Robert Habeck: Germany is an “easy target” for autocrats

Former Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck sees Germany, with its “torn history,” in the crosshairs of autocrats. “During my time, the secret services from abroad told me that Germany was considered an easy target, a low-hanging fruit,” said Habeck at the presentation of his new book “Arctic Meltdown: The Re-measurement of the World” in Cologne.

Russia is trying everywhere to manipulate elections, to run disinformation campaigns, and in a different way - "of course now through the algorithms" - the American software companies are also doing their part.

"So I don't necessarily mean that they are manipulating elections, but indirectly they are, because this bubble formation, which we used to know from Meta on Instagram and from X on Twitter, of course leads to people somehow believing that the world only consists of AfD, Greens, whatever people." Of course, that is not the idea that can strengthen a democracy.

Habeck: “We are torn.”

“So everyone is pulling at us,” he said in an interview with presenter Louis Klamroth at the “Lit.Cologne spezial” literature festival. Unlike other countries in Europe, Germany has a torn history and has started two world wars. Many people became homeless and lost everything. Reunification is also the story of 40 years in which “a third of the country lived under a government system that was completely different and established different cultural norms,” explained Habeck.

“We are torn.” The others would know that too. “So Germany is fully in the crosshairs, because you can say that if the goal of these autocrats is to destroy this idea of ​​peace and limiting power and freedom and they have to destroy Europe to do that.” The easiest way would be if Germany stopped working for Europe. If Germany only cares about itself, becomes a nationalist state, and tries to bring about a Europe of fatherlands, there would be a lack of central resources in Europe.