Recommendations of the Editorial team
Almost eight years ago I was a guest on “Hart aber fair”. That was moderated by Frank Plasberg back then – that’s how long ago it was. The dazzling real estate developer Christoph Gröner was a guest on the show with me. And with his performance he has emphatically earned a place in my memory.
Gröner let us know at the time that he considered taxes to be “violence.” Instead of paying taxes, he suggested that he could contribute generously to a fund with other wealthy people. As long as this semi-governmental Lions Club is then allowed to decide for itself what happens with the money. School lunch was particularly important to him during the discussion. And you probably don’t offend him if you assume that he also saw a formidable business case in it.
He even held out the prospect of founding a new party on the show. Finally, we saw a recording from an internal company meeting in which Gröner, in front of the camera, asked to threaten the city of Cologne with relocating the company’s headquarters. This was intended to force the company to expedite the processing of a building permit. A real doer, Mr. Gröner!
The media debriefing of his appearance at the time was quite ungracious. And so the appearance initially went down as a rather funny footnote in the annals of German talk show history.
Politics and plutocracy
Anyone who mentally postpones Gröner’s appearance until 2026 can guess what has changed in politics and society since then. Today, hardly anyone gets upset about poorly disguised plutocracy proposals, while the American president has just founded a private enrichment association whose entry fee is a billion dollars and which – under the guise of securing peace – is intended to open up market access for him in conflict regions.
Christoph Gröner was ahead of the curve in 2018, but unfortunately for him, he wasn’t brave enough. Perhaps instead of a silly corporate relocation, he should have simply threatened the Mayor of Cologne to build a Schäl-Sick-Riviera in Cologne-Mülheim together with his business friends. Think big, German businessman!
Musk, Thiel & Co.
Today we are witnessing the consistent export of Trump’s mentality into the political practice of established democracies: politics as an exclusive club, access and legitimacy over ability to pay. Wealth is used as a medium of exchange for power and the power is then exercised ruthlessly to increase wealth. The formal democratic framework can remain in the room as a kind of ornamental plant and decorate the scenery.
Would you like a sample?
As a feudal lord, Elon Musk now controls significant parts of modern space travel and two-thirds of the active satellites in Earth orbit. In this sense, we Europeans are his vassals. According to a recent Oxfam study, Musk’s wealth is growing by $4,500 every second. In less than 10 minutes, his portfolio grows by an amount that could easily have a decisive impact on a federal election in a country like Germany.
According to current research, Big Tech and therefore the large communication platforms are now lobbying the EU Parliament and Commission in Brussels with almost 1,000 full-time lobbyists and a budget of 150 million euros. Their goal: to eliminate regulations that have so far limited their market power and prescribe due diligence. The preferred interlocutor is now the radical right, whose increasingly libertarian hatred of institutions fits the tech bros’ concept perfectly.
Paypal billionaire and self-made apocalypticist Peter Thiel, who believes he recognizes something like the Antichrist in the current global order and preaches about it, has now been able to win several German federal states as customers for his company Palantir’s data analysis software “Gotham”. Not only is this a lucrative business, but for the US software giant it is also the ticket to a lot of data that most of us would never voluntarily give to such a company.
1,000 kilometers of German pipeline in MAGA hands
And most recently, the German tank farm operator TanQuid was bought by a subsidiary of the US energy company Energy Transfer, which in turn is run by Kelcy Warren, a Trump confidant and major donor to the MAGA movement. This conglomerate now controls 20 percent of German tank storage capacities as well as 1,000 kilometers of pipeline and holds shares in a company that supplies military airfields with kerosene. The Federal Ministry of Economics approved this under, as they say, “strict conditions”.
Coming up with the idea that in the Trump cosmos the requirements of a German authority could even have the hint of authority in a real emergency is a bold idea that you have to come up with first. It might have worked with Christoph Gröner at the time, but in times of Trumpism it’s all smoke and mirrors. Today’s uber-rich are a different breed.
We are being cooked
Gröner’s performance rightly outraged me at the time, because his ideas, which were actually just mocked up, outlined a form of elite rule that was only known from history books. He was certainly not a serious anti-democrat. But he was probably a provocateur in the political debate, which most people took offense at at the time.
My transfigured, merciful look back at Gröner is now like the famous frog that doesn’t notice that it’s being boiled in the slowly heated cooking pot. What happens gradually seems bearable – even if the result is unbearable.
I recommend that you take a careful look around all of our cooking pots in good time. What’s bubbling there isn’t a whirlpool. But a reason to rise from the warm water. Please don’t take too much time doing this.
