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The Peculiar Metamorphosis of the German Greens

  • Tariq Marzbaan Tariq Marzbaan
  • Source: Al Mayadeen English
  • 25 May 2023 15:34
  • 5 Shares
12 Min Read

Seeing the transition that the Green Party has made from its beginnings and the values it held at the time to what it became today, one cannot help but ask: What actually turned what was once an anti-war, anti-NATO party into a bellicose, pro-NATO party? 

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  • The Peculiar Metamorphosis of the German Greens
    There is no specific date or period in time that marks this transformation, but it is important to recall various CIA infiltration programmes such as "Operation Mockingbird", which purportedly focused on the new media organisations of the USA and (Western) Europe in the 1970s.

Green politicians in Germany are suddenly facing growing criticism from their citizens. In the spotlight are two Greens holding two of the highest offices: Robert Habeck (Vice Chancellor and Minister of Finance) and Annalena Baerbock (Minister of Foreign Affairs). Their recent policies, actions and statements have been eliciting an array of accusations ranging from incompetence, arrogance, war-mongering, stupidity… to an unconditional and blind obedience to their Big Brother (USA/NATO).

While at first it was only the traditional critics of the Greens and the opposition parties who voiced standard "factional disagreements", now other public figures and growing sections of the population are airing their grievances against them – especially on two crucial issues: the energy sector and the war in Ukraine.

With regard to the energy crisis and the government's handling of it, the government in general and Robert Habeck in particular are accused of betraying of Germany's national interests.

In an interview with Danish television, Habeck defended his party's policies by referring to the hazards of nuclear facilities – citing, unsurprisingly, Chernobyl and Fukushima – and by insisting that the uranium needed to run such facilities would have to be imported from Russia, "which is out of the question!" (Here Habeck simply ignores or denies the fact that, in terms of uranium production and export, Russia comes in 6th place after Uzbekistan, Australia, Canada, Namibia and Kazakhstan… In this case, Germany would not be hindered whatsoever from purchasing uranium.)

In keeping with Habeck's policies, nuclear plants are to be shut down and replaced by coal-fired power plants (harmful to the environment and the health of the population) and by imported LNG (costly and an equally serious polluter). Furthermore… as Germany's demand for electricity would still not be sufficiently met, and their much-vaunted wind and solar plants have proven to be not only inefficient but beset with problems, additional electricity would have to be imported from neighbouring countries – from their nuclear power plants.

And with regard to the war in Ukraine, by recklessly promoting its escalation, both Habeck and especially Baerbock are flirting with the risk of a nuclear war that would wipe Germany and large parts of Europe off the map.

More than any other party, the Greens never miss an opportunity to hold Russia and Putin personally responsible for all the problems facing Germany and even elsewhere.

What and who are the Greens…

Most of those supporting the Green policies today are the traditional Green voters and the party's grassroots, all of whom belong to the affluent middle class and the lower tier of the wealthy caste. Other supporters and sympathisers include: "Antifa" groups, "climate activists" (including the "Last Generation" – who created "Fridays for Future")… The rest comprise pretty much all of those who practise genderism, wokism and cancel culture. 

The Greens emerged as a political extra-parliamentary opposition movement in the 1970s, consisting of ecology activists, adherents of the 1968 student movement and other left-wing groups. In 1980 they formally established themselves as a peace and ecological party. Their goals included the abolition of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and eventually NATO, as well as the elaboration of various environmental protection plans that they would demand from government, industry and society. Initially, the established bourgeois parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP) were either hostile to them or simply paid no attention to them – until they succeeded through their heralded "long march through the institutions" in entering regional state parliaments and regional state governments… and ultimately ending up in the Bundestag and the federal government (with Schröder and Fischer) in 1990. Nevertheless, they have not yet achieved the sole domination of parliament and the government. (Whether this will ever occur, judging by the situation today, is rather doubtful, but not impossible.)

Gradually the initially hostile established parties began to recognise and accept the reality of the Green Party's existence and even began to adopt the Greens' positions on environmental issues. They nonetheless remained intransigent on the issues of nuclear weapons and NATO.

In 1990, after the reunification of East and West Germany under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the Greens merged with the East German Green Party (which had been founded a year earlier in the GDR) and the East German "Alliance Movement" and formed an all-German Green Party known as "BÜNDNIS 90 DIE GRÜNEN".

Considering their original mission statement, their party manifesto and their principles: In the past, the Greens stood for peace, anti-fascism, anti-racism, the abolition of NATO, tolerance, social and ecological reforms and other progressive improvements – all of which resonated with the younger generation. These hallmarks and the actual achievements of some environmental reforms in industry and society instilled the Greens with a high degree of "self-confidence", which has now transformed into a high degree of "self-righteousness". In adopting the latest neoliberal trends from the US, such as wokism, genderism, trans, LGBTQX+, cancel culture – all of which are considered by many as "progressive" and "modern" – they have assumed an almost religious zealotry.

The Metamorphosis: toward Russophobia and Warmongering

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But what actually turned what was once an anti-war, anti-NATO party into a bellicose, pro-NATO party? 

There is no specific date or period in time that marks this transformation, but it is important to recall various CIA infiltration programmes such as "Operation Mockingbird", which purportedly focused on the new media organisations of the USA and (Western) Europe in the 1970s, during which "over 400 agents and "compromised journalists" infiltrated the editorial offices of the major news media and media houses".

Whether this operation was only limited to the news media or whether it also targeted political organisations and parties is not known. But at some point in time, the Left Party and Green politicians must have been sucked into the maelstrom of US interests and worked on, as some high-ranking Green politicians soon began to appear in transatlantic organisations and were invited to conferences like Bilderberg and the WEF.

When Germany participated – in total violation of international law – in the NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 under the coalition government of SPD/BÜNDNIS90/DIE GRÜNEN, the 180° pivot of the Greens from a peace party to a war party was consummated and no longer a secret.

How Joschka Fischer (Germany's Green Foreign Minister at the time) managed, with the support of other Green politicians and the media, to transform the "peace-loving" Green Party into a NATO-loving war party, is nothing short of extraordinary. With this feat, he defiled the "Never again Auschwitz!" lesson drawn from the horrors of World War II and obliterated the second lesson "no war must again emanate from German soil."

This episode may have marked the turning point for the Greens – as proposed by this incisive article in the New Left Review.

It may be that the leading Green politicians were blackmailed, bought or persuaded to radically change their political position and abandon their original ideals and values. But what about the 125,000 members, sympathisers and "devotees" who all stood and still stand united behind all the decisions of the party leadership? That is an even more complex issue.

After 1945, countless researchers, intellectuals, authors, historians and other interested groups had long grappled with the question of "how it all came about" – meaning the circumstances that led to the Nazis' rise to power, the war and the genocides. Though much valuable material has been published on this subject, it seems that the core of the issue and the associated ambiguities still linger on in people's minds.

Despite the excellent and comprehensive available research material and the historical reappraisals made in both German states (FRG and GDR), the Nazi era and WWII were reduced to "Auschwitz and the Holocaust" in the eyes of the population, the political parties and organisations… owing to effective US-NATO and Israeli/Zionist narratives and propaganda. The victory of the Soviets over Nazi Germany was perceived by Germans as a (national) defeat, while the Western Allies (USA, Britain, France) were seen as "liberators" – over the years, politicians and the media have managed to coax Germans into feeling eternally grateful to the USA. The Old Left (Marxists), who were once amongst the few to express recognition and appreciation to the Soviets for their struggle against fascism, were deprived of their already marginal influence and self-confidence after the collapse of the USSR and today are but shadows of their former selves.

Moreover… the ideals and slogans of the left were expropriated by the neoliberals and their institutions and diametrically inverted in the service of their agendas (the Great Reset of the WEF, Wokism, Transgenderism, Cancel Culture etc. ...). Therefore, many people (not only in Germany) consider neoliberal policies and trends as "leftist", even communist(!)… which has only led to more confusion and distortion of political terms and concepts.

Fools in the farce

The US Marshall Plan for post-war Germany, which brought a remarkable boost to the West German economy and prosperity and civil liberties to the West German population, not only led to an often excessive sense of ingratiation toward the USA but also to open anti-Sovietism and a latent Russophobia, which is now becoming ever less latent and more conspicuous with the war in Ukraine.

US propaganda in the cultural sphere, especially in Hollywood films, still holds a powerful sway around the world… Here, the US and its allies are portrayed as the "good guys" and the Soviets (read: the Russians) as the "bad guys". And in films about World War II, the Germans are almost always brutally grotesque or ridiculously stupid Nazis. This image has in fact led to considerable identity crises amongst Germans and intensified their inferiority complex, which projects itself either in self-hatred (as evidenced by the Antideutsche and some of the Greens) or in xenophobia and Islamophobia, (as evidenced by the neo-Nazis, right-wing nationalists and some of the Greens and AfD members). The Greens, who now run the government together with the Social Democrats, find advantages in these images and propagate Russophobia in a brazen manner that increasingly borders on religious fanaticism.

Interestingly enough, the Greens' present approach to the future of Germany bears striking similarities with the Morgenthau Plan, in which Germany was to be de-industrialised after the war and exist only as an agricultural country (the plan was, however, rejected by Theodore D. Roosevelt). With the gradual deindustrialisation of Germany, resulting from Green policies, it looks like the Greens are determined to put the WEF's agenda (The Great Reset) into action.

In their "Manifesto of Principles", the Greens write: "As a party, we are united by the foundation of values in this manifesto of principles, a common fundamental attitude to the world as it is and as it could be. Our vision is to make possible a life in dignity and freedom, today as well as the day after tomorrow, everywhere on this planet we inhabit together. [italics added by the author]

Aside from the positive aspirations in the text, the phrase "...everywhere on this planet" exposes the essence of what the Greens are truly all about – exemplified by  Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock when she lectures her interlocutors abroad – e.g. in Beijing (China) or recently in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) – in line with her "feminist" and "values-oriented" foreign policy. One can just imagine Fräulein Baerbock's thoughts in such moments when she meets with those "oriental machos": "Am unseren Wesen, sollt ihr genesen, ihr Barbaren!" * ["By our very nature, you should be redeemed, you barbarians!]"

So it seems that history will most likely repeat itself – the farce being provided in Germany by the Greens and the Social Democrats (SPD), in close cooperation with their controlled media.

--------------

* "Am deutschen Wesen, mag die Welt genesen" (literally: "By the German nature (or being), may the world be redeemed (or healed)") is a German line in a poem by Emanuel Geibel (1861). Kaiser Wilhelm I substituted the word "mag" (may) with "soll" (should)… and this then became a widespread German catchphrase, especially popular with the Nazis

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
  • Green Party
  • Germany
Tariq Marzbaan

Tariq Marzbaan

Independent researcher of geopolitics, colonialism; Filmmaker

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