Stupid Watergate a Year On: Legacy Media Catches On (Slowly)
Courtesy of somewhat better reporting by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the 'protests against the right™', called for by the embattled Scholz gov't in early 2024, are revealed for what they are: agit-prop
About a year ago, something happened in Germany: a govt’t plus oligarch-funded ‘journo™’ and ‘fact-checking™’ outlet by the name of Correctiv published a long and winding hit-piece against the AfD.
Insinuating, wrongly, that a meeting of right-wing™ nationalists and supporters talked about mass deportations incl. German citizens in a posh hotel a few miles away from the location of the notorious 1942 Wannsee Conference, Correctiv’s ‘reporting™’ (on 10 Jan. 2024) led to the Scholz gov’t calling for mass protests ‘against the Right™’. Oh, lest I forget, Correctiv actually won a ‘journalism™’ award for its ‘reporting™’.
As early as a few days after the initial reporting, I’ve determined that it’s a hoax aided and abetted, as it turned out, by both the domestic counter-intelligence spooks (the Verfassungsschutz) and massively helped by what can only be called the ‘presstitutes’ in legacy media:
I’m merely posting this for the record, as last (!) week, even (!!) legacy media could no longer hide the fact that the piece by Correctiv was—fake and fraud: Die Zeit, on 9 Jan. 2025 (!!!), did some ‘reporting™’ (archived), which is a case study in ‘creative writing’: more than a year after the events, two intrepid ‘journos™’ went and talked to some—not all—people who attended the event.
They also create some more fake news by holding that it was ‘in the discussion after Sellner’s lecture [that] sensitive statements were made that later triggered the mass protests’ while omitting that it was the gov’t—most prominently, chancellor Olaf Scholz himself—who called for said protests.
One of the most illuminating aspects of the Zeit piece is that the ‘journos™’ apparently talked to Correctiv’s investigative reporters, incl. the rather notorious agit-prop artist Jean Peters who is cited as follows:
Peters can talk vividly about his research, at one point he even imitates how exactly Martin Sellner has drawn out a certain word with his Viennese accent [I was born in Vienna, and I’m sure I could speak like that, too].
Peters is willing to provide information, but sometimes reacts reluctantly to simple questions about what happened in Potsdam: ‘Really? Is that the question?’ Another time he asks: ‘What are we doing here right now?’
It’s almost tragicomically farcical, if it wasn’t so stupid.
The Zeit piece is almost entirely devoid of any analytical bend, which should incl., at the very least, the confirmed notion that Thomas Haldenwang, a long-time CDU politico™ and currently the head of the Verfassungsschutz, regularly chats with Berlin-based journos™; or that Correctiv suffered set-backs in court.
Please see ‘more’ about these shenanigans here:
And for an anniversary update about these absurdities, we now turn to some reporting done by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. One note here—the NZZ is one of the last partially readable newspapers that deserves that kind of description, at least its foreign reporting (which is often done by people on site) is often lightyears better than that offered by other outlets. Do note, though, that irony and self-awareness isn’t exactly a Swiss strength.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
How True was the Correctiv Report on the ‘Secret Meeting’ in Potsdam? One Year on, Doubts are Growing in the German Media
The fact [sic] that right-wingers at Lehnitzsee are said to have planned the ‘expulsion’ of millions of migrants was considered virtually indisputable by many German media. This consensus no longer exists.
By Nathan Giwerzew, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10 Jan. 2025 [source; archived]
Exactly one year ago, Correctiv published the article ‘The Secret Plan Against Germany’. According to the authors, high-ranking ‘AfD politicians’, ‘neo-Nazis’, and ‘financially strong entrepreneurs’ had met in a villa on Potsdam’s Lehnitzsee. There, they were said to have planned ‘nothing less than the expulsion of millions of people from Germany’, according to the article, based on racist criteria.
It contained all the ingredients to get politicians, legacy media, and hundreds of thousands of people all over Germany all worked up. However, doubts as to whether the account is true are now greater than ever. And it’s not just bourgeois [orig. bürgerlich, a term that’s very frequently used in Switzerland and has gone out of style in Germany (and Austria) quite some time ago] or liberal media outlets in Germany that are sceptical about the article.
On Wednesday, [left-liberal newspaper] Die Zeit published a critical investigation into the Correctiv report [see above]. Among others, it spoke to reporter Jean Peters, who had stayed at the villa where the group met under a false name. When asked whether the word ‘expulsion’ had been used in Potsdam, Peters replied in the negative. ‘But of course it was meant,’ he added [this is a major red flag as, e.g., in a court of law, such insinuations would cast significant doubt on anyone’s testimony, esp. if it was the key witness of the prosecution, as Mr. Peters is].
According to Die Zeit, it is still unclear whether the core thesis of the article is correct [let that sink in: with Mr. Peters’ admission, the entire farce is revealed to have been made up to a significant degree: ‘even’ (sic) legacy media can’t hide this any longer]. What could have been meant by the alleged ‘secret plan’ in Potsdam takes up a lot of space in the article. What was actually said is ‘only very briefly reproduced in the crucial passages’.
Court: Correctiv Created [sic] an ‘Inaccurate Impression’
The Süddeutsche Zeitung also published a report questioning the truthfulness of Correctiv’s reporting. In it, the editor sheds light on the latest legal developments surrounding the text.
It is more interpretation than fact that there was talk of an unconstitutional ‘expulsion’ of German citizens in Potsdam. In this context, the newspaper mentions a ruling by the Berlin regional court from December last year. The court had ruled that the statement by AfD politician Beatrix von Storch about a ‘dirty Correctiv lie’ was covered by freedom of expression [read that sentence once more: an AfD politico™ called Correctiv’s ‘reporting™’ a ‘dirty lie’ and a court held that’s alright—because there’s too little evidence Correctiv could muster to the contrary that upheld their edifice].
The Correctiv text [sic, as the NZZ refuses to call it ‘reporting’ any longer], the Süddeutsche Zeitung quotes the court reuling, had created an ‘inaccurate impression’ of the meeting in Potsdam among many readers and journalists. The question now arises as to the chances of success of two participants of the meeting with their lawsuit against the core statements of the Correctiv text. They filed a lawsuit last week before the press chamber of the Hamburg Regional Court [another item casually omitted in the Zeit piece, by the way, as if it had nothing to do with Correctiv’s hit job].
Previously, the Hamburg Regional Court and the Higher Regional Court had prohibited [state broadcasters] ZDF, NDR, which is responsible for the ‘Tagesschau’ programme [Germany’s main nightly news], and SWR from making several false statements about the meeting in Potsdam. All three public broadcasters had misleadingly reproduced the assessments of the Correctiv article in their reports [this is the bigger scandal, in my view, relative to the agit-prop spread by Correctiv’s journo™ team of Antifa supporters].
On the day the Correctiv text was published, ZDF presenter Marietta Slomka reported in [Germany’s main nightly newscast] ‘Heute-Journal’ that the ‘deportation of millions of people, including those with German citizenship’ had been planned in Potsdam.
In the days and weeks that followed, over a million people took to the streets across Germany to protest against the alleged [this is the key term here] expulsion plans. German government politicians took the lead in the protests. In a video address, Chancellor Olaf Scholz [told you] warned against ‘fanatics with fantasies of assimilation’, while Interior Minister Nancy Faeser even felt reminded of the Nazis’ Wannsee Conference [this was another key invention in Correctiv’s ‘reporting™’: while I don’t know about Ms. Faeser’s feelings, that insinuation is of course bonkers].
Constitutional Law Scholar Degenhart Criticises ‘Attitude Journalism’ [Haltungsjournalismus, also omitted by Die Zeit]
The Correctiv article virtually invited such exaggerated interpretations [ahahahahaa, that’s also fake news by the NZZ; here’s the key piece of evidence from Correctiv’s original article: ‘Just under eight kilometres from the hotel is the House of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazis coordinated the systematic extermination of the Jews.’ There’s nothing subtle or ‘inviting’ there—it’s a clear insinuation by the agit-propsters of Correctiv]. Where direct quotes from the participants would have been needed to prove their alleged expulsion plans, the authors inserted vague associations with National Socialism [this is true—but why would the NZZ journo™ make up part of this paragraph? My sense is that he might want Correctiv’s narrative to be true…but that sentiment founders on the shoals of reality]
But what was Potsdam really about? According to Die Zeit, the focus of the meeting was not on ‘remigration’, i.e., the return of people who have immigrated to Germany to their homeland—but rather the networking of right-wing influencers with potential sponsors. The Correctiv article only mentions this in passing [well, if you’re wondering why…].
Little remains of the mass protests ‘against the right’. The media have also become increasingly cautious about accepting Correctiv’s assessments without checking them.
At the end of July last year [a less-than-subtle reminder for you, dear readers: you who read my Substack knew that in late January 2024…], three authors criticised Correctiv’s researchers in an analysis on the media blog ‘Übermedien’ for the ‘principle of non-evidence and wholesale interpretation’. Among them was the editor-in-chief of the online legal magazine ‘Legal Tribune Online’ [here’s a bit more of what they held about the piece: ‘The text is unsuccessful, Correctiv’s behaviour after publication is questionable, and the reporting of many media outlets is a disaster’].
From a legal perspective, the renowned constitutional law expert Christoph Degenhart is now also expressing doubts about the Correctiv article [’bout time, but better late than never, I suppose…]. In a column for the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, he writes that ‘attitude journalism’ triumphed over journalistic diligence in the reporting on the meeting in Potsdam, particularly in the case of public broadcasters. The article by Correctiv was ‘obviously incorrect’.
Bottom Lines
And thus, very much like in the middle of the engagement with the implications, the NZZ’s Mr. Giwerzew stops his reporting.
At least they link to the ‘Übermedien’ blog—and here’s a bit more:
Correctiv creates systematic uncertainty about what the article actually says and what the Potsdam scandal is.
The research [sic] showed indisputably that right-wing ideas are being discussed by the bourgeoisie. For example, how ‘pressure to conform’ should force German citizens who are not considered German enough to leave the country [for comparison, read the Smithsonian Mag’s treatment of the 1924 Immigration Act].
But Correctiv’s narrative went far beyond this. It suggested that the expulsion of millions of people according to racist criteria, including the expulsion of German citizens, was jointly planned in Potsdam. At the same time, Correctiv does not claim to have meant this at all, as the research collective has since even gone on record in court.
The text therefore claims things that it does not claim—it is so strange to say.
I suggest that this isn’t strange—it’s classic agit-prop.
Yet, a year on, here’s its main meaning:
Correctiv is sponsored by, among others, the state treasury of Northrhine-Westphalia, Pierre Omidyar’s Luminate and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and I suspect that the very cosy relationship between Germany’s domestic counter-intelligence spooks used a really existing meeting (which, I also suspect the Verfassungsschutz surveilled, perhaps illegally, perhaps taking recourse to allied services) and concocted a narrative that—for the moment and aided and abetted by both legacy media and upheld by the gov’t—seemed plausible enough to permit the gov’t to call for mass protests against the main domestic (mostly fake) opposition™.
Please allow me to elucidate this in bullet-point form:
The main claims advanced by Correctiv were fake.
The embattled Scholz gov’t—remember, this was when the farmers shut down Berlin in protest—grasped that straw and called for mass-protests against the surging, if merely half-assed, opposition party, the AfD.
And while many subsequent court cases have shown the first bullet point to be accurate, legacy media is loath to accurately report about this; perhaps it’s vanity (can’t admit one was fooled, but more likely because legacy media journos™ share the anti-right™ sentiments).
No-one in gov’t has suffered any consequences for so thoroughly misleading the public.
Legacy media has thoroughly, and systematically so, disregarded the questionable role played by the Verfassungsschutz and chief spook Thomas Haldenwang in particular.
In what kind of a system does the gov’t, using the domestic counter-terrorism spooks, invite mass protests against a lawful opposition party?
The key elements of the Correctiv fakery were essentially known within a few weeks of publication in mid-to-late January 2024.
A year later, legacy media, however cautiously and in baby steps, is catching on.
At that point, one must ask: when would the abuses by a gov’t become too many so that, according to liberal democratic theory, it becomes a moral obligation to do what triggered the US founding fathers to write these lines:
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States…
Given the laundry list of grievances voiced in 1776, it’s obvious that we’re not quite ‘there’ (yet) in Germany.
Where we are, however, is as close to the tipping point between arbitrary tyranny imposed at-will by the gov’t and something else, a republican-democratic system of order that, however flawed and imperfect it was, was infinitely better.
Now, if we could only get a modicum of accountability…yet all we get are quite none-too-subtle signals whom no-one should trust, with gov’t decorations such as the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) and journalistic awards like the Lighthouse Prize for Extraordinary Journalistic Achievements (Leuchtturm für besondere publizistische Leistungen), which is awarded by the Netzwerk Recherche e.V., a registered charity of journalists, working, albeit in an upside-down manner, to spill the beans.
Post-Script: Correctiv Won the Lighthouse Prize 2024
Speaking of the Netzwerk Recherche e.V. for a moment—they gave their Lighthouse Award to none other than Correctiv in 2024. In their eulogy, here’s the reasoning as provided by Netzwerk Recherche e.V.:
‘Correctiv’s work exemplifies the value and necessity of investigative journalism’, says Daniel Drepper, Chairman of Netzwerk Recherche. ‘Rarely has a single piece of research had such an impact and shown us all how important this type of journalism is for our democratic [sic] discourse’...[nevermind most of Correctiv’s claims were—fake]
Correctiv’s publication made it clear how deeply rooted extremism is in parts of the political landscape—and not just within the AfD. The reactions to the research were unprecedented [given the long history of gov’t-incited mass protests against enemies foreign and domestic in Germany, this is an outrageously stupid and ignorant comment]. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets for weeks to protest against these inhumane plans [as we established a year ago, ‘these inhumane plans’ were insinuated by Correctiv and the protests were called for by the gov’t].
The journalists [sic] involved have been subjected to massive hostility since publication [they’ve also been sued quite often and lost several times in court, which must therefore qualify as ‘violence™’]. They have also had to face numerous legal disputes [which they all lost because of their fakery]. ‘We not only want to honour the work of Correctiv’s reporters [remember, Correctiv is funded by the state of Northrhine-Westphalia and various globalist oligarchs] with this Lighthouse Prize, but also symbolically support the entire editorial team. Correctiv is an enrichment for investigative journalism’, says Daniel Drepper.
I’ll stop this here—it’s too bizarre.
Speaking of transparency, we note, however briefly, that the Netzwerk Recherche e.V. is funded by a variety of the following institutions, according to their own reporting for 2023:
The Schöpflin Foundation, the investment/activism vehicle of a now-defunct mail-order business (Quelle); they are very much aligned with the UN’s Sustainability Goals and promote ESG aims.
The Federal Minister for Culture and Media Affairs, which just happens to be held by Green politico™ Claudia Roth who also, since 2013, serves as vice president of the Bundestag.
And then there’s also the EU-funded ‘Arena for Journalism’ among their top donors (which, in turn, receives a lot of funding from various NGOs and foundations, incl. Soros’ Open Society Foundation)
These are but the three top donors—a private foundation, the federal gov’t, and an EU trade association—that together made up close to half of Netzwerk Recherche’s funding in 2023 (the latest available report).
Smaller donations came from virtually all relevant legacy media outlets, incl. Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, and Germany’s Journalism Association (Deutscher Journalisten-Verband e.V.).
Basically, what Netzwerk Recherche’s Lighthouse Award is—it’s a prize awarded by legacy media to legacy media, funded by several quite questionable institutions. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop’s security.
In the final analysis, Correctiv’s ‘reporting™’ must count among the more successful state-funded agit-prop campaigns whose true—globalist—colours were revealed quite clearly during the very same protests called for by Mr. Scholz:
Woe to the vanquished peoples seems, as far as this historian is concerned, the timeless essence of conquest.
Germany after 1945 is no different.
In the wake of this relatives sent me excited selfies of them attending a huge demonstration against Nazis in Potsdam.
I want to say that this is why I drink but I seem to have stopped doing that.
Sigh.
How interested is the German public, really? This looks very much as journalists writing about other journalists, for journalists (and their employers) to read about - and as infighting in the Lügenpresse, possibly Old Guard vs Young Turks.