensnared, manipulated and appropriated their adversaries. Even more—they disguise themselves as their former opponents. They boast of leftist ideas, such as anti-racism, cosmopolitanism, health and environmental protection, while their actions to the contrary reveal their hidden hypocrisy, time and again.

Der Spiegel, the obvious flagship for the dissemination of the fairytale of a supposedly “left-wing mainstream,” now even uses Karl Marx and his Das Kapital to propagate the vision of “green capitalism,” presumably conceived in some thinktank of the super-rich. The headline is emblazoned above the paywall as a lure for left-liberals “by instinct” and an indignation-trigger for right-libertarians: “Greener and fairer—Was Marx right after all?” Sounds as if the author of Das Kapital had once thought about reforms for capitalism. That’s sheer nonsense, of course.

Abuse of Leftist Masterminds for the Purposes of Domination

First, Marx’s Das Kapital is an early scholarly work on the workings of capitalism. The author analyzed the system with an eye to conditions in the 19th century. His findings certainly shed light on understanding its visible development to today. For example, Marx described the systemic concentration of capital, i.e., accumulation, and explained why this inevitably leads to the formation of monopolies. Such do visibly dominate the world economy and politics today.

In many other philosophical works—in contrast to Das Kapital—Marx sharply criticized capitalism. He opposed the exploitation of wage-earners by the owners of large means of production. Of course, Marx did not want to reform capitalism, as Der Spiegel would like us to believe. He certainly did not call for giving capitalist governments and states more power. His view of things was different: the state in a class society is the instrument of power of the rulers.

In truth, Der Spiegel propagates exactly what Marx, and later Lenin, had warned against: the total fusion of monopoly capital and politics as a consequence of accumulation—colored “green,” enforced in an authoritarian manner. For some, the vision of “less profit” certainly sounds tempting.

But taken to its logical conclusion, “less profit” by no means entails a renunciation of the rule of the few over the many. For most of the history of class societies, power has not depended on profits at all. The basis for rule has always been, at least as Karl Marx saw it, private ownership of the means of production. And of course, neither the government nor Der Spiegel want to shake that.

Fairytale Lesson about Capitalism

Der Spiegel also suggests that super-rich technocrats from Silicon Valley have stolen their ideas of regulating “nanny-states,” supposedly in favor of the environment, from left-wing masterminds. Put simply, that these are somehow leftist ideas. This is, of course, a misdirection.

But such a lie, put into the world in a roundabout way, brings a decisive advantage to the rulers: the people stop thinking about their fundamental situation in capitalism when they assume that “the leftists” are behind the agenda, which only promises more servitude than already exists. There is even a fairytale circulating—even in some academic minds—that the technocrats’ idea of “green capitalism” is socialist in nature.

Those who believe this tend to cry foul to one part of the oppressors, while giving the green light to the other part of them, and while even considering themselves critical of domination. Behind this is the fairytale of evil capitalists (technocrats) and good capitalists (everyone else). One could call it a clever ideological strategy of the rulers to steer protests into the void from the outset.

Demagogy for Critics of the System and “Leftists by Instinct”

The beliefs propagated directly and indirectly by Der Spiegel, in fact, serve all around the interests of the ruling front of monopoly capital and its politics. As a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this front lures the “leftists by instinct” as comrades-in-arms and steers the remaining resistance into politically confused nirvana. The demagogy behind this can be summarized in a few points.

First, the idea of “green capitalism” has as little to do with socialism as it does with Karl Marx or even any leftist idea. It is merely the fantasy of a continuation of capitalist rule on a state-monopolistic level, adapted to technologically developed productive forces.

Second, it suggests that classical industrial capitalism was at some point of great benefit to the wage-earning masses. This may have been true for the bulk of German workers for a few decades after World War II. But the price paid by billions of wage earners in the periphery was consistently high. The good capitalism in the idea of an idyllic vegetable market never existed.

Third, the lie of the alleged “left mainstream” drives many critics of the system into the hands of those who do not stand for an end to their oppression, but preach a return to classical industrial capitalism. This is already no longer possible because of the developed technology. Above all, however, such fantasies prevent thinking about an actual end to the exploitation of people and nature.

Fourthly, such demagogy catches on with many “leftists by instinct” who either have not read Marx or have not understood him. Presumably, some are flattered by the idea that leftist ideas have conquered (capitalist) politics and that they themselves can finally get involved. Ultimately, those who are seduced make themselves recipients of orders from the powerful.

Monopoly Capitalism with Nanny State

But let’s conclude with some outpourings in Der Spiegel article. Right under the headline it states:

“Classic capitalism no longer works. But driven by ever new world crises and a looming climate collapse, concrete reform ideas are emerging: less growth, more government targets.”

That “classical capitalism” as a competitive and pecking order produces economic crises, wars and environmental catastrophes without end is of course recognizable. Moreover, the “no more” is superfluous, because poverty, hunger and social misery have always been present, even tending to increase. But the supposedly “left-liberal” magazine then takes a remarkable turn:

Instead of reflecting on economic property relations as the fundamental cause of the problems, it preaches reformism under a strong state. The latter, of course, is supposed to remain the instrument of power of the ruling class to manage the wage slavery of the many under the premise of “less growth.”

But to be serious about Marx: Growth is based on the market competition of individual capitalists. If monopolies have been formed by this very competition, according to which the strongest wins, competition disappears, of course. The rule without competition does not need any more growth to stay in power. Authoritarian surveillance policy is sufficient for that.

Throughout the article, Der Spiegel skillfully pairs a charming critique of capitalism (which certainly contains many truths) with the fantasies of the super-rich world leaders. It sounds something like this:

“But now he [Ray Dalio, hedge fund founder) says phrases like this about capitalism: ‘If good things are overdone, they threaten to destroy themselves. They must evolve or die.’ Wealth and prosperity are now only distributed one-sidedly, he says, and those who are poor remain poor, with hardly a trace of equality of opportunity. Dalio demands an end to this. Capitalism urgently and fundamentally needs to be reformed. Otherwise, it will perish, and deservedly so.”

Instead of blaming the rulers themselves, the authors put the blame for the serious distortions on a “capitalism” that has somehow gotten out of hand, i.e., on something unassailable. Of course, they do not question the rule itself: A little reform is needed to mitigate the worst effects. And so it goes on:

“Criticism of capitalism is first of all nothing new. But in the dawning year four of the pandemic and year two of the Ukraine war, it is gaining noticeably in force. Too many things no longer work: globalization is crumbling and with it the German model of prosperity. The world is entrenching itself in hostile blocs. Inflation is causing rich and poor to drift further apart. Almost all climate targets have been missed. And politicians can no longer keep up with patching up all the ever-new cracks in the system.”

Apart from the fact that Lenin already knew that in monopoly capitalism, which has matured into imperialism, alliances of states naturally “entrench themselves behind hostile blocs” and wage wars for market domination: What do the authors want to imply by stating that politics is no longer able to “patch up all the ever-new cracks in the system?” This sounds like a call for all-round surveillance of citizens by the state.

That authoritarian forms of government and capitalism—in whatever form—are not contradictory is impressively demonstrated by recent history. The authors, of course, do not use the word “authoritarian.” Instead, they talk about a “new economic order,” even though, according to them, capitalism should remain:

“Calls for a new economic order are now growing louder from all corners, strikingly often from unsuspected ones. The Financial Times, international mouthpiece of the financial markets, proclaimed that it was time for neoliberalism to step down from the world stage.”

So now only neoliberalism is to step down, i.e., merely the market-radical superstructure for a “lean state,” which above all ensures free rein for large corporations. But to call this a “new economic order” is nonsense. To substantiate this with two extreme examples: Capitalism, after all, also worked in Chile under Pinochet and in Germany under Hitler—without any neoliberalism at all, but with cruel oppression of the people.

But the authors get carried away with fine words. A gentler, sustainable capitalism is needed. But who is to develop it? The billionaires in Silicon Valley? And what does this “gentler and more sustainable” mean for the people? Are they to become the disposal mass of tech-corporate-governed governments in the future, sweet-soundingly referred to as the “controlling state?” Obviously:

“Ideas for a fairer, greener—yet still free-market—order now abound. Proposals for such a gentler capitalism come from a wide variety of ideological camps, but common lines can be discerned: less market, more controlling state, and less growth by hook or by crook.”

Propaganda with Both Sides Taken for a Ride

Now, a “softer capitalism” is neither a leftist idea, nor would it end the exploitation of the majority by the few. Especially since it is not at all clear for whom the fantasy world of the powerful is supposed to be “gentler”—presumably mainly for the monopoly lords and their well-paid managers.

To dust off Marx and his Das Kapital for this venture is rather mendacious. But probably some left-feeling (and right-acting) bureaucrat functionaries cheered the agitators (or propagandists). And probably quite a few railed against the alleged “left mainstream” that never existed. Both fell for the targeted, ideological propaganda of the really powerful and their supporters.


Susan Bonath writes from Germany, where she studies painting and ceramics. This article appears courtesy of RT Germany.

University All-In for Journalism with a Slant

Because of research in the Donbass, journalist Patrik Baab lost a teaching position – now he is suing Kiel University.


For a forthcoming book, the renowned journalist Patrik Baab is analyzing the background to the war in Ukraine. What could be more natural than to go and see the reality? A year after his visit to western Ukraine, he went to the eastern Donbass in the early fall of 2022, which the Ukrainian army has been bombarding since 2014. But anyone who stands up to Western propaganda needs to really be steady on his feet: A media shitstorm, peppered with half-truths and slander, burst upon him; two universities banned him from teaching—and Baab is going to court.

Research in the Donbass

Patrik Baab is an experienced investigative journalist. He has produced numerous reports for North German Public Broadcaster NDR, and other news outlets and books as well. He has passed on his knowledge to students at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), among other places, and already had the teaching assignment for this winter semester in his pocket. Baab is also writing a book about the conflict in Ukraine. What was the history of the conflict? What caused the situation to escalate? When, how and what led to Russia’s invasion? What do those affected on the ground think about the developments leading up to the war?

It seems journalistically imperative to approach the complex interrelationships on the ground as objectively as possible. During the semester break, Baab traveled to the Donbass via Russia. The trip, he says, was long planned. A year earlier, he had been researching in western Ukraine. It was a coincidence that he directly witnessed the referendums on annexation to the Russian Federation. Baab filmed in destroyed cities, spoke with those affected, watched the election—good journalism, one would think.

But no one should enter a war zone alone, especially not if they lack perfect knowledge of the language and the place. That’s why Baab had Sergey Filbert at his side, who runs the well-frequented German-Russian YouTube channel Druschba FM. Filbert knows the country, speaks the language, but has been pilloried by the “leading media” for years. But where else could Baab have reported directly from the scene of the events about his observations, which do not always quite fit in with Western propaganda?

Shitstorm and Expulsion
The shitstorm was not long in coming. It caught up with Baab during his trip and probably started with t-online. Author Lars Wienand claimed untruthfully that Baab had traveled to Ukraine as an “election observer,” and other media outlets took this up without checking. Wienand also got in touch with the Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (HMKW) in Berlin, where Baab taught. Even before Wienand’s article appeared, the School declared its lecturer an outlaw with reference to the yet-to-be-published “article” and banned him from teaching.

Baab’s former employer, NDR, immediately followed suit. The station did not hold back with the personal attacks and obviously used the opportunity to settle old scores. Because Baab was never comfortable there. As early as 2019, he and other colleagues had denounced serious abuses in public broadcasting. Among other things, there were allegations of political influence.

The media campaign also put Kiel University on alert. In a hysterical, moralizing three-liner made up of a string of propaganda terms, the university announced that it would terminate Baab’s teaching contract. A few days later, the university also informed Baab of this in writing, in long form. I have the letter in hand, in fact.

To understand: teaching assignments from state universities are contracts under public law outside the scope of labor and civil service law. Lecturers are thus denied numerous rights of permanent employees, such as collectively agreed salary, allowances, vacation, continued payment in case of illness, and so on. Unions have long criticized this practice.

Nevertheless, universities may not prematurely terminate teaching assignments once they have been granted without good cause, such as a lack of students or violations of the teaching agreement. Private moral attitudes and political views on certain topics are not among the reasons for termination.

And this is as it should be, because freedom of research and teaching, of opinion and of the press, is a basic democratic right, enshrined in Article 5 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany.

University with a “Clear Stance”

The University of Kiel, however, is just as unconcerned about all this as the HMKW. When it comes to the Ukraine war, the educational institutions display the politically desired, simple friend-foe paradigm, according to which NATO and Ukraine are good and Russians are bad. You don’t talk to the bad guys; you believe everything the good guys say—and anyone who sees things differently gets fired, journalism or not.

In other words, the Kiel University CAU requires its lecturers to adopt a predefined political stance on the Ukraine war, both professionally and privately.

In its letter to Baab, Kiel University revoked his teaching assignment in a highly emotionalized manner. Instead of well-founded evidence for all the cobbled-together accusations, the letter is just a string of evaluations, accusations and personal attacks.

CAU has also apparently cribbed from t-online. The first accusation is that Baab was in the Donbass “during the sham referendums” as a “Western election observer” and, to make matters worse, took part in a press conference with Russian media—without being certified by the United Nations (UN) for this task, as required.

Although Baab clearly stated that he had done research in the Donbass exclusively for his book and that nothing could be heard or read in his work that might be deemed praise of the Russian government, the CAU insisted on its interpretation, even in its negative statement of opposition. It further stated:

“The foregoing conduct is likely to call into question Christian Albrechts University’s unequivocal stance on the war in Ukraine. Your appearance as an ‘observer’ of the sham referenda gives the appearance of legitimacy to Russia’s occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territories in violation of international law.”

The university’s stance is described as follows by the signatories, Christian Martin, Robert Seyfert, and Dirk Nabers, all professors in the fields of politics and sociology: Since CAU is committed to peace, it stands by Ukraine and “strongly supports the consistent action of the German government and the EU sanctions against the aggressor Russia.” It has therefore already suspended student exchanges and scientific cooperation with Russia.

Mind Control Instead of Freedom of Teaching

In other words, because the university is for peace, it has sided with a warring party, namely Ukraine, and thus backed the political views and aspirations of the German government. Criticism of German and EU policies is unwelcome. It demands the same from its lecturers.

The university has obviously mutated into a political-influencer establishment that controls the personal attitudes of its staff and lecturers, in an all-encompassing manner.

The educational institution now fears a “loss of reputation,” as a result of Baab’s research trip. The impression must not be created, it wrote, that some of the lecturers could be in favor of Russia’s behavior. The signatories do not say a word about the task of journalists to do thorough and proper research. They are also silent on the freedom of research, freedom of the press and of opinion.

False Allegations

After an unsuccessful appeal, Patrik Baab is now suing through the Schleswig-Holstein Administrative Court against his expulsion. Lawyer LL.D. Volker Arndt accuses the CAU of several false allegations in the preliminary statement of grounds for the action. His client had neither traveled to Ukraine as an election observer, nor had he allowed himself to be taken over by the Russian regime or relativized the war. Further, he writes:

“The plaintiff, as a journalist committed to reporting on the ground—and not from afar like other media observers—undertook highly risky research in order to actually see and report on the situation on the ground with his journalistic experience.”

Mr. Arndt emphasizes: “In the difficult and dangerous war situation, Baab maintained a critical distance to all sides. He only observed, filmed and spoke with people—and did so in a way that was legitimate under basic and human rights. His presence in eastern Ukraine also did not, as has been alleged, contribute to any advantage for the Russian government. Rather, Baab was fulfilling his journalistic duty of being diligent. The revocation of his teaching assignment was therefore unlawful.”

Political Censor Clique

Baab has also criticized the approach of Kiel University as a whole. It has not granted him any legal hearing so far, he said. “They didn’t talk to me, but simply presented me with a fait accompli,” he said in an interview with me.

In his estimation, his criticism of the NDR plays a major role in the university’s reaction. Baab spoke of an “obvious act of revenge” by a “political media clique” at the executive levels of the public broadcaster, under the guise of investigative research, carried out by economically dependent freelancers. This network extends into the university, he believes.

Meanwhile, the NDR is playing a familiar tune. It accuses Baab above all of having talked to the “wrong people,” who allegedly spread “conspiracy narratives” and are “open to the right.” The media’s largely one-sided handling of the protests against the Covid measures sends its regards. Baab’s journalistic merits in the past go unmentioned. The NDR has declared the disliked person a persona non grata, a street urchin—in other words, outright political censorship with serious personal and social consequences for the person concerned.

University Propagandists

To be very clear: Where even renowned journalists like Patrik Baab have to fear losing their jobs and being publicly discredited for disagreeable reporting, there is no real freedom of the press. In view of this, it is hardly surprising that Germany’s leading media are perceived as being in sync with the rest of the world. Those who only write what the government wants and what the top management dictates are not disseminating information, but propaganda. When even teachers at universities are expected to teach prospective journalists how to think, this situation has long since outlived its usefulness.

On-site research, Baab explains, “is not only part of the journalistic mission, but absolutely necessary for obtaining information.” “It’s a reality check,” he says. It’s the only way, for example, to check governmental pronouncements for their truthfulness.

And you also have to talk to both sides, he says, precisely to avoid being “joined at the hip” to one side. Corresponding accusations by the university against Baab should rather be directed at journalists who reproduce—unchecked—the propaganda of the Ukrainian government and NATO.

The problem of opinion-making in the leading media probably goes deeper. One has to ask: If universities prescribe certain political attitudes to their lecturers, the thought is not too far-fetched: Will budding journalists learn to do objective research at all? Should they perhaps no longer learn this at all, in order to produce certain political opinions instead? At any rate, this would explain the dilemma in the major German media. Whether on the subject of Ukraine or Covid, it doesn’t matter: propaganda disguised as “reporting” is on the rise. And perhaps not least the universities are providing enough new propagandists.

The CAU itself does not want to comment on its mode of expression. Regarding my own questions about all this, it referred me to the current procedure, which Patrik Baab set in motion, and then remained silent. Thus, for the time being, it remains the secret of the CAU as to what legal basis it can at all demand of its staff and lecturers that they express a very specific political stance on the Ukraine conflict, both professionally and privately. Was the scientific community in the same frame of mind in the Covid case?


Susan Bonath writes from Germany, where she studies painting and ceramics. This article appears courtesy of Rubikon.


Featured: “Muzzling the Press,” lithograph by Jay C. Taylor and J. Ottmann; published in Puck, May, 1889.

With Us or Against Us

Anyone who does not unconditionally support the German course of war in Ukraine is declared an enemy. The treatment of NDR reporter Patrik Baab by universities and the media shows how deeply divided Germany is and how ruthless it is when militarized nationalism spreads.

If the devil exists, he must be interviewed.

Because in September 2022 he was in the eastern Ukrainian regions occupied by Russian forces, where so-called referendums were held on the question of annexation to the Russian Federation, journalist Patrik Baab, 63 years old, employed by the North German Public Broadcaster (NDR) but traveling on his own behalf, was shown the door by two German universities. In other words, he was stripped of his teaching assignments. Reason: His presence legitimized Putin’s war of aggression.

Baab as an Example

This is how primitive the disputes in Germany have become. The “case” of Patrik Baab is above all an example. It shows how arbitrary and threatening things have become in this country in the last three years. And he stands in for a number of other names, such as Ulrike Guérot (University of Bonn), Jürgen Döschner (German Public Broadcaster, WDR) or Ole Skambraks (German Public Broadcaster, SWR).

Baab has been employed as an editor at NDR since 1999, and is currently in part-time early retirement. In the past, he has repeatedly reported from Russia, as have many other correspondents of the Consortium of German Public Broadcasters, ARD before and after him. He is currently writing a book on the Ukraine war, which is due to be published in the summer. He sat on the NDR staff council for several years and criticized political influence on reporting.

The war in Ukraine is taking place primarily in the Donbass regions. International law is characterized by two competing principles: The right of peoples to self-determination versus the territorial integrity of states. The Soviet Union was a forced amalgamation of many territories and states. The disintegration of the Soviet empire was accompanied by countless cases of territorial secessions or annexations, independence aspirations, separatism, regionalism and countless wars against and among each other. And everywhere, the old Soviet elites were still fighting for their former privileges against an all-consuming democratization. In the newly independent states, the old officials tried to maintain their power in a nationalistic way, as in Ukraine. And today’s oligarchs are also yesterday’s communists.

The Donbass regions in eastern Ukraine are the main combat zone of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and their western borderlines form the front.

Baab: “Russia’s War of Aggression on Ukraine in Violation of International Law”

Patrik Baab traveled to Russia and eastern Ukraine from mid-September to early October 2022 for research on his book. He did not know until shortly beforehand that so-called referendums on the question of annexation to Russia were to take place in the disputed and contested area. On site, he then observed the votes and spoke with residents. He did what a reporter has to do. Incidentally, his position on the war is unambiguous: he speaks of a “war of aggression by Russia on Ukraine in violation of international law.”

So much for the back story, which would hardly be worth mentioning, if the war had not also reached Germany and created a war faction. It reinterprets everything. The main story is about it.

In September 2022, the web portal of t-online (“News for Germany”) discovered the journalist Baab in eastern Ukraine and declared him a “poll watcher” for the denounced referendums. Actually, an innocuous term. But now an election-observing chronicler was declared a partisan of Putin.

The University of Media, Communication and Business (HMKW) in Berlin learned of this through t-online. Baab had repeatedly worked there as a lecturer. The university management immediately called him in eastern Ukraine. Actually, this was not a bad idea, but a war zone is not necessarily favorable terrain for settling differences, especially on the phone. Baab also explained that he was traveling privately as a journalist because he was writing a book on the war.

Journalistic Presence and Reality

This was not enough for the HMKW, in the guise of the rector and chancellor. They declared the mere presence of the reporter to be a legitimization of the sham referendums and ultimately of the war; that he was a fig leaf for the aggressors; that his reports possessed a journalistic sham objectivity. In short, it was incompatible with the basic principles of their university to continue using him as a lecturer. The statement can be read here.

It’s worth taking a closer look. For in fact the sanction and its justification say something about the disregard for and bending of hitherto recognized democratic as well as journalistic principles, such as apparently happens in times of war.

If the presence of a journalist in an area of rule legitimizes the rulers, so the accusation goes, then the press is declared to be a party. Then its independence is denied. Strictly speaking, the position of those responsible for HMKW represents a denial of the independence of journalists. It is also an attack on the freedom of the press. In the consequence of such thinking, the ARD correspondents in Moscow, for example, would also legitimize the Russian regime. And if one would then renounce reporters in order not to run the risk of legitimizing rule, then one could no longer report on reality at all, not even on the internal victims of this regime or on opposition and resistance in the country. It would be the renunciation of presence that would spare this regime.

The powerful try to capture journalists all the time. Now, in Baab’s case, the Berlin media academy is readily acknowledging this.

HMKW, Belligerent

However, this has its logic, because the media academy has long since allowed itself to be appropriated: namely, it is a war party on the side of Ukraine. However, this side is not critically questioned. The fact that human rights are also violated there and war crimes are committed does not interest the war supporters at the university. They are obviously not even interested in the fact that the German armed forces are cooperating with weapons-carrying forces of the denounced Russian aggressor in the African country of Mali. On top of that, to prop up a murderous coup government, of all things.

Instead, everything is supported, including the disinformation, manipulation and obfuscation of the reality of war. If the first casualty of war is truth, then that applies to both sides. And then it is as true on the hundredth day as it was on the first. The number of casualties in the Ukrainian ranks is concealed as well as the Ukrainian shelling of residential buildings. The deportation of men to the front is kept secret, as is the persecution of Ukrainian conscientious objectors and, in contrast, the privilege of wealthy Ukrainians to buy their way out of the war. And, of course, action must be taken against anything and anyone who brings this dark reality to light. Like Patrik Baab.

The rector and chancellor of HMKW have turned the university into a war-party; they have made it into a belligerent. And they have done so at the expense of truthfulness, freedom of opinion, research and teaching, and democratic rules.

Behind their war attitude, however, is not a conviction, for example, to defend freedom. But rather, it is pure cowardice in times of war, hot or cold, uncritical conformity to the government’s actions. The dissociation from their lecturer Baab is a reaction of fear of a sanctions-regime to which they themselves belong, in which they participate and which could affect them.

Back Then, on Alexanderplatz

A disastrous system, for which, above all, the chancellor of HMKW stands, and in an almost historical dimension. He was once an adapted GDR citizen who liked SED socialism. Then came the time of change with the mass demonstrations and the fellow traveler changed roles: now he stood up for democracy and invoked the new freedoms. But this took the turncoat all the way to the top. He was one of the speakers at the big rally on Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989, which heralded the beginning of the end of the SED and the Stasi. (See here, from 2:31:40 to 2:33:50 minutes).

In 2022, this man obviously forgot what was so sacred to him in 1989. Now he mutates again into a turncoat and fellow traveler in yet another matter. In the meantime, the GDR past sends its greetings to the University of Göttingen: because Baab’s book Recherchieren may no longer be used by teaching staff. The dissident is once again the enemy who must be eradicated and destroyed.

On the part of the HMKW, there is no reaction to the request for answers to numerous questions.

Patrik Baab has worked for six years as a lecturer at the Berlin Media University. However, the teaching contract for the winter semester 2022/23 had not yet been drawn up and signed last September. Baab thus has no legal recourse to take action against the revocation of this non-contract.

Russian Citizens are Held Liable for the Russian Regime

This is different in the second case. In Kiel, at the Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU), the journalist Patrik Baab has even been repeatedly hired for a teaching assignment for 20 years. One week after his expulsion in Berlin, at the beginning of October 2022, his teaching assignment was also withdrawn in Kiel. The reason given was similar to that in Berlin: he had lent the appearance of legitimacy to the sham referendums through his presence in the areas in question. In Kiel, and specifically at the Institute of Social Sciences, where Baab taught, they did not even think it necessary to contact him, but executed his expulsion without any inquiry. Bizarrely, the three professors in the institute’s management responsible for this, justified it by saying that there was “imminent danger.” If they had not reacted immediately, even without hearing the sanctioned person, the university would have been threatened with a loss of reputation and its “ability to function” would have been impaired.

Quite incidentally, but appropriately, CAU has also suspended student exchanges and scientific cooperation with Russia. Russian citizens are held liable for the Russian regime. A war nationalism that equates everyone: perpetrators as well as victims, belligerents as well as deniers.

Baab, with his lawyer, objected to the withdrawal of his teaching assignment at CAU. The president of the university rejected the objection, and the matter is now before the administrative court in Kiel.

Regardless, the escalation has reached the next stage and produced the next victim. It concerns 86-year-old U.S. professor emeritus of politics, Robert Harkavy, a friend and colleague of Baab’s who also co-authored a book with him on intelligence services, subtitled, Why were Olof Palme, Uwe Barschel and William Colby Murdered? Thus, the assumption of murder in the case of of German politician Uwe Barschel and former CIA-director William Colby..

Sippenhaft—Kinship-Guilt

Harkavy was associated with Kiel University for 40 years, was there several times as a visiting professor, and whenever he visited, accommodation was available for him at the university’s International Meeting Center. In 2023, however, that no longer applies. In the summer, Harkavy wanted to come back to Kiel. But now his request for accommodation has been turned down. With reference to his relationship with Baab, Harkavy has now also become “persona non grata,” an undesirable person. You could also call this contact guilt or Sippenhaft (kinship-guilt)..

The university does not want to answer questions, citing the ongoing legal proceedings. However, its dealings with the US professor Harkavy have nothing to do with the ongoing proceedings.

In the ghost army of German intellectuals, however, one contributor is still missing: the chairman of the German Journalists’ Association (DJV), after all an interest group representing journalists. He is also one of the lecturers at the HMKW Media University in Berlin. However, he does not see any reason to take the initiative in the Baab case and stand up for a fellow journalist. “I’m staying out of it,” he says by e-mail. But in the next sentence, the lobbyist summarily declares his colleague a non-journalist: “Propaganda for a war criminal is by definition not a journalistic activity.” War requires making up one’s mind, and the DJV chief has made up his mind. No matter what the truth is. As it happens, he has thus made his office pointless.

We still have one question: Would these adjustments to the government’s war policy also have taken place in such a stupidly blind manner if there had not been the run-up to the Covid regime, which likewise demanded unquestioning submission and threatened exclusion?

Starring Roles

Rector of the Berlin School of Media, Communication and Business: Klaus-Dieter Schulz

Chancellor of the HMKW: Ronald Freytag

President of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel: Simone Fulda

Institute for Social Sciences of the CAU, Director: Robert Seyfert

Deputy Director: Christian Martin

Joint Committee: Dirk Nabers

Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences: Wilhelm Knelangen

Chairman of the German Journalists’ Association (DJV): Frank Überall


This article appears through the kind courtesy of Overton Magazin.

Mainstream Journalism: A Morality Tale in Four Acts

The story of Patrik Baab is, supposedly, an open book: The experienced investigative reporter, who worked as a Northern German Broadcasting (NDR) editor for many years, and who refuses to be silenced, let alone canceled. He is taking action against the attacks and is suing the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. After denunciatory “reporting” by one of the spokesmen in German attitude journalism (Haltungsjournalismus—reporting, which frames opinion from the point of view of the power elite), the university immediately revoked his teaching position. He is now taking legal action against this. In what follows, we tell the true story of a real journalist in the year 2022, in four acts: A textbook on research; the scandal of politically biased reporting at the NDR state broadcasting agency in Kiel; Mr. Baab’s research trips to Russia and Ukraine; and a lawsuit against the revocation of his teaching assignment, which was filed with the Schleswig Administrative Court, shortly before Christmas.

[To view a selection of Mr. Baab’s documentary films, please follow this link.]

We have received the lawsuit and other documents relating to the revocation of the teaching position at Kiel University. In addition, we rely on a statement by Mr. Baab as part of the attempted clarification of the NDR scandal, which was published a few days ago on the website of the MEP of the Pirate Party. Of course, we also looked at Mr. Baab’s book, Recherchieren (Research), which is highly recommended to critical journalists as a textbook, but it can also be read as a critique of contemporary (political) journalism.

Act One: The Book

For Patrik Baab, research is the core activity of every journalist. It is the basis of criticism of prevailing opinion. Against this background, he published his book at the beginning of the year. In it, he not only writes about the tools of the trade of the investigative reporter, but also criticizes in detail the current conditions in mass media. A concise quotation will serve to clarify his position:

“In a very eloquent way, neoliberal minded journalism is becoming a silence cartel. The press apparently no longer demands anything from politics. Instead, it continually proclaims to people that they are living ‘without alternative’ in the best of all possible worlds. In this way, they themselves have contributed to narrowing the space for public debate to the continuation of the existing situation, with all its ills, without any alternatives. Political measures now focus only on a few system-immanent excesses; the fundamental questions are relegated to the realm of conspiracy theories.”

Anyone who writes something like this should no longer be allowed to train budding journalists, as Mr. Baab did at two universities until the middle of this year. This opinion is held at least relatively blatantly by Volker Lilienthal, who holds the chair of the “Rudolf Augstein Foundation Professorship for the Practice of Quality Journalism” at the University of Hamburg. His review of Mr. Baab’s book predetermined what would happen later: Mr. Baab was stripped of his lectureship. Professor Lilienthal was disturbed by Mr. Baab’s politically entrenched point of view, which does not give a very good impression of the German media landscape. Mr. Lilienthal is part of a conservative media network based in Hamburg, linked via the “Netzwerk Recherche.” Its task, in theory, is to promote investigative journalism, but in practice, it is a coterie.

Hotel in East Ukraine, where Mr. Baab was staying, right after a 155-mm-shell hit the parking lot; fired by a Ukrainian self-propelled gun of NATO-origin. The windows were all shattered, but no one was hurt. Photo Credit: Sergey Filbert.

Act Two: The Scandal of the Kiel State Broadcasting Center

First RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting), then NDR. In the fall, things did not go well for Germany’s public broadcasters. While the scandal at RBB was primarily about accusations of taking advantage, the NDR got down to the nitty-gritty. Journalism itself became an issue. The editor-in-chief of the Kiel state broadcasting center, Norbert Lorentzen, the head of politics there, Julia Stein, and the director of the state broadcasting agency, Volker Thormählen, were accused of influencing research in the interests of the ruling CDU (The Christian Democratic Union of Germany), which runs the government in the federal region of Schleswig-Holstein. Initially, it was about another journalist who was allegedly obstructed in his reporting on a police scandal. But those journalists who investigated the events soon came across Patrik Baab, who had also voiced accusations against the management level of the state broadcasting house.

Mr. Baab himself said nothing more about it, after labor court proceedings; the parties concerned had agreed on that at the time. Nevertheless, details of the accusations to light in the reports. Mr. Baab, who had co-authored several films for NDR about the still mysterious death of former Schleswig-Holstein premier Uwe Barschel, sharply criticized the state broadcaster’s top management. In his report for the auditing firm Deloitte, which was supposed to review the scandal, he wrote, among other things, in retrospect of the direct criticism of his research by state broadcasting agency director Thormählen:

“It was clear to me that the aim was to steer the coverage in the sense of a CDU rope team. My memo about this meeting, which later became part of the labor court dispute, was not contradicted by NDR in court.”

Pirate Party member Patrick Breyer published the link to Mr. Baab’s statement that was leaked and showed up on the internet.. Breyer definitely saw—unlike most commentators in their articles about the Deloitte report—the appearance of political consideration of the NDR in Kiel.

Mr. Baab had also reported “interrogations” in the radio station’s political editorial department:

“This seemed to me to be intended as a journalistic disciplinary tool. In my opinion, it was about forcing pre-emptive obedience by creating fear. The goal of the interrogations was to break any future resistance to political intervention in the program from the outset.”

Mr. Baab refused to be broken, but agreed before the labor court not to repeat the accusations made in 2019 in an editorial conference. According to his own statement to Deloitte, the fact that he was now once again the focus of media coverage came as a surprise to him.

Interviewing a soldier in a shopping street in Donetsk, where some hours earlier 14 people, including children, were killed, when an Ukrainian 155-mm-shell hit a supermarket. Photo Credit: Sergey Filbert.

While Mr. Baab said nothing, or was not allowed to say anything because of his duty to keep confidentiality according to his working contract, NDR reported on him in its media magazine Zapp as a “controversial critic” of the broadcaster. By then, much more had happened than a trip to the East. Mr. Baab saw the Zapp report, as he wrote to Deloitte, as an “act of revenge on behalf of the executives in question, carried out by freelancers who act according to instructions and are economically dependent.”

Act Three: A Trip East and the Consequences

Since the middle of this year, Patrik Baab had been in the “passive phase” of his long-term contract” at NDR, as it is called in administrative German. He is no longer working at the station, will soon retire and now has time for his own projects. One of them is a book, for which he traveled to Ukraine several times, as he says himself when asked. On the trip, he shot some films together with Russian-born video blogger Sergey Filbert. He was in eastern Ukraine during the referendums that were to decide whether Donetsk and Luhansk would join the Russian Federation. In terms of timing, the trip was not coordinated with all this; had nothing to do with it, Mr. Baab told journalist Georg Altrogge a little later. He had been preparing for the research since May, in order to report on the Russian Federation’s “war of aggression on Ukraine in violation of international law,” Mr. Baab said. He had also made a public appearance there, for public media. Mr. Baab was in eastern Ukraine as an election observer, some Russian media reported, and the major news portal T-Online picked up the thread, though having been informed that this is wrong. It all started with the report by Lars Wienand on September 26, followed a little later by Altrogge’s article in Die Welt. A week later, Zapp picked up the story.

Interview with a resident whose housing block, in the suburbs of Mariupol, was completely destroyed during heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian military forces. Photo Credit: Sergey Filbert.

Reactions from the universities Mr. Baab works for were not long in coming. The first to take action was the Berlin University of Media, Communication and Business (HMKW). Here will just quote repeat a paragraph from our article from the end of September:

Presumably, it went as follows: The T-Online journalist learned of Mr. Baab’s presence on site, researched his background and made a press inquiry to the Berlin University of Media, Communication and Business (HMKW). “Do you know what your lecturer is doing there? At the mock referendums? He’s legitimizing them! Do you think that’s good?” That’s how it might have been. It doesn’t matter how exactly, because according to its own statement, the university was on the phone with the delinquent, who was made one by his mere presence in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then a statement was hastily published on the homepage. The gist: We condemn and distance ourselves (HMKW, 26.9.22). Meanwhile, the article appeared on the net. Author Wienand could now add the accomplishment of his mission right away; online many things can be changed and enhanced quickly.

Kiel University followed suit a little later. On October 3, Mr. Baab was notified of the revocation of his teaching assignment on the subject of research. He was thus “canceled” for what he is supposed to teach the students. Research in the field seems undesirable, it can shake the already established opinion.

Mr. Baab’s appearance as an “observer” lent “the appearance of legitimacy to Russia’s occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territories in violation of international law,” three professors from the Institute of Social Science at Kiel University wrote to Mr. Baab. (The letter is available to our editors.) The letter went on to say that the university, and in particular the Department of Political Science, would be threatened with an immense loss of reputation if the impression should arise that lecturers “endorse Russia’s behavior, which is contrary to international law.” Heavy guns were then brought out—only by revoking the teaching assignment could the reputation, order and functioning of the university be preserved. A hearing would be dispensable “due to the imminent danger, and in the public interest.” Mr. Baab’s lawyer reacted to the latter statement with bewilderment, and in his objection filed a few days later, he referred to the need for a procedure based on the rule of law. The objection was rejected, and Mr. Baab is now suing the university.

Before we come to this last act of the story, a short detour to Albrecht, the Kiel student newspaper. There, an author who had attended a seminar with Mr. Baab shortly before took up the topic and let Mr. Baab speak at length. This article had no clear slant, even though it became clear that the author opposed “well-known narratives” of the Russian side and accused Mr. Baab of being too close to those who represent precisely these narratives. Nonetheless, a little of the principles of journalism that Mr. Baab may have taught in the seminar stuck with the author. He asked Mr. Baab, i.e. “the other side,” and let him have his say, but could also have asked the university why it refers to the reports of “Russian state media,” according to which Mr. Baab was an election observer. Normally, after all, this media is accused of propaganda. Hintergrund recently asked the university a question along these lines, but the university did not provide any information, citing the ongoing legal proceedings.

Act Four: The Lament

And so we arrive at the fourth act of the story. Mr. Baab is suing Kiel University with the aim of having the revocation of his teaching contract rescinded. This should not have been revoked. The plaintiff is a committed journalist and was neither an election observer nor could he be perceived as such, writes Mr. Baab’s lawyer in the grounds for the lawsuit, which is available to our editors.

“The plaintiff, as a journalist committed to reporting on location—and not from afar like other media observers—undertook highly risky research on location in order to actually perceive and report on the situation on location with his journalistic experience.”

This statement says it all. It contains—in addition to the concise justification of why an experienced journalist should not be thrown out just like that—a clear assessment of most of today’s reporters: They observe from a distance. One could add to the lawyer’s words in spirit that they do not allow their preconceived image in the sense of the prevailing opinion to be destroyed by on-the-spot checks.

An Azov Battalion tank destroyed in the Azov steel mill. Notice the “Wolfsangel” (a Nazi emblem) on the side of the tank. Photo Credit: Sergey Filbert.

The fact that mainstream journalism has largely gone to the dogs is due precisely to this attitude—the attitude toward war and the attitude toward the profession. Because journalists have to observe on location, they have to go everywhere. And they must be allowed to do so.

Because it is precisely about denying a journalist this basis for work and this right, that we will continue to keep an eye on the Patrik Baab case. In its many facets, it represents a moral portrait that shows us the reality of today’s mainstream journalism in one example, in one person. It shows how journalism could and should be—and how it is instead.

By focusing on Patrik Baab, we have brought into focus the great decline of western journalism—the double standards, attitude journalism, the partisan stance when it comes to the war in Ukraine and issues relating to the Corona Virus. We have looked at mainstream denunciationism, the fake news stories that the leading media disseminate and admit, if at all, only coyly. And Mr. Baab’s story is about Cancel Culture, as well as the close connection between politics and public broadcasting.


This article appears through the kind courtesy of Hintergrund.

The German Conservative Revolution (1919-1932)

The term, “Conservative Revolution,” coined by Armin Mohler (The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932), houses various currents of thought, whose most prominent figures are Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt and Moeller van den Bruck, among others. The term, perhaps too eclectic and diffuse, has nonetheless gained acceptance and taken root to embody a number of “idiosyncratic” German intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century, without organizational unity or ideological homogeneity, much less a common political affiliation, who nurtured projects for a cultural and spiritual renewal of authentic values against the demo-liberal principles of the Weimar Republic, and within the dynamics of a process of Palingenesis that called for a new German and European renaissance (a re-generation).

Thus, it seems appropriate to make an attempt to situate the Conservative Revolution (CR) ideologically, especially through certain descriptions of it by its protagonists, complemented by a synthesis of its main ideological attitudes—or rather, rejections—which are, precisely, the only link of association between them all. Because the revolutionary-conservative is defined mainly by an attitude towards life and the world, a style, and not by any program or doctrine.

According to Giorgio Locchi, between 1918 and 1933 the Konservative Revolution never presented a unitary or monolithic aspect and “ended up outlining a thousand apparently divergent directions,” contradictory even, antagonistic at other times. Here we find such varfied characters as the early Thomas Mann, Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich Georg, Oswald Spengler, Ernst von Salomon, Alfred Bäumler, Stefan Georg, Hugo von Hofmanssthal, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Jacob von Uexküll, Christian Günther, Werner Sombart, Hans Blüher, Gottfried Benn, Max Scheler and Ludwig Klages. All of them were scattered around a network of diverse associations, thought societies, literary circles, semi-clandestine organizations, political groupings, most of the time without any connection whatsoever. These differences have led one of the great scholars of the CR, Stefan Breuer, to argue that the “Conservative Revolution” did not really exist and that such a concept should be eliminated as an interpretative tool. But, as Louis Dupeux argues, the CR was, in fact, the dominant ideology in Germany during the Weimar period.

The origins of the CR—following Locchi’s thesis—must be placed in the mid-nineteenth century, although locating what Mohler calls the “ideas,” or rather, the “driving-images” (Leitbilder) common to all the animators of the CR. Precisely, one of the effects of the collapse of the old and decadent attitude was the discrediting of concepts in the face of the revaluation of images. Aesthetics versus ethics is the expression that best describes this new attitude.

In the first place, the origin of the image of the world is situated in the work of Nietzsche—it is the spherical conception of history, as opposed to the linear one of Christianity, liberalism and Marxism; it is, in fact, an “eternal return,” since history is not a form of infinite and indefinite progress. Secondly, the idea of the “interregnum”: the old order is sinking and the new order is in the process of becoming visible; Nietzsche again being the prophet of this moment. Thirdly, the combat of positive and regenerative nihilism—a “re-volution, a return, reproduction of a moment that has already been.” And fourthly and finally, the religious renewal of an anti-Christian character, through a “Germanic Christianity,” liberated from its original forms, or the resurrection of ancient Indo-European pagan divinities.

It turns out, then, that Nietzsche constitutes not only the starting point, but also the nexus of union of the protagonists of the CR, the teacher of a rebellious generation, who was filtered by Spengler and Moeller van den Bruck, first, and Jünger and Heidegger, later, and as masterfully exposed by Gottfried Benn. In Nietzsche’s own words, we find the first warning of the change: “I know my destiny. Someday my name will be joined to the memory of something tremendous, to a crisis such as there was not on earth, to the deepest conflict of conscience, to a decision pronounced against all that has hitherto been believed, demanded, revered.”

Nietzsche is the tip of an iceberg that rejected the old order in order to replace it with a new renaissance. And the generational representatives of the Conservative Revolution perceived that they could find in the German philosopher a “direct ancestor,” to adapt the revolution of European consciousness to their Kulturpessimismus. Ferrán Gallego has summarized the essence of the Konservative Revolution as follows:

“The praise of the elites… the instrumental conception of the masses, the rejection of the ‘nation of citizens’ [understood as isolated atoms] in favor of the integral nation, the organic and communitarian vision of society, as opposed to mechanistic and competitive formulations, the combination of leadership with hostility to individualism, the adjustment between the negation of materialism and the search for material verifications in the sciences of nature. All this, presented as a great movement of revision of the values of nineteenth-century culture, as an identical rejection of liberalism and Marxist socialism, was still far from being organized as a political movement. The impression that a historical cycle had ended, that the momentum of rationalist ideologies had expired, the contemplation of the present as decadence, the conviction that civilizations are living organisms, were not exclusive to German pessimism, accentuated by the rigor of defeat in the Great War—but it was an international crisis that called into question the very foundations of the contemporary ideological order and that many experienced in terms of a generational task.”

Louis Dupeux insists, however, that the CR does not constitute, at any time, “a unified ideology, but a plural Weltanschauung, a sentimental constellation.” Whether they are considered “idealists,” “spiritualists” or “vitalists,” all the revolutionary-conservatives considered political struggle as a priority, and liberalism was considered the main enemy, although the political struggle was situated in a spiritual world of idealist opposition, not in the objective of the conquest of power, desired by the mainstream parties. According to Dupeux, the formula of this “spiritualist revolution” was to propitiate the passage to the constitution of an “organic national community,” structured and hierarchical, consolidated by the same system of values and directed by a strong State. In short, a “cultural revolt” against enlightened ideals and modern civilization, against rationalism, liberal democracy, the predominance of the material over the spiritual. The ultimate cause of the decadence of the West was not the sentimental crisis of the interwar period (although it does symbolically mark the need for change)—the neutrality of liberal states in spiritual matters had to give way to a system in which temporal and spiritual authority are one and the same, so that only a “total state” can overcome the era of dissolution, represented by modernity. Thus, the work of reformulating the discourse of decadence and the necessary regeneration was to be undertaken by the CR.

If we were to underline certain basic attitudes or tendencies as constitutive elements of revolutionary-conservative thought, in spite of its contradictory plurality, we could point out various aspects, such as: the questioning of the supremacy of rationality over spirituality; the rejection of the political activity of the demolitionist parties; the preference for a popular, authoritarian and hierarchical, non-democratic State, as well as a distancing from both the “old conservative traditionalism” and the capitalist and Marxist “new liberalisms,” while emphasizing the experience of war and combat as the ultimate realization. The reformulation of the ideology was based on the need to build a “third way” between capitalism and communism (whether the Prussian socialism of van den Bruck, the revolutionary nationalism of Jünger, or the national-Bolshevism of Ernst Niekisch). And over and above these attitudes there hovered the common feeling for the need to sweep away the decadent and corrupt present as a way to regain contact with a life founded on eternal values.

Mohler himself, who understood the CR as “the spiritual movement of regeneration which sought to sweep away the ruins of the nineteenth century and create a new order of life”—just as Hans Freyer thought that it would “sweep away the wreckage of the nineteenth century”—provides the most convincing evidence for a classification of the central motifs of CR thought which, according to his analysis, revolve around the consideration of the end of a cycle; its sudden metamorphosis, followed by a renaissance in which the “interregnum” that began with the generation of 1914 will come to a definitive end. To this purpose, Mohler rescued a series of German intellectuals and artists who nurtured community projects for cultural renewal, based on a genuine rejection of the dem-liberal principles of the Weimar Republic.

For Mohler, according to Robert Steuckers, the essential point of contact of the CR was a non-linear vision of history, although he did not simply take up the traditional cyclical vision, but a Nietzschean spherical conception of history. Mohler, in this sense, never believed in universalistic political doctrines, but in strong personalities and their followers, who were capable of opening new and original paths in existence.

The terminological combination “Konservative-Revolution” was already associated as early as 1851, by Theobald Buddeus; subsequently by Yuri Samarin, Dostoyevsky, and in 1900 Maurras. But in 1921, Thomas Mann was the first to use the expression CR in a more ideologized sense, in his Russische Anthologie, speaking of a “synthesis… of enlightenment and faith, of freedom and obligation, of spirit and body, god and world, sensuality and critical attention, of conservatism and revolution.” The process of which Mann spoke “is none other than a conservative revolution of a scope such as European history has not known.”

The expression Conservative Revolution was also prevalent in the theses disseminated by the European Cultural Union (Europïsche Kulturband), led by Karl Anton, Prince of Rohan, a Europeanist aristocrat and Austrian cultural leader, whose 1926 work, Die Aufgabe unserer Generation (The Task of Our Generation)—inspired by Ortega y Gasset’s The Modern Theme—uses the term on several occasions. However, the phrase “Conservative Revolution” gained full popularity in 1927, with Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s most famous Bavarian lecture, when he set out to discover the truly Herculean task of the Conservative Revolution: the need to turn the wheel of history back four hundred years, since the ongoing restorative process “in reality begins as an internal reaction against that spiritual revolution of the 16th century” (he is referring to the Renaissance). Hofmannsthal, in short, called for a movement of reaction that would allow man to escape from modern dissociation and rediscover his “link with the whole.”

In the words of one of the most prominent representatives of the Conservative Revolution, Edgar J. Jung: “We call Conservative Revolution the revival of all those fundamental laws and values without which man loses his relationship to Nature and to God and becomes incapable of building an authentic order. In place of equality, inner worth is to be imposed. In place of social conviction, just integration into statal society; mechanical choice is replaced by the organic growth of leaders. In place of bureaucratic coercion, there is an inner responsibility that comes from genuine self-determination. The pleasure of the masses is replaced by the right of the personality of the people.”

Another commonplace of the Conservative Revolution is the self-consciousness of those who belonged to it, that they were not merely conservatives. Indeed, they were at pains to distance themselves from groups belonging to “old conservatism” (Altkonservativen) and from the ideas of “reactionaries” who only wished to “restore” the old. The central concern was to “combine revolutionary ideas with conservative ones,” or “push them in a revolutionary-conservative way,” as Moeller van den Bruck proposed.

Of course, the “conservative revolution,” however much the so-called “neoconservatives” (be they of the Reagan, Bush, Thatcher, Aznar, Sarkozy or Merkel type) may regret it, has nothing to do with the “conservative reaction” (an authentic “counter-revolution”) that they pretend to lead against progressive liberalism, postmodern communism and the counter-culturalism of the left. The weakness of the classic-traditional right lies in its inclination towards centrism and social democracy (“the seduction of the left”), in a frustrated attempt to close the way to socialism, sympathizing, even, with the only possible values of its adversaries (egalitarianism, universalism, false progressivism). A serious mistake for those who have never understood that political action is just one more aspect of a long-standing ideological war between two completely antagonistic conceptions of the world.

Finally, the neoconservative right has not grasped Gramsci’s message, has failed to see the threat of cultural power over the State and how the latter acts on the implicit values that provide lasting political power, ignoring a truism: no change is possible in power and in society, if the transformation it seeks to impose has not first taken place in minds and spirits. It is a bet on consumerist, industrial and accommodating “neoconservatism,” the opposite of what is being imposed today—to recreate a “conservative revolution” with a European patent which, in Jünger’s phrase, merges the past and the future in a fiery present.

Meanwhile, counter-revolutionary “neo-conservatism,” based on the thinking of the German émigré Leo Strauss, is nothing but a kind of “reaction” to the loss of values that have an expiration date (precisely his own, those of the mercantilist and imperialist Anglo-American bourgeoisie). Their principles are ideal and humanitarian universalism, savage capitalism, academic traditionalism and totalitarian bureaucratism. For these neocons, the United States appears as the most perfect representation of the values of freedom, democracy and happiness based on material progress and a return to “Judeo-Christian” morality, with Europe’s obligation to copy this triumphant model.

Anglo-American “neoconservatism,” reactionary and counter-revolutionary, is, in reality, a democratist and traditionalist neo-liberalism—read Fukuyama—heir to the principles of the French Revolution. The Conservative Revolution, however, can be defined, according to Mohler, as the authentic “anti-French Revolution”: the French Revolution disintegrated society into individuals; the Conservative aspired to reestablish the unity of the social whole; the French proclaimed the sovereignty of reason, disarticulating the world to apprehend it in concepts; the Conservative tried to intuit its meaning in images; the French believed in indefinite progress in a linear march; the Conservative returned to the idea of the cycle, where setbacks and advances are naturally compensated.

In the antagonistic Conservative Revolution, neither “conservation” refers to the attempt to defend some expired form of life, nor “revolution” refers to the purpose of accelerating the evolutionary process in order to incorporate something new into the present. The former is typical of the old reactionary conservatism—also of the ill-named neoconservatism—which lives from the past; the latter is the hallmark of false progressivism, which lives from the most absolute present-future.

While in much of the so-called Western world, the reaction to the democratization of societies has always moved in the orbit of a sentimental conservatism, inclined to extol the past and achieve the restoration of the old order, the revolutionary conservatives spared no effort to mark differences and distances with what for them was simple reactionaryism, even if it was, in Hans Freyer’s expression, a Revolution from the right. The Conservative Revolution was simply a spiritual rebellion, a revolution without any goal or future messianic kingdom.


Jesús Sebastián Lorente is a Spanish lawyer. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Elmanifesto.


Featured: The imperial banner and sword of Emperor Maximilian, by Albrecht Altdorfer; painted ca. 1513-1515.