Ukraine war: The second victim is freedom of expression

by Harald Neuber

[This article posted on 2/23/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/Ukraine-Krieg-Das-zweite-Opfer-ist-die-Meinungsfreiheit-9636604.html.]

Ukrainian soldier with Russian newspaper: only the enemy makes propaganda. Image: goldznak.ua

On the second anniversary of the attack, warnings about narratives from Moscow are being heard everywhere. But this also weakens our democracy. A Telepolis editorial.

Two years after the Russian army attacked Ukraine, a second front has formed. Not in the breakaway east of Ukraine, not in the Ukrainian heartland, but in the collective west. There, the attitude to the war and the limits of what can be said are being debated. At the same time, there is an attempt by the state and the media to dominate the debate. This has devastating consequences. Not only politically, but also socially.

The fear of a third world war

Of course, the conflict between Russia and NATO, which escalated with the attack on Ukraine in violation of international law and which has since been fought militarily on Ukrainian soil, has reawakened the old fear of a global, possibly nuclear war. This is understandable. Almost two generations of Germans have grown up with this fear, fueled by films, books for young people and disaster drills.

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However, it is not allowed to speak or even draw conclusions for one's own attitude. The possibility of a third world war has "long been a very popular buzzword among Russian politicians and propagandists", writes journalist Mikhail Zygar, who is critical of the Kremlin, in Der Spiegel. Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov also believes that the Third World War is already underway, writes the Frankfurter Rundschau. So is it all a Russian narrative, a story to intimidate the West?

Language bans and suspicions

Russia is spreading "disinformation, propaganda and narratives", warned Thomas Haldenwang, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution; for example, that the Kremlin attacked Ukraine because its own security interests had been violated by the West. The fact that this thesis is the subject of political and political science debates is of no concern to the head of the secret service. Russian narrative! Period!

Forgetting history and disinformation

The debate ends in this way when it comes to the causes and genesis of the war in Ukraine. An "extremely effective Kremlin narrative" revolves around the "alleged promise" in 1990 that NATO would never expand beyond Germany's eastern border, writes the journalist, the magazine of the German Journalists' Association, which colored its logo in Ukrainian national colors online after the Russian invasion.

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The fact that all of this is documented and was a central aspect of the debate between the Western powers at the time, in order to wrest approval for German unification from the Russians, is simply ignored. Interpretations of historical events are dismissed as disinformation and individual opinions are declared to be the truth without any evidence.

Militarization and lack of dialogue

Three central aspects of the war in Ukraine, three bans on speech. Anyone who expresses a dissident opinion in the cases cited is per se suspected of being an advocate of the Kremlin. This also applies to those who advocate a quick political solution to the war in Ukraine out of concern for human lives. Anyone who wants peace is for Putin.

On the other hand, there is a phalanx of political and media actors who are in favor of a military solution. Massively ignoring the consequences of the war in Ukraine, the consequences for global food security and what is left of the European peace order after the Russian war, this side insists on further arms deliveries. Anyone who wants weapons is for peace.

This framing of the debate is not only harmful to society and democratic culture, but also threatens to develop a dangerous momentum of its own. None of this is new. History - in this case that of the Cold War - is repeating itself.

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The political scientist and conflict researcher Dieter Senghaas once studied the consequences of rearmament and deterrence policies during the bloc confrontation. As early as 1983, he found that the militarization of the historical East-West conflict followed a momentum of its own, "which makes it more difficult to reveal and address its political core." His conclusion: "In order to develop political solution strategies, however, it is important to understand this core."

Many of these insights have fallen into oblivion, although Senghaas' findings on nuclear deterrence policy have become explosively topical in light of the debate on the nuclear armament of the EU. The arms race that is beginning in the 21st century threatens to surpass the post-1945 arms race by far.

However, the willingness to enter into a dialog with the other side is diminishing as ideas and plans for rearmament are pushed forward. The militarization of the world becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The autonomy of the armaments complexes

Although the armament complexes in East and West are loosely related to each other, Senghaas noted in 1970, their real growth is determined autonomously in the respective deterrence societies:

With growing self-centeredness, conflicts then become not only more fictitious, but also potentially more virulent, and their dynamics can be understood less and less from the interactive interplay of opponents. To an increasing extent, they can only be understood from the potentially aggressive dynamics of their own developed in the respective actor, produced in autistic isolation.

Dieter Senghaas

It is obvious that this opponent is also increasingly located in one's own country. On the anniversary of the Russian attack on Ukraine, there are warnings everywhere about propaganda and disinformation from Moscow, which puts the spotlight on those who put forward correspondingly framed theses.

War and the restriction of freedom of opinion

This development is increasingly hampering the free formation of opinion and thus one of the guiding principles of democratic societies. It presupposes that as many different perspectives as possible are included in the debate and that pluralism is preserved as an essential principle of democracy.

And, yes, there is propaganda from Russia, how could it be otherwise in times of war? A strong democracy, however, would be able to tolerate such ricochets and fend them off with aplomb. The fact that this is not possible and that state-funded counter-information projects are instead hunting down narrative collaborators of Putinism shows the state of society.

Polarization and its consequences

The lack of a pluralistic debate is creating a fake reality, fuelling mistrust in the political leadership and encouraging even greater polarization. As a result, the Ukraine policy, which also requires broad democratic legitimation in Germany due to its impact, is causing attitudes between those in power and those governed to diverge ever further.

Controlling public opinion

Germany is prepared to "pay a high economic price" for supporting Ukraine, said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at a press conference with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba two years ago. It is still not clear whether she was speaking as a private individual, as a Green politician or as a representative of the German government. Last November, the Union parties called for "continued support for Ukraine and to help it achieve a victory against Russia". Easy to say from the Konrad Adenauer House.

In contrast, 51% of those surveyed in an ARD poll at the beginning of January stated that the diplomatic efforts to end the conflict did not go far enough. And only ten percent of Europeans from twelve member states still believe that Ukraine can defeat Russia. In December, 61% of respondents in the 27 EU member states still agreed with the statement: "The Ukrainians will win this war".

Democracy in crisis

A battle for public opinion is raging. The war in Ukraine is just the latest arena in this battle. Obviously, the same schemes are at work that were also observed during the coronavirus pandemic: Views were predetermined, dissent defamed. Society is forgetting how to hold debates and wrestle over opinions, forced by the state.

The debate about the consequences of climate change, which is being conducted in a similarly missionary manner, shows that the right and the left are in no way inferior. Wherever you look: An inability to freely exchange opinions and - even critically - engage with other well-founded positions.

Return to freedom of opinion

It is therefore a fundamental democratic duty, not only in the case of the Ukraine debate, to oppose the narrowing of debate spaces. Anyone who refuses to do so runs the risk of being delusionally determined by subjective convictions.

The path to a new beginning

Curiously, this mechanism has been identified in specialist circles in small, closed groups such as radical anti-vaccinationists. They only communicate in echo chambers and filter bubbles, often with like-minded people, often driven by emotionally charged thoughts.

The German government is not a small radical group. Quite the opposite: it has every opportunity to propagate its stance with millions in funding; something that many a "lateral thinker" could only dream of. The fact that the overvalued ideas from the federal cabinet are moving further and further away from the attitude and concerns of the sovereign is shown not only by the aforementioned survey on Ukraine's chances, but also by any election poll.

Delusional behavior always arises when one's own stance is no longer sufficiently corrected or can no longer be corrected. The behavior becomes pathological when the person concerned or those around them suffer as a result.

After two years of war, sanctions, boycotts, expulsions, entry bans, protests and vilification, a new start is needed to avert further suffering and greater damage. Experienced diplomats and serious security politicians are aware of this. They must finally regain control.