In order to be “home” in time to spawn, the salmon jump three meters high if necessary. How far up the stream does Habeck make it?
Photo: IMAGO/Dreamstime
The cheap campaign against Robert Habeck has picked up speed again. Preservationists and their journalistic trumpet associations at Springer, Focus, Cicero and the like are in full swing. Anyone who forgets half-sentences will be bitterly punished in a reactionary current of time.
Habeck can make it clear on RTL on Tuesday evening: “The small saver doesn’t have to worry,” it’s not about “normal savers,” his suggestions are rather directed against those “people who, instead of working, let their money work for them ( …) and do not participate in the financing of the social systems. Doesn’t matter. On Wednesday last week, the Bild newspaper published its “tax bill” on the front page with the headline: “This is how Habeck wants to shrink your savings.” Misleading, fearmongering, propaganda. And it is precisely those who are secretly, quietly and quietly preparing social cuts on a large scale today, namely the CDU and AfD, side by side in bright blue on the election posters, as well as the boycott party of the Free Democrats, who are cheering on this choir of outraged people.
Is anyone talking about excess profits tax? Rich tax? About civil servants who don’t pay social security contributions? Politicians who don’t pay into the pension system? No, everything is taboo in the current debate. It is precisely the escalating wealth and growing inequality that are undermining democracy and making the disadvantaged look for weaker culprits. And on top of that, there was the nine-hour interrogation marathon last Friday that Habeck had to endure before a parliamentary investigative committee in the Bundestag convened by the CDU/CSU and FDP because he ultimately wanted to stick with the Chancellor on the nuclear phase-out. This committee too: a maneuver!
And yet, on the other hand, Habeck is supported by a wave of approval and enthusiasm at many events. Despite the mistakes and omissions during his reign, he is still seen by many as a bearer of hope who thinks and speaks differently than Friedrich Merz or Christian Lindner, and also differently than Olaf Scholz. For example, last Wednesday evening the outgoing Economics Minister received the sympathy of young and old in Berlin-Charlottenburg when he presented his new book to a sold-out audience at the Delphi cinema.
What is striking about this one with the idiosyncratic title “Up the Stream” are a few glaring missing parts or underexposed topics. It’s less about climate protection, about war and peace, about anti-Semitism and Israel, but more about lies and truth, rampant populism, the anti-democratic tendencies here and in the world. The book was written during the parliamentary summer break last year, at a time when Habeck still believed that the next federal elections would take place as planned in September 2025.
“Writing down what I’ve learned, checking who I am” – that’s what he said at the book launch. The hot-off-the-press publication is something like a self-experience report, and of course also justification. So there is little to be found here about opposing each other in the so-called progress coalition. “We didn’t give enough answers to the big questions,” Habeck self-critically sums up, but there are no deeper insights into government business, as the traffic light coalition had not yet been given up.
He wanted to convey “confidence” with his book, just as it is now displayed under his portrait on the election advertising. Confidence, a spirit of optimism, out of the eternal complaining in a prosperous country that has been deteriorated by 16 years of political standstill under Angela Merkel’s chancellorship and that first has to be rebuilt: digitally, infrastructurally and, unfortunately, even in times of global rearmament, defensively. Of course, Habeck also touches on the topic of the Ukraine war. “The time when we could delegate our military protection to the Americans is over,” he writes. And: “Putin wants – let’s not kid ourselves – to destroy the unification and unity of Europe.” The topic of peace appears as a vague possibility in the distance, not as a concrete instruction for action for realpolitik.
This slim volume is primarily about his concern for democracy in Germany; it is about “people who want to succeed, not fail,” about togetherness, for each other, the participation of citizens’ councils, a social future united, strong Europe. Habeck advocates a politics that brings people together and does not divide – although it is a question whether there is or can be a politics (and also journalism) that does not divide, because it is so easy to polemicize against others and so difficult to come to a common language and common solutions.
When it comes to migration, the Green politician advocates “unity in diversity instead of simplicity in discord”; At the same time, the asylum system includes the issue of deportation, because: “Islam belongs to Germany, Islamism does not.”
Habeck also lives with his contradictions. In this book he avoids the gender star – “because I don’t write or speak like that.” In the previous book he had gendered because it was modern, as he thought at the time. With the new book he wants to point the way and give a sketch of his understanding of politics. “A course determination,” says the subtitle. While Merz and Scholz “have so far primarily celebrated a competition to avoid mistakes in the election campaign,” as the “Westdeutsche Zeitung” recently read, Habeck continues to dare to think outside the beaten path. This apparently makes him so uncomfortable and suspiciously strong for the political class that they reflexively switch to campaign mode, polemicizing and agitating instead of bringing concrete solutions forward.
The book does not provide any numbers, data or facts. It is kept in a language mode, as is known from many interviews, and can be read here in a condensed version. It is aimed at its supporters and those undecided who are still looking because the alternatives are not very promising. A bit cloudy and floral, but definitely well-intentioned. Robert Habeck does not seem to be threatening a republic of oligarchs.
Robert Habeck: Up the stream. A course determination. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 144 pages, hardcover, €18.