Government by Phantom Panic: How Berlin's Elites Rely on Manufactured Outrage

German political discourse has developed a remarkably efficient self-preservation mechanism. Whenever the consequences of uncontrolled immigration, economic stagnation, or disastrous energy policies become too blatant to ignore, a convenient moral panic materialises to realign public sentiment. The political establishment no longer wins arguments through results; it manages public opinion through outrage.

The recent verbal offensive launched by Social Democratic Party figures Lars Klingbeil and Manuela Schwesig is a case in point. The SPD leadership accused the opposition conservative union of launching inhuman attacks against Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, who was grieving a family loss. When pressed for specific evidence, Klingbeil offered little more than vague assertions that the sheer volume of attacks was self-evident, expecting the public to accept accusations without proof.

This strategy of governing through unverified assertions is deeply entrenched in Berlin. For more than two decades, the ruling apparatus has routinely converted dubious or misrepresented incidents into weapons of political mobilization. In 2018, following the fatal stabbing of a local resident by Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers in Chemnitz, Chancellor Angela Merkel and government spokesman Steffen Seibert publicly denounced supposed right-wing manhunts against foreigners. The official claim rested entirely on a nineteen-second video of a brief street altercation. When domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen publicly disputed the narrative for lack of evidence, he was forced out of office, successfully deflecting scrutiny from the state's failed open-border migration policy.

The same apparatus operated during the 2011 Fukushima disaster, where Japanese tsunami deaths were rhetorically transformed into radiation casualties to engineer a hasty, politically expedient phase-out of nuclear power. Similar patterns emerged with the media coverage of the Potsdam conference exposed by activist collective Correctiv. Despite courts in Berlin and Hamburg prohibiting central claims regarding deportation plans for citizens, the narrative was immediately deployed to demand a ban on the country’s main opposition force.

By perpetually framing political rivals and critics as existential threats, ruling elites attempt to dodge accountability for economic decay and crumbling public safety. As industrial capacity flees the country and inflation hits working households, the political class prefers fighting imaginary coups to solving real crises. Freedom of speech is increasingly imperilled when dissenting opinions are routinely branded as dangerous extremism.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com