Dear friends,

Thank you for inviting me to this important conference. I am very pleased to be here with so many supporters of peace from all over Europe.    

I am a member of the Berlin State Parliament, the Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus. There I am a media expert for Die Linke (The Left).

I was also one of the organisers of the „Rise for peace“, the major peace demonstration that took place in Berlin on February 25th. It had been the largest left-wing demonstration for peace in Germany for decades. Up to 50,000 people took part.

The demonstration was initiated by the left-wing political leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who has already spoken to you today, and the feminist activist Alice Schwarzer.

Peace and the media – these are my themes. And in Germany, they are unfortunately linked to each other in a negative way.

I’ve been a political militant for decades, and I have to say that I was actually surprised by the scale of the media fury that followed the peace demonstration.

The demonstration had to be presented as pro-Russia and open to the right.

To do so, the newspapers and news websites that usually present themselves as serious (the so-called quality media, as they say in Germany) did not hesitate to lie outright.

Thus, they reported that Russian flags were massively displayed at the march, whereas there were no flags at all. They spoke of a mass right-wing mobilisation at the march, whereas only a few scattered right-wing individuals appeared on the fringes of the demonstration – and were repelled by our security service.

But not a word was said about the motivations of the tens of thousands of participants, ordinary people, families and workers.

A particularly vile hatred was poured out onto the demonstration initiators, Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer. An unprecedented witch-hunt.

Unfortunately, public broadcasting was not any different. The public media often didn’t even mind spreading the most abject insults, fallaciously distorting the aims of the peace demonstration and pillorying Wagenknecht and Schwarzer as Moscow’s fifth column.

It’s worth noting that German public broadcasting is funded by the audiovisual licence fee that every household has to pay: 18.36 euros per month after all. In return, it has a remit, enshrined in law, to reflect and promote the diversity of opinions; it has an educational remit and a duty to inform.

It did not fulfil this mission during the pandemic, and even less now in the context of war.

The need to be sometimes a thorn in the flesh of dominant politics has completely disappeared.

There is no longer a question of public broadcasting being independent of the state. Instead, it is the words of the ruling class that are regurgitated unchanged and dissenters scorned.

The good news is that the establishment and its media are faced with a surly population.

The following points are important for a critical approach to the media:

1. I still appeal in Germany to support and strengthen the counter-media, the existing counterweights.

2. We must actively oppose the incitement to hatred in the mainstream media. I call on people to write readers‘ letters, to address the editors of newspapers and television channels.

3. And we must realise that public service broadcasting belongs to us. We pay for it. We must not be taken in by this type of reporting. We are entitled to higher standards of quality, and we must demand them.

But above all, we must not let ourselves be intimidated by this media frenzy – and even less take it for granted.

It is precisely Die Linke that must strive to ensure that there is once again a strong peace movement. There’s still a long way to go, at least in Germany. I’m curious to hear about your experiences, including in other countries. It’s nevertheless astonishing that, despite total brainwashing, so many people have come out to demonstrate and that, in the polls, half the people questioned speak out against arms deliveries and in favour of negotiations. This gives hope, and it is on this basis that we must stand.