Annalena Baerbock is the leader of die Grüne, and a likely future Green Chancellor, come the elections in Germany in September. 

And she’s a bit of a puzzle. 

She’s a bronze medal-winning trampolinist who, as a member of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders, has coached Emmanuel Macron, the Finnish PM Sanna Marin, and the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern. (Where’s the video of the four of them on the trampoline? To your search engines, boys and girls.)

As her party’s parliamentary spokeswoman for climate policy, she was present at COP19 in Warsaw, COP20 in Lima, COP21 in Paris, and COP22 in Marrakesh.

As you might expect, the Guardian loves her. This article devotes 27 paragraphs to explaining how the Russian secret services, incensed by her opposition to the Nordstream oil pipeline, have published fake photos of her naked on the internet. The Greens’ foreign policy expert is quoted as saying:

“In order to prevent the Greens from entering the government, no means are beyond the Kremlin. I can only advise all democrats not to participate in Putin’s dirty campaign. The German parliament will be chosen in Germany, not in Moscow, Ankara or Beijing.”

How does he know the Russians did it? Easy. Her head has been photoshopped on to the body of a Russian model. (And how many hours of hard slog on the internet did that take to establish?) And if you look carefully she’s lying on a Turkish towel with a Chinese lantern in the background.

The several articles about Baerbock at the Guardian are surprisingly coy about her politics. Here we’re told that: 

Baerbock, 40, viewed as a tenacious, down-to earth centrist with an eye for detail, and an expert on climate change and how to tackle it, told a small party gathering she aimed to “make politics for society at large”. She described her candidacy as “an offer, an invitation to lead our diverse, prosperous, strong country into a good future”.

And:

“Our society is more progressive than its politics,” Baerbock said, adding that it was “time for politics to construct a future”. She pledged to focus her energies on childcare and schools, care workers and digital functionality. Baerbock said of the climate – the sixth item on her list – that it was important to include everyone when considering reforms, in a nod to those who have accused the Greens of pursuing an ecological agenda which excluded ordinary people and made unrealistic demands of them.

“A good future, not making unrealistic demands of people, and digital functionality.” I’ll go for that. Did she crib it from a speech by David Cameron? Or Tony Blair? Or Boris Johnson? There’s so many bodies you could photoshop that blur of green blobby glup on to.

A long fan-bio in the New Statesman is no clearer on her political stance, which she shares with her token male co-leader Robert Habeck, philosopher and translator of Yeats and Ted Hughes:

Habeck and Baerbock make a strong leadership team… They have unfurled an audaciously ambitious common project: to claim the centre of German politics and society for the Greens. “Habeck and Baerbock are aiming at society as a whole, all of us,” argues Schulte, “no longer just die-hard eco-voters. They don’t bother with lectures and the usual pile-on rituals of politics, but instead speak in an inclusive language.” Part of that language is the word heimat, an emotive term meaning “homeland” or “roots” traditionally associated with the German right, but which Habeck and Baerbock have consciously sought to appropriate for progressive politics.

In her acceptance speech, Baerbock framed her candidacy as “an offer, an invitation to German citizens to lead our diverse, rich, strong country into a good future”. She talked about the environment – “the task of our time, the task of our generation” – but also ranged across more everyday issues such as education, social care and digital public services. Her tone was optimistic and undogmatic. The country urgently needs renewal and a fresh start, she argued, but it should also be confident in itself: “Germany has so much potential. We invented the car and the bicycle.”

Really? One gold star and one black mark for Germany then. But what about the politics? 

…at the party’s pre-election conference from 11 to 13 June… party members will also finalise a Green manifesto for the election… a quintessential Baerbock-Habeck fusion of party ideals and bold forays into the territory of other mainstream parties.

Major policy points include €500bn of new investments in green infrastructure and industry, accelerated climate targets, higher taxes on top incomes and digital firms, an easier naturalisation path for migrants and new fiscal reform and integration in the EU… the manifesto proposes a tough line on Russia and China, strong transatlantic ties and the option to use military force for humanitarian ends.

And if you think that doesn’t sound very treehuggerish, the New Statesman goes on to speak of:

…the divisions that linger below the harmonious unified surface, particularly on foreign policy. A glimpse of these came in January when a think tank close to the Greens caused uproar in the party by publishing a paper that supported the use of US nuclear weapons to shield Germany.

Oh, that kind of nuclear. The blowing-up-the-world, Dr Strangelove kind. Just as long as it’s not doing anything useful like producing cheap electricity…

But Baerbock has problems with what Lord Alan Clark used to call (in terrible French) the actualité. Pierre Gosselin at NoTricksZone 

Green Party Leader Tells National Audience: “Average German Emits 9 BILLION Tonnes Of CO2 Annually!

quotes Baerbock telling a radio audience that “the average German citizen emitted “9 billiontonnes of CO2 annually.” Only a billion times out.

Thanks also to Pierre Gosselin for pointing us to this tweet by Florian Warweg 

in which Baerbock, in a speech to the Atlantic Council, “…first sells herself as an East German (huh?) only to tell how her grandpa fought on the Eastern Front against the Red Army in the winter of ’45 on the Oder. This is her inspiration for ‘fighting for the European Union’..”

The hyperactive German site kaltesonne.de has numerous articles on Baerbock (all in German, unfortunately.) For example here: 

Kann man in Zukunft noch so viel fliegen wie man möchte?

they quote her answers to journalists’ questions about flying: [my correction of GoogleTranslate’s Hundfrühstück:]

“Will people be allowed to fly as much as they like in the future?”

Annalena Baerbock could have answered this question with a yes or a no and perhaps explain why. Her answer is so confused it’s like trying to nail a pudding to the wall. She says:

“That means renouncing things that are not good for everyone’s wellbeing, but are actually harmful.”

After this meaningless response, the second interviewer tries again: “Does that mean that the rich will be allowed to fly, but that cheap holiday flights won’t be possible anymore?”

This evokes a no. “We don’t want to create a new social divide, but there’s more social justice in protecting the climate. Currently, the poorest suffer the most from climate damage. But to come back to flying again… “

Again another question from Peter Frey: “Will there be a restriction on the number of flights? One trip a year toMallorca is ok, but not 10 times?”

“No, I’m not laying down limits. Everyone can go on vacation where he wants. But still, what’s important, what needs to be restricted is the overall global air traffic… “

And here

Welt: Baerbocks Taktik ist bisweilen die Taktik von Populisten

Kaltesonne quotes from an article in die Welt: “Baerbock sometimes uses Populist Tactics:”

In her choice of words, Greens boss Annalena Baerbock tends to a certain inaccuracy, as if she’s trying to see how far she can go. If she actually wants to become Chancellor, she should stick to the facts.

Last week Annalena Baerbock, chairman of the Greens, on the anniversary of the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, tweeted that her thoughts were with the “many people who lost their lives because of the accident.” In fact no-one was killed directly because of the accident at the nuclear plant, and studies come to different results as to the number of those who fell sick.

The official Green spokesperson issued an apology for an error in the reporting of the speech by the party leader… “A mistake we regret… Tens of thousands of people didn’t die as a result of the catastrophe of Fukushima… “

This is a typical inaccuracy for the leader of the Green Party. And since these inaccuracies occur regularly, and always in the sense of her argument, one can assume that they are intended…

German voters are apparently much taken with her, and several recent polls have her leading the CDU candidate for the post of Chancellor. Could it be that electors are so riveted to that photoshopped image that they haven’t noticed that she talks nonsense? And pro-NATO, Atlantic Council, somewhere-to-the-right-of-Joe-Biden nonsense at that.

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10 Comments

  1. Beware German voters and their need to support candidates offering grand back to nature delusionally inspired final solutions.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. “Could it be that electors are so riveted to that photoshopped image that they haven’t noticed that she talks nonsense?”

    The German greens have long noted that vague centric-sounding nonsense with some eco-sauce garners them far, far more votes than way-out-there fringe hair-shirt give-up-everything nonsense that’s more typical of their brand worldwide. The problem being, should they get in and wield real power at the national level (rather than local and as minor coalition partners), which is quite likely now, what would they stand for? What would they actually do? It’s impossible to tell from such a stance. Would they immediately revert to type and impose ‘give-up-everything’ (plus change the system to prevent themselves being voted out again, like a certain predecessor Hunter refers to above). Or would they actually try and turn the centric nonsense into policy? The latter at least would be only random; the former is much worse.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. ANDY WEST
    By “vague centric-sounding nonsense” I imagine you mean the modernising/”good future” waffle. It seems very similar to Blair’s “third way” – in fact, it’s the standard line for any politician wanting to get elected on a radical-sounding programme but intending to stick to “centrist” policies.

    It seems that she will probably either win and become Chancellor, or come second and be Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister in a coalition government. The Green-leaning media are astonishingly quiet about what should be a matter for huge celebration. The pacifist, anti-NATO left must be tied in knots psychologically to see her promoting US policy on Nordstream, and envisaging support for the nuclear deterrent, rather as they’re tied in knots over China, which they’d naturally attack on its human rights record, but want to defend as the “good guy” on greenhouse gas reduction.

    There’s an argument to be made that decades of lying about climate have pushed the liberal media into an impossible posture. If you talk nonsense about the subject you consider the most important for the future of the planet, then all their positions on geo-politics risk becoming self-contradictory.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Geoff, yes, that is what I mean. And I think your ‘psychologically tied in knots’ plus ‘impossible posture’ are a good assessment. I differ only in that for a large majority I would substitute ‘avidly believing’ for ‘lying’ (an avid belief that bypasses all reason and so looks like lying), albeit a minority of actual lying too.

    The green / liberal media will surely not be able to maintain their knotted silence when she actually makes it into power though. So how will they resolve their impossible posture?

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  5. [I should have made it clear that, while the Greens have been neck and neck with the CDU/CSU in overall voting intentions since mid-April, surveys of preferred candidate for Chancellor have the Green candidate Annalena Baerbock way ahead of the CDU/CSU and Social Democrat candidates (30% to 18% and 13% respectively in the latest poll.) But the Chancellor is elected by the Bundestag (parliament) and so may not reflect voters’ preferences.]

    My bewilderment at the lack of media interest in the possibility of a major power choosing a Green head of government is only increased by this very long article in English from der Spiegel.
    https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/green-candidate-and-kingmaker-annalena-baerbock-holds-the-keys-to-germany-s-next-election-a-69889a74-d1bf-4179-a595-853b26113ca3
    Though supposedly about Baerbock and her challenge to the very stable German parliamentary system, she only gets a look in starting about paragraph 12. And then you have to wait till paragraph 27 for any discussion of her policies, when it’s stated as a fact (not a Green policy position) that:

    the biggest issue facing the country is climate change. And many Greens believe that they are the only party in Germany capable of meeting that challenge.

    There follow seven more paragraphs of inter- and intra-party squabbles before we get this, on a possible coalition with right-wing parties:

    There would also be significant differences on climate issues between the Greens, the pro-industry SPD and pro-business FDP. One could, though, easily imagine an alliance focused primarily on updating the country’s technological infrastructure, particularly when it comes to digitalization – an area where Germany fell behind during the Merkel years. The question is whether the Greens are really as fresh and modern as they look. The party remains home to plenty of skeptics who see technological innovation as more of a risk than an opportunity.

    And this, on a possible left wing coalition:

    … senior Left Party parliamentarian Sahra Wagenknecht sees “possibilities for cooperation” on social, environmental and tax issues. The biggest hurdles to such an alliance, she says, are “in foreign policy, with Ms. Baerbock’s support for rearmament, the expansion of German military operations and the confrontation with Russia.”

    In any case, according to der Spiegel:

    … the climate issue is so large and existential that it requires a clear, radical response. Baerbock and the Greens will begin calling for such answers during the campaign. Passing sweeping climate legislation won’t be possible without tough debates and bitterly fought political battles. And there will be those, at least for a time, who are disadvantaged as a result – just as there were following the deep welfare reforms pushed through by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the early 2000s, before the desired results began emerging.

    Just as it took a socialist to get the (West) Germans to swallow austerity and falling living standards, it will take a Green to get them to swallow the “disadvantages” of a radical response to the climate issue. There’s another 37 paragraphs on the detailed discussion of the inadequacy of the various party leaders, none of whom seem to reflect the views of a majority of their respective parties. But absolutely nothing on what Baerbock would do about the climate, which is, according to der Spiegel, the most important issue facing the country. The only thing we know she’s for is rearmament, the expansion of German military operations and confrontation with Russia. And, as she announced to the rightwing Atlantic Council in the tweeted video in the article, she has a soft spot for her grandfather who defended Europe (in its thousand year Reich version) against the Slav hordes from the East.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. “But absolutely nothing on what Baerbock would do about the climate…”

    Indeed. Having lost the typical hair-shirt green stance and talked up various non-climate policies, in order to look like a mainstream party and garner votes accordingly (which worked), this leaves us not knowing what the German Greens would actually do re climate policy when in power. Will they revert to type? Will they be more pragmatic about the severe downsides of Net Zero? Or will they be random?

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  7. @Geoff – bit o/t – but I’m in middle of reading a book “the master plan – Himmler’s scholars & the holocaust”

    not finished it, but seems the “green – back to nature – Aryan/Nordic race (myth ?) was Himmler’s pet project”

    not saying Baerbock has any link to the above, but when she say’s –
    “she’s for is rearmament, the expansion of German military operations and confrontation with Russia”
    I have to wonder !!!

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  8. It seems to me that significant amount of the bizarre acting out of XR and the rest of the “woke” vanguard is due to the cognitive dissonance resulting from resolutely clinging to patent nonsense.

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  9. I spotted this today – seems relevant to this article:

    “German Greens leader Baerbock under fire for resumé inflation
    Baerbock has had a string of lapses concerning her professional past since declaring her candidacy for chancellor.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/german-greens-leader-annalena-baerbock-under-fire-for-resume-inflation/

    “German Greens leader Annalena Baerbock is facing renewed questions over her professional ethics following the discovery of several factual inconsistencies on her official resumé.

    Baerbock, who is also her party’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s September election, falsely claimed membership at the German Marshall Fund and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), among other lesser-known organizations, in the CV available on her official website.

    Though Baerbock is affiliated with all of the organizations cited, her involvement in several instances was exaggerated. For example, she is not a member of the UNHCR, which doesn’t have individual members, but she supports UNO-Flüchtlingshilfe, a German refugee organization that raises money for the UN’s refugee arm.

    The document was corrected overnight after a German journalist dissected the false information on Twitter.

    “As a result of queries about ‘memberships’ cited on Ms. Baerbock’s resumé, the information was adjusted and corrected,” Andreas Kappler, the Green’s campaign spokesman, said on Twitter early Saturday.

    The episode is the latest in a string of embarrassing lapses by Baerbock concerning her professional past that has arisen since she declared her candidacy for chancellor. Last month, she acknowledged that she had failed to declare thousands of euros in extra income she received from her party in addition to her salary as an MP, disclosures required by the German parliament.

    Baerbock has also faced scrutiny of her academic background — she received a degree in international law from the London School of Economics. Some German critics questioned whether she had fulfilled all the requirements for entry into the program, which she completed in 2005.

    Just as Baerbock had laid those doubts to rest, the inconsistencies regarding the memberships listed in her CV came to light.

    Support for the Greens remains strong in Germany, but the party’s poll numbers have dipped recently amid the scrutiny of Baerbock’s background and the party’s program.”

    Liked by 1 person

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