'I'm afraid of the stupidity', Former GDR Interior Minister Warns

And thus the life cycle of Germany nears its end: with legacy media offering a platform to a GDR critic™ who doesn't offer a single policy proposal

You see, when—once more—former East German politicians try to ‘splain what ails Germany, you’ve probably went beyond a few inflection points…

Here’s a brief bio of the author of the below piece (it’s how the Berliner Zeitung introduces their guest contributor):

Peter-Michael Diestel was born in Prora on the island of Rügen in 1952. His father was an NVA [Nationale Volksarmee, the GDR’s communist Wehrmacht] officer. After his parents divorced, he and his brothers stayed with his mother in Leipzig, who was employed by the church. Diestel went to sports school, but he had to leave early due to disciplinary problems. He trained as a cattle breeder and then studied law. From 1978 to 1989, he worked as head of the legal department of an agricultural association. In 1986, he completed his doctorate with a dissertation on LPG law. In January 1990, he co-founded the German Social Union [orig. Deutsche Soziale Union, or DSU) and joined the CDU in August 1990. In the last GDR government, he was Minister of the Interior and responsible for the dissolution of state security services [Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, the East German state security forces]. After reunification, he was a member of the Brandenburg state parliament for four years. He has run a law firm since 1993 and has represented many East Germans suspected of Stasi or doping offences, as well as serious criminals such as the triple murderer of Müllrose. Diestel has three children and has been married three times. He lives in Zislow, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

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Peter-Michael Diestel on Baerbock and Co.: ‘I am afraid of the political stupidity that surrounds us’

Figures have emerged in German politics who in no way meet the demands of today’s world, says the last GDR interior minister [would these current politicos™ have managed to get by ‘back then’, I’m tempted to ask]. A guest contribution.

By Peter-Michael Diestel, Berliner Zeitung, 15 April 2025 [source; archived]

A foreign minister with no professional or rhetorical aptitude has made Germany look ridiculous around the world for almost four years.

I am writing the following article in the certainty that I am free to write what follows [impossible in the former GDR] I am 74 years old, work as a lawyer, and have successfully completed my professional training and wealth accumulation [remember: this is a former Soviet bloc politico™], and I believe that my life experience—including political experiences, knowledge, and insights, as well as my legal career—allow me to state the following.

A few weeks after the collapse of the traffic light coalition, we are facing chaos following early federal elections. The established parties are in free fall in the eyes of the public. The current election winner, the CDU under Friedrich Merz, has not achieved the worst result since German reunification like the SPD, but the second worst. If Merz had announced in the election campaign what he propagated immediately after the election, the CDU would have had a veritable problem with the five per cent clause [parties below 5% share of the vote may not enter the Bundestag; ‘their’ share of representatives is allocated to those parties who make the cut].

What Do the Poor Election Results Mean for the SPD and CDU?

In German politics, social democratic ideas have always had a major, generally progressive influence on events in our country [Hitler liked them, too, you know]. The oldest bourgeois [sic, also: lol] party in our country has proven with its election results that these ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle, August Bebel, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky and other great minds no longer play a role in current German politics. The political work of important social democratic politicians such as Willy Brandt, Egon Bahr, Gerhard Schröder, and many others was also rendered insignificant by this election result.

The CDU, which won the last Bundestag election, has lost ground and taken a step towards political anaemia with its election victory [sic]. In the meantime, the influence of great minds such as Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Richard von Weizsäcker, and Helmut Kohl can no longer be felt in the politics of my former party. Two extremely weakened political forces have come together with the coalition agreement that has been concluded, and they have only one objective: to involve the people in the expansion of the ‘firewall’ [orig. Brandmauer, i.e., exclusion of the AfD]. We now [sic] know that this political wall was completely useless, because we cannot ban or marginalise the currently strongest political party. We can only fight them in the party-political debate.

Voters are not stupid. They realise when they are being lied to and deceived. The kind of deception that the CDU has practised on its clientele in recent months has never been seen before in the German political history of the 20th and 21st centuries. In order to avoid misinterpretations, I expressly exclude the period from 1933 to 1945.

Why is That the Case?

In German politics, figures have emerged who in no way fulfil the requirements of today’s world [would they have, say, 40-50 years ago?]. Politicians with no education and no training, politicians who have never done any value-adding work in their lives, politicians who design their CVs themselves and give free rein to their imagination, politicians who have to have their doctoral theses written because they can’t do it themselves, are too lazy to read them and are stupid enough to fail simple plagiarism tests [you’re welcome; also, Mr. Diestel is, of course, correct—yet the point isn’t to get ‘good’, or at least ‘better’ politicos™ (which would be, well, better), but draft people who don’t want to be politicians and keep an eye on them (plus consequences for malpractice), all three of these conditions aren’t met in recent years].

In a talk show a few years ago, I was asked by a Green politician where it is stipulated in the Basic Law that you have to be smart and educated to be elected. I was speechless. Of course, the Basic Law only regulates what needs to be regulated [this sums up the problem quite aptly: pro-state fanatics will never understand]. For example, the Basic Law stipulates that the complete exclusion of East Germans from politics, from social structures, from the possibility of being a member of parliament, is unconstitutional. But you can only know that if you know the constitution, and for that you would have to read it. If you do, you will see that the marginalisation I have described is not only unconstitutional, but also futile. You cannot marginalise a minority (the East German citizens are also a minority with 15 to 16 million) [I disagree: it’s done every day, e.g., ‘right-wingers’ and Christians are quite constantly marginalised—and the problem here isn’t their marginalisation, but the group-ish way of doing: individuals have constitutionally protected rights, groups don’t].

Schäuble and I Tore Down a Wall, Now a New One is Being Built

In July 1990, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Dr Wolfgang Schäuble, and I, i.e., the Vice-Chancellor of West Germany and the Minister of the Interior of the GDR, signed one of the most important German-German treaties. A treaty on the final demolition of the German-German border fortifications. Through irresponsible politics, a new, this time insurmountable wall is currently being built. The East is blue [AfD’s party colour], the West is deep red and black. The East is stupid and the West should show us how to live, laugh, think, and how to vote [I’ve dealt with this kind of (fake) history elsewhere, and if you like long essays, please venture over here].

If you study German constitutional law, you won’t find the term ‘firewall’ there. This is because it is unconstitutional to define certain groups of MPs who are subject to complete marginalisation. Every member of parliament, but also everyone, is bound by his or her conscience and must serve the German people. As long as a political party is not banned in Germany, there must be no marginalisation of political mandate holders. The former ‘people's parties’ [former big tent factions SPD and CDU/CSU], which are losing influence in Germany, do not even think that they could be doing something wrong themselves and have therefore lost and continue to lose the trust of voters. The political heads currently leading these parties resemble buffoons and their public impact is likely to spread fear.

The Elites Must Return to the Leadership of the Parties

It is therefore necessary to do some soul-searching and put an end to the elite-free situation in the leadership of Germany's political parties. A foreign minister with no professional or rhetorical aptitude has made Germany look ridiculous around the world for almost four years [as if Ms. Baerbock’s lack of professional or rhetorical aptitude was the issue: it’s her ignorance, condescension, and lack grounding in reality: see here]. The bickering in the traffic light coalition and the undignified end of this government have done extreme damage to our country’s reputation [why not mention that the left/far-left gov’t failed because reality eventually overcame their stupid ideology? See here for the example of ‘feminist foreign policy’]. We are laughed at, we are no longer invited or taken seriously, and the response of those in power is: ‘Close your eyes and get out!’ [also, Germans leaders™ don’t show any self-respect, hence they are disrespected, but Mr. Diestel’s introspection doesn’t go that far].

As an East German, I had to read: ‘Learning from the Soviet Union means learning to win’. After reunification, I learnt that this was quite different, namely that learning from the United States meant learning to win. But that was wrong again, and I am currently very glad that our current Foreign Minister has not declared war on the United States. Fortunately, this lady has taken down the painting of one of the most important German diplomats and statesmen—Otto von Bismarck. We don’t know whether he was a Nazi and whether his involvement with the Third Reich might not be reproachable.

This is a sarcastic exaggeration, but it makes it clear how current German foreign policy works. This is not a feminist foreign policy; foreign policy shaped by women is by no means that ignorant. We have known this since Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, and Angela Merkel [only Indira Gandhi didn’t gratuitously engaged in bloody conflicts].

With the end of the traffic light coalition, many—including myself—assumed that things could now be better with Friedrich Merz. However, I have the feeling that things are going to get much worse [way to go, Sherlock]. Debts are being labelled as assets [well, technically, one’s debt is someone else’s asset] and borrowing, which will finally deal the death blow to our country, is being justified with the claim that Putin is at the door with a club. Strangely enough, however, he will not attack us now, when we are lamenting an almost helpless Bundeswehr, but will only attack in three years’ time, when we have made ourselves defenceless again.

Stupidity is Devouring Germany—We Must Defend Ourselves

Dear friends, I am using strong words because I am afraid: afraid of the political arrogance that surrounds us. I had a very clever father who taught me everything that I can do and have done in my life so far. One of his smartest pieces of advice was the following: ‘Peter, when the stupid start thinking, that’s when it gets dangerous.’

I would like this text to be understood in this sense. I don’t need a Christian Democrat Theo Lingen offshoot from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to explain the world to us. We all don’t need politicians who, when faced with other political forces, blurt out a single thought: ‘Ban it!’ Our parties are in free fall and we all need to take action to get out of this slump: Reflect, listen to each other, and turn the results into action, not bans.

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Bottom Lines

This is among the most tone-deaf critiques™ I’ve ever read: there’s not a single policy prescription or proposal—you know, why is it that AfD is rising in the polls?

The term ‘mass migration’ is absent, and so is the nefarious shit the EU does.

Instead of meat, we get to more of the ‘we gotta do better than these morons’, which is fair enough—but not good enough.

The discrepancy to what Mr. Diestel’s former boss, the GDR’s last prime minister Egon Krenz, had to say is, well, more than palpable:

Egon Krenz, the GDR’s Last Premier, on the Current Crisis with (against) Russia

With critics™ like Mr. Diestel, there’s little, if any, hope for Germany.

I’ll leave you with a few quotes from my long essay penned in October 2022:

It is hard to avoid the cold, hard truth: politicians like Mr. Schäuble or Ms. Baerbock are not servants of the German people.

Like most of their European peers, they went all-in on Transatlanticism, the peoples of their countries be damned…

For the essay, entitled ‘Woe to the Vanquished’, click here.