Stupid Watergate's 'Useless Idiots'

Welcome to the netherworld of 'left-wing' (ahem) activism to bring down 'the system', Correctiv Edition

Prelim: Substack says ‘post too long for email.’ Act accordingly.

Reference is made to several earlier postings, and I recommend reading them, too:

Stupid Watergate, Now Confirmed

Stupid Watergate Involved Domestic Spy Agency

Today, we’ll take a look at some of the main actors involved, their funders, and draw some tentative conclusions about the implications of WTF is going on in Germany.

Translations, emphases, and bottom lines mine.

---

Correctiv is Backed by US Oligarchs and the German Gov’t

This is the first thing to note here in this entire shit-show. I mentioned it several times, which isn’t that easy to overlook, esp. if you know a thing or two about how federal republics in Central Europe ‘work’. Thankfully, Florian Warweg over at Nachdenkseiten.de (it’s an ‘old-left’ website organised by, among others, one Albrecht Müller who used to work as a policy advisor to Willy Brandt, West German chancellor in the 1970s), has put out a helpful compilation, from which I shall cite a few passages to get the gist along:

US Oligarchs and German Federal Agencies

Correctiv was founded in January 2014. The initial funding of 3m euros was provided by the Brost Foundation set up by the German billionaire and shareholder of the international media group WAZ (since 2013 ‘Funke Media Group’), Anneliese Brost...

[Thus Correctiv] ‘Without the initial support from the Brost Foundation, the development of Correctiv would not have been possible.’

If you thought: how odd that a billionaire shareholder of a major int’l media conglomerate (WAZ) funds a new alt-media outlet to do…what exactly, well, you’re not the only one. Here’s what left-liberal daily Die Zeit wrote back in 2014:

Anneliese Brost, the long-standing head of the Westphalian newspaper group [WAZ], is financing a project that aims to take the editorial journalism of the past to a new level. [Die Zeit calls this ‘foundation-funded journalism on-demand’]

Let's be clear: the initial funding for the ‘independent research centre’ was provided by a foundation that is at least indirectly backed by one of the most influential German media groups.

However, the Brost Foundation not only provided the initial funding; in 2017, the WAZ publisher's foundation was by far the largest single donor to Correctiv (with 450,000 euros), followed by Google's Digital News Innovation Fund (DNI) and the Open Society Foundation financed by US oligarch George Soros. Up to this point, multi-billionaires and their foundations had financed a large part of Correctiv's work.

Mind you, all of this occurred years ago, and things have gotten way worse—and much weirder—since.

As Mr. Warweg recounts in meticulous detail, in 2018 ‘US multi-billionaire and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his foundation Omidyar Network’ have become the main sponsors of Correctiv.

Of course, Mr. Warweg double-checked the figures cited by Correctiv on their ‘on our finances’ sub-page with information provided by the donor side. One thing that stands out, though, is that, while the numbers on both sides generally line up,

certain accounting tricks stand out. For example, Luminate-Omidyar states on their website that they transferred US$ 1m to Correctiv in 2020, but Correctiv itself…only declares receipt of around 400,000 euros that year, with the rest of the sum being booked in Correctiv's ‘transparent’ listing for 2021.

In 2022, according to their own figures (cited on the above ‘about us’ subpage), ‘Correctiv again received by far the highest donation amount of 636,331.94 euros from the Omidyar Network. The next highest donation, totalling 361,784.69 euros, came from the Northrhine-Westphalian State Treasury’ (orig. Landeshauptkasse Nordrhein-Westfalen).

The State Treasury is part of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Finance Authority and works on behalf of the state's departments. This therefore involves state subsidies to Correctiv. The official website of the North Rhine-Westphalia Finance Authority states the following about the remit of the Landeshauptkasse:

‘The Landeshauptkasse NRW performs treasury tasks, the scope of which is assigned to it by the NRW Ministry of Finance.’

Oh, look, the Finance Minister of Germany’s most populous federal state spends some taxpayer money on Correctiv. Would you are to learn who is in charge of that particularly interesting and, apparently, free-giving piece of real estate?

From 1966-2005, it was the Social Democrats, which by the early 2000s had lost enough voters to enter into coalitions with either the small liberal-in-name only FDP or the Greens. Look: the colours of the current traffic light coalition that’s in charge in Berlin right now.

In 2017, the conservative-in-name only Christian Democrats (CDU) won a plurality of votes and subsequently formed a coalition gov’t with—the FDP. After the last state election in 2022, the CDU entered into a coalition with—the Greens. (Talk about strange bedfellows, eh? Also, note the apparent willingness of the conservatives-in-name only to enter into such agreements with both the FDP, a notionally social liberal-economically libertarian faction, and the Greens.)

To sum up this little detour, Correctiv was funded, by the CDU-run state gov’t of Northrhine-Westphalia, in the immediate run-up to the present circumstances. The CDU-nominated finance ministers were one Lutz Lienenkämper (2017-22) and Marcus Optentrenk (2022-).

Do you still scratch your head at the ‘pro-democratic unity’ displayed by the current federal gov’t (SPD, FDP, Greens) and the CDU, all united by their feverish denunciations of ‘the right’ (AfD)? Wonder no longer, for here’s why: reminiscent of the defunct GDR’s Socialist Union Party (orig. Sozialistische Einheitspartei, or SED), which contained strait-jacketed factions of SPD, FDP, and CDU, all of the ‘pro-democracy unity’ front are aboard once more (what is today known as ‘the Green’ was also firmly in the Socialist camp back then, in case you’re wondering).

The picture for 2023 is very similar in terms of Correctiv's funding. Once again, the highest contribution by far comes from US billionaire Omidyar and his foundation (661,018.53 euros), followed by state funding. With one difference. The next highest payment, totalling 431,059.85 euros, did not come from the NRW State Treasury [orig. Landeshauptkasse] this time, but from the Federal Treasury [orig. Bundeskasse]. This is a German federal authority that is subordinate to the Directorate-General of Customs [orig. Generalzolldirektion]. Departmental supervision authority lies with the Federal Ministry of Finance. In this case too, one wonders why a federal authority that reports to the Directorate-General of Customs is paying high six-figure sums of taxpayers' money to a private ‘fact-checking’ organisation that can obviously acquire enough financial resources from private donors.

Good question, eh? Also, note that 2023 is also the year in which ‘Stupid Watergate’ happened, which involved Germany’s domestic spy agency, the Verfassungsschutz, and a wide variety of other rather unsavoury characters who are pushing this absurd ‘Wannsee Conference 2.0’ nonsense. All co-financed by the CDU-FDP-Green cabal in Northrhine-Westphalia (until 2022) and since then by the SPD-run Federal Finance Ministry.

We note, in passing, that Correctiv’s ‘reporting’ is behind the more or less massive ‘pro democracy-unity’ protests across Germany while, financed by the SPD-FDP-Green-CDU/CSU cabal, is there to protest the conditions that are fuelling the Alternative for Germany’s seemingly inexorable rise in polling. AfD is, of course, the one party that has, so far, been excluded from state and federal politics because they’re ‘right-wing extremists’, or so gov’t-funded ‘reporting’ by, among others, Correctiv, holds.

Life imitates satire, I’d add, but, sadly, the buck doesn’t stop there:

If you browse through Luminate's partner database page, you will find that Omidyar financially supports 633 non-governmental organisations with this foundation alone, including de facto all donation-based ‘fact checker’ organisations worldwide. Whether Africa, Latin America, Asia or Europe. If there is a privately funded fact-checking group, then Omidyar funding is involved.

Even the German Wikipedia entry refers to an assessment of Omidyar by MPN-News in the article on Omidyar and his network, which reads:

‘Omidyar works closely with US soft power leaders: From the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), acting as a facilitator for information warfare-style projects in countries around the world.’

Are you surprised yet?

Would you like to learn what Correctiv says about these shenanigans? From Mr. Warweg’s piece, which also explains that Alice Echtermann is ‘head of Correctiv’s “fact-checking” operation’:

At an event organised by the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) in April 2021, she was asked by the moderator (who was also very sympathetic to her) whether it was a problem for Correctiv that the ‘research platform’ is financed by billionaires. Echtermann‘s astonishing answer was:

‘Hm, if you want to see it that way, that such funding is an indication of a lack of independence, we can of course do little to counter that.’ [orig. ‘wenn man das so sehen möchte, dass so eine Finanzierung ein Indiz für fehlende Unabhängigkeit ist, können wir dem natürlich wenig entgegensetzen’]

Another statement made by [Echtermann] at the same KAS event is similarly revealing. Against the backdrop of Correctiv's emphasis on transparency, she was asked to explain, even if it was only a rough guide, how much funding Correctiv receives for its fact checks Facebook. Her answer?

‘No. I can't. I'm not allowed to. We have an agreement with Facebook that we are not allowed to talk about contract details.’

Needless to say, on its website Correctiv claims that ‘the transparent handling of our finances and independent audits are essential for us’. Of course they are.

At this point, we’ll leave Mr. Warweg’s reporting behind because, of course, Correctiv is ‘certified’ by the ‘International Fact Checking Network’, an affiliate of the Florida-based Poynter Institute. Yes, that one, which, apart from Mr. Omidyar and his Luminate Foundation, is also co-funded by, among others, Charles and David Koch, as well as George Soros. What a small billionaire-funded world, isn’t it?

Let’s wrap up this part by asking the one question Mr. Warweg isn’t loath to point to:

If, in Correctiv's self-image, ‘confront the powers-that-be’ [orig. mit der Macht fremdeln] means allowing US super-rich organisations with publicly proclaimed agenda-setting intentions and German federal and state authorities to finance a large part of its ‘research’ work—what conclusions can be drawn for the self-image ‘we are investigative journalistic’? [orig. ‘wir sind journalistische Aufklärer’]

I’ve promised a clown car, hence let’s move on to some of the main actors in this melodrama, because we all deserve a break every now and then.

Stupid Watergate’s Useless Idiots

We begin our coverage of the masterminds (sic) behind Correctiv’s ‘reporting’ (ahem) with independent journalist Boris Reitschuster where I read about it first. On 4 Feb. 2024, Mr. Reitschuster wrote the following about one particular character, Mr. Jean Peters:

Wikipedia, which massively defames non-leftists but tends to focus on the positive when it comes to red-greens like Peters, writes about him: ‘Jean Peters (*1984, other aliases: Paul von Ribbeck, Gil Schneider, Sven Ansvar, Jessica Gräber, Conny Runner and many more) is a German journalist, author and action artist. He is best known as a founding member of the Peng Kollektiv, with which he won the Aachen Peace Prize in 2018, and for his research at Correctiv’…

The fact that one of the authors of Correctiv's ‘secret meeting’ story is an activist-artist should make you suspicious. If this suspicion leads you to the 40-year-old's website, you will find a subsection entitled ‘Tactical media work’. This title alone does not sound like independent, critical journalism.

But the content of the subsection is quite something. Peters writes: ‘I develop campaigns and invent stories with which I intervene in political and economic events.’

I have omitted the link to Mr. Peters’ website (which Mr. Reitschuster gave) for one particular reason: apparently, Correctiv and/or Mr. Peters read the piece by Mr. Reitschuster—and changed the highlighted part about the ‘invention’ of stories since 4 Feb. 2024.

Here’s a link to the archived version of Mr. Peters’ website with the above-related version. If you read German and care to compare, here’s the current version of the same page. If placed next to each other, it’s obvious even if you don’t read German:

Source link given above (2 Feb. 2024). The highlighted part reads: ‘I develop direct actions and invent stories’.

Source link given above (7 Feb. 2024): [‘As of now, I am working as an investigative journalist at Correctiv…] before, I developed in direct actions…’

Mr. Reitschuster dryly added a post script to his piece, highlighting that a comment noted that Mr. Peters changed his above-linked website at 6:41 p.m. on 4 Feb. 2024.

There’s one other aspect that must not be overlooked—and it pertains to the lingering question: what competences would one, say, a Western oligarch, gain by paying people like Mr. Peters?

Well, the above-linked content provides answers here, too. The segment originally hyperlinked in red (‘auf der Webseite unseres Kollektivs’, which translates into ‘check out our collective’s website’) directs the casual reader to the so-called Das Peng! Kollektiv (literally ‘The Shot! Collective’).

WTF do they do? Well, their ‘campaigns’ sub-page tells the story in English (and German), and here are a few choice excerpts:

Click on ‘read more’, and this is what you get:

In the tranquil village of Bayerisch Gmain, where people call themselves German and only have to walk one street further to meet people who call themselves Austrian, we had a poster put up: ‘This border does not exist’.

We have apologized – Tatü Tata – in the name of the Bavarian police, because we find the removal of art by police officers stupid [I don’t understand this, it’s Peng’s work, not the police’s]

Because responsible handling and professionalism is important to us and a statement is missing so far, we have taken their advertising campaign as a model. Of course, we respect the artistic style of the police and do not stylistically disregard their design decisions [see the above insert: WTF?]

The question remains: what is the police’s concept of art in Bayrisch Gmain?

In the small municipality of Bayerisch Gmain, where art exhibitions are rarely seen, a work by the Peng collective was now on display. It was part of the art project ‘Schrei es in die welt hinaus’ (“Shout it out into the world”). For this project, conceptual artist Peter Kees invited eleven artists to design public billboards. Sponsored by the Free State of Bavaria [more grift], by the way.

So we had an advertising poster put up at Grenzweg 3 saying that this German-Austrian border would not be there. More precisely: ‘This border crossing does not exist’. In Ukrainian, Arabic and English, to underline the cosmopolitan claim of the work.

A federal eagle was depicted on the poster, but also a slightly alienated EU symbol on purpose to show: this is a work of art. Similar to the showmaster Jan Böhmermann’s videos on the constitutional law, in which the logos of the late night show ZDF Neomagazin can be found next to the emblem of the Ministry of the Interior as an indicator of satire. We similarly contextualised the German emblem and wrote ‘Wilkommen in Bayern’ (Welcome to Bavaria), deliberately with one L too few, so that even the last official would scratch his head in wonder.

There is much more here, such as these two gems:

From the left-side ‘read more’:

The research of the Biontech vaccine was financed with about 450 million euros of government support. Now, however, the knowledge lies solely with the company and provides Biontech with billions in sales prospects – for the year 2021 alone..

At the same time, poorer countries in the Global South will have to wait several years for the vaccine to become available. This is also due to a lack of production capacity. Many pharmaceutical plants are ready and could start producing the mRNA vaccine – if Biontech would share the knowledge and production know-how.

So as long as Biontech refuses, it is up to the employees. To this end, we have used posters in Marburg and Mainz, a video and a website at biontech-leaks.org to call on employees to leak the production instructions for the Biontech vaccine.

And this is from the right-side ‘read more’:

10.000 Euros tax money for the Antifa

Saxony needs antifa and antifa needs money. Therefore we have transferred 10.000 euros of Saxony state funds to Antifa. For this we acquired ten important objects of anti-fascism - and exhibited them in a museum.

Summer 2020: The Chemnitz Art Festival “Gegenwarten” invited us to make an artistic contribution 😉. With a project budget of about 24.000 euros, we could do what we want! The only requirement from the curators: it should have something to do with Saxony. What could you do with so much money? Our answer was clear: offer it to antifa!

I suppose three of these mind-boggling examples are enough.

Dear Oligarchs, don’t you think your money was well spent on these loons?

WTF are the German federal and state governments—run by combinations of SPD, CDU, FDP, and Greens, no less—doing funding these loons?

There is but one more thing to consider here, and it relates to the Lenin-esque notion of these people being ‘useless idiots’ (my modifications). I think you should meet some of the who are part of the activist ‘collective’ funded by the ‘investigative journalist’ Jean Peters. From their ‘team’ sub-page:

The people behind Peng! are hard working and highly professional. The inner core [vanguard] is small, but there are more than 100 people in the extended network, having all kinds of backgrounds: science, media, politics, art, craft, public service. We also hire external specialists to work with on specific campaigns.

Here are a few of their ‘inner core’, as of 7 Feb. 2024:

If you’re asking yourself what a lacewing is, here goes. You’re welcome. 500 of them, with ‘individual Hindu names’.

How does ‘a leader’ actually ‘smell’? I dunno, but I’m loath to find out.

We note, in passing, that Peng! has a very high turnover of its ‘inner core’, and I’ll invite you to peruse the Internet Archive to get to know their past inner circle.

And remember: this is what you get as a paying funder.

Speaking of funding Das Peng! Kollektiv, I also perused the Internet Archive to go to their earliest archived website (dated 21 Dec. 2014), and I found two odd things (yes, I know, ‘but two?’, you’re asking, and I understand that sentiment):

This is how one of their past ‘inner core’ members, one Roberto Morrison, is described:

roberto talks like a leader, walks like a leader, smells like a leader but never has a plan. As trained physicist and a PhD on the history of Russian/US-American spy industry of aeronautics and aerospace programs, he decided to become a florist and Peng member after a false diagnosis of cancer. roberto can dance the cha cha cha with a natural grace at the oddest moments.

It is literally the same ‘bio’ as with the guy masquerading (?) as ‘Robert Mitchell’. They have different pictures, but what does that mean these days?

There’s a second named personality, one ‘Tommy Lawrence’, whose bio is also identical (‘once owned a a monsterbike shop in Rajasthan…’ to someone else noted on the ‘team’ sub-page in late Dec. 2023, which lists a person named ‘Konstantin Kentner’. These four ‘people’ aren’t the only ones whose ‘biographies’ (sic) overlap.

Oddly, Jean Peters is nowhere to be found on the early versions of these websites. He kinda briefly appeared, in 2021, in a short piece in the Berliner Zeitung—because he got himself into a cat-fight with the ‘collective’ for speaking about their work using first-person singular pronouns. You cannot make this up.

A long-standing conflict over the contradiction between anonymity and self-expression has escalated following the publication of Jean Peters' Peng book...

Its co-founder, the journalist Jean Peters, has written a book about it. We quote: ‘I am not only driven by a vague utopia of a social and ecological society, but also by the negation of the current one. This rejection harbours an attitude of search, passion and love for people.’ Wait a minute, he's writing about the collective in the first person singular? The collective resents such self-promotion.

‘The last three core members’ (self-designation) announced their departure on Twitter on Monday and wrote in the statement that they had been in an ‘ongoing internal conflict’ since 2016. ‘From the beginning, there was toxic behaviour, chauvinism, sexism, self-dramatisation, lack of space for criticism, reflection, and diversity of opinion’. Even a ‘years-long, costly, and arduous mediation process’ was ultimately unable to resolve the contradiction between the constitution of the collective and its aspirations in terms of content, which had pledged ‘equal rights, queer feminism, and non-hierarchical, consensus-based and solidarity-based work’: ‘no real names, no fixed structures, no leaders, no self-promotion, no neoliberal striving for success’.

I’ll spare us the rest here.

Bottom Lines

One of the contributors to Correctiv’s ‘Stupid Watergate’ is a renowned left-radical activist whose brain-child, the direct-action collective ‘Peng!’, has a habit of wasting funding, incl. taxpayer money, on left-radical extremists like Antifa.

On Peng!’s website, according to reporting in the Berliner Zeitung, only questionable information about the people involved is given. A brief cross-check of whatever content is available with earlier versions of their ‘team’ page shows clearly that, while there are ever-changing pictures and names, the biographical description remains literally identical over the years. It seems highly doubtful that Peng! has more than 5-10 members, invariably clad in black and/or rainbow (Pride)-themed masks, proudly showing how they funnel taxpayer money to Antifa.

Now, I’m not saying that Jean Peters (if that is, in fact, his real name) is yet another alias, but it is obvious that, while claiming to ‘invent stories’ until two days ago, he now styles himself as an ‘investigative journalist’. I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to judge whether Mr. Peters—and, by virtue of his contribution to this charade—Correctiv has been engaging in a hugely influential gaslighting campaign better understood as left-extremist ‘direct action’.

One last thing before we go—let’s not forget that, via direct or indirect streams, Correctiv has received funding by German federal and state governments that all include, in various combinations, CDU, SPD, FPD, and the Greens. It is no surprise, then, that Correctiv’s target is the one parliamentary party (AfD) that has not contributed to the funding of Correctiv.

This also relates to the funding Correctiv received from US oligarchs who also, in best bipartisan fashion, include individuals like the Koch brothers and George Soros who would, technically speaking, be on the opposite sides of the ‘political spectrum’.

Bottom line—if you elect to believe in the goodness of these people, or in the accuracy of Correctiv’s ‘reporting’, you’re in a quite hopeless position.

What a way to go, Germany, by the way.