DISINFO: The German President goes the way of Goebbels
SUMMARY
The German President Steinmeier calls for abandoning his love of Russian culture, following the footsteps of Goebbels, who also used to praise Russian Culture before he became a Nazi.
Now Germany has realised that without cheap energy from Russia their accustomed life of prosperity will collapse. And of course the Russians are to blame for that. And the psychological preparation for the domination of their resources involves the dehumanisation and demonisation of Russia. The same was done in the Third Reich.
On 24 February the German Chancellor commented on the start of the special military operation by saying that it had "freed Germany from historical guilt".
RESPONSE
No factual basis confirms the statement that the current Federal President Frank-Walter-Steinmeier maintains parallels with the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. This is an adapted disinformation narrative from pro-Kremlin outlets accusing the West of Russophobia or being Nazi or fascist.
The smear campaign against Frank Walter Steinmeier found its start after a recent speech on 28 October 2022, in which Federal President Steinmeier delivered a speech titled "Strengthening everything that connects us".
In the entire speech, Steinmeier self-critically reflects on the Federal Republic of Germany's Russia policy in the past and in the present. A single sentence on the treatment of Russian culture and music is torn out of its overall context and reproduced as an anti-Russian, russophobic statement. However, the statement is of no relevance in the overall context of his speech, i.e. the political changes since 24 February, as Steinmeier points out numerous times in his speech. For example, Steinmeier calls the start of Russia's war of aggression on 24 February 2022 "the definitive, bitter failure of years of political efforts, including my own."
"24. February was an epochal shift. It plunged us here in Germany, too, into a different time, into an uncertainty that we thought we had left behind us, a time marked by war, violence and displacement, by concerns that the war would spread across Europe like wildfire. A time of severe economic upheaval, of energy crisis." "Russia's brutal war of aggression in Ukraine has reduced the European security order to ashes. In his imperial obsession, the Russian President has broken international law, committed land grabs, called borders into question. The Russian attack is an attack on all of the lessons that the world had learned from the last century's two World Wars."
Referring to Russian culture and "old dreams" Steinmeier concludes: "But when we look at today's Russia, there simply is no place for old dreams. Our countries are today opposed. Putin is commanding an invading army, and the Ukrainians are defending their country, which they have been building since their independence thirty years ago. Russia's war of aggression has demolished Gorbachev's dream of a "common European home". It is an attack on the law, on the principles of the renunciation of violence and of inviolable borders.
The quotes used and comparisons with the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels have no basis. Read more disinformation cases alleging that the West is carrying out a policy of Russophobia.
See the EU's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine here along with EU vs Disinfo's Guide to Deciphering Pro-Kremlin disinformation around Putin's War.