Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Schleswig‑Holstein’s Minister‑President Daniel Günther has, in what felt like a genteel salon, pulled back the curtain on the true censorship ambitions of politics. In the safe biotope of public broadcasting, he simply babbled and hit the spotlight on the repressive tendencies within the party system. We now find ourselves in a critical defensive struggle against the enemies of liberty.
Some achieve notoriety and fame by chance. Fortune may fall into one person’s lap, another may experience his ten minutes of public shine through a fluke rhetorical spark. In the case of the Minister‑President of Schleswig‑Holstein in Germany, however, this is a dubious honor.
In his appearance on Markus Lanz’s show on Germany’s state TV "ZDF", CDU politician Daniel Günther slid into that revealing tone of small talk to which people are prone precisely when they believe themselves in a supposedly safe social environment – a place where no criticism is expected, no matter what leaves their lips.
What emerged during his guest spot on Lanz was a condemnable attitude toward the principle of free speech and toward critical media: the threat of censorship up to and including the blocking of individual platforms, including the portal Nius, reveals a profound ethical collapse. A growing, subtly operating apparatus of repression is now reaching us – a warning we should take seriously.
It was almost comical how Lanz, styled by public‑broadcasting elites as a star moderator, in tandem with the state‑aligned media sector repeatedly sought in the aftermath to rhetorically downplay Günther’s clearly articulated desire for censorship. Decontextualize, diffuse, and smother the real scandal with new waves of outrage like the Greenland debate – that’s how the media repair operation works.
Imposing Order in the Digital Sphere
What is forming before our eyes is unmistakable. A surveillance apparatus coordinated by the EU Commission in Brussels is emerging, built on the Digital Services Act and extending like a kraken over national intelligence agencies such as the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).
In an echo chamber, Daniel Günther now operates in the mode of a censor‑in‑waiting, confident that he is secured by the party apparatus. As early as June of last year, the CDU of Schleswig‑Holstein unveiled a policy paper titled “Protecting Democracy – Effectively Combating Disinformation as Well as Hate and Incitement Online.” In fifteen pages, its authors sketched a concrete strategy to regulate content on platforms such as Telegram, Meta, and X. Totalitarian thinking and the prospect of fulfilling a secretly cherished control fetish seem to exert a peculiar fascination even on the second tier of party functionaries.
Followed over the past months — culminating in a real dispute with the U.S. government — one thing becomes clear: Europe’s political leadership seems to fear nothing more than losing its dominance over the public discourse.
Yet that is the very nature of social media: it allows individual opinions to float freely, to form clusters and to be cast loudly into the public sphere. That is their explosive power — and apparently the genuine problem from the perspective of those who would rather order, canalize, and control discourse. Günther is not alone in his crusade against a defiant opposition that raises its voice now against COVID lockdowns, now against overheated climate apocalypticism, and otherwise positions itself as broadly skeptical of the state.
German Roots
Strategically, the politics of initially gentle censorship followed a seemingly intelligent, media‑political path. Two strands define the rhetorical front:
On the one hand, so‑called youth protection is invoked whenever politicians attempt to justify instruments of surveillance into private communication. On the other, the fuzzy concept of combating “hate and incitement” online is used as a vector against our privacy. The state proclaims itself a moral warrior against evil, leaves definitions of what may be said in political discourse largely open, and operates alongside a network of so‑called Trusted Flaggers — digital informants who diligently report rhetorical borderline cases to public institutions. Then things can get tricky: house visits by the state or account suspensions have emerged as effective tools in the fight against dissent. State and banks — here, too, they pull in the same direction.
Such an apparatus creates a space of silent threat in which unspoken prejudgments loom. Participants in public debates — commentators, podcasters, and media makers — already apply the mental censorship scissors in advance, reducing the critical sound against government institutions, parties, and political personalities.
As the politics of gentle censorship increasingly proves ineffective, sharper swords are drawn. The atmosphere on digital platforms is growing harsher. Even memes, sharp comments, or legally unproblematic insults become casus belli for the surveillance apparatus — a fine but increasingly overt network that perceptibly constricts the free field of opinion.
History will not look kindly upon our country. Germany was, in a way, the starting point — the sick root — of this system. In 2017, with the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), the first institutionalized attack on freedom of speech occurred, and Germany was its impetus. This censorship contraption was championed by SPD politician and then‑Justice Minister Heiko Maas. He seized the opportunity to indulge his resentment toward the civic sphere of freedom. He was backed by his coalition partner, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière of the CDU, who appears equally devoted to the spirit of unfreedom. A fateful duo, carrying this grim work forward in an ethically sclerotic coalition.
It is striking how this push, born of German intent, first took tangible form in the Digital Services Act in Brussels, how eagerly the Brussels apparatus adopted this initiative, and how it later took hold in the political programs of German parties. Everything now follows a hierarchical command cascade. The CDU Schleswig‑Holstein’s digital control guidelines fit seamlessly into the prescribed strategy.
There is unanimity within the party apparatus; dissent comes only from the much‑maligned AfD, which staunchly opposes citizen surveillance in the digital space. In front of the firewall, it is getting uncomfortable.
The progress achieved in building the EU’s censorship apparatus, and the frantic national efforts to bring it into practical operation, show unmistakably how poorly our freedom is faring. Just as grim is the future of civilizational fundamental values — personal liberty before the repressive apparatus as well as freedom of expression itself.
What we are witnessing now is an anti‑civilizational blow, a form of cultural degeneration presented in the guise of a climate‑socialist restructuring of our society. The rhetoric is morally charged, the scope sweeping, the consequences deeply authoritarian. Where are the voices of elite representatives in this land who would speak out against the growing apparatus of repression? They have fallen silent and thereby been discredited.
The Price of Crisis
It is foreseeable what we must expect. The more severe the economic crisis becomes, impacting the prosperity of the broad masses, the more relentlessly the constructed apparatus will hunt dissidents and free media. Repression follows crisis like a shadow follows the body, ever deeper into the desert of totalitarianism.
And who knows — perhaps one day we will thank Daniel Günther for his naive, short‑sighted honesty. Perhaps he was the one who inadvertently stimulated our society’s immune system, sharpening the awareness of many for the real underlying problem of our time.
If so, Günther would have succeeded — albeit as antagonist and accidentally, yet ultimately in the service of freedom, seizing his moment of fame. He would have done a good deed by helping to save our society from drifting into the swamp of socialist planned economy — a system that always produces a repressive, presumptuous, and stupefying control apparatus.
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About the author: Thomas Kolbe is a German graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
